Burials From from all Smallpox. Diseases. 1744 1345 167 1745 1463 141 1746 1712[63] 128 1747 1200 71 1748 1286 167 1749 1132 192 1750 1038 64 1751 1241 109 1752 1187 147 1753 1105 70 ------ ---- 12,709 1256
1754 1215 104 1755 1187 89 1756 1316 126 1757 1267 113 1758 1001 52 1759 1136 232 1760 1123 66 1761 903 6 1762 1305 274 1763 1160 123 ------ ---- 11,613 1185
Here we have a piece of valid experience with every advantage to the smallpox terrorist: for Edinburgh last century was a city contrived as if for the generation and perpetuation of smallpox. The population of 55,000 was lodged thickly in flats, in houses of many storeys, closely built in lanes and courts--a population densely compacted as any in Europe, with arrangements for cleanliness indescribable, at this day perhaps incredible. Yet in conditions so propitious to smallpox, we see before us the total outcome during a series of twenty years; and reprehensible as the result may appear to contemporary sanitarians, who hold, and rightly hold, that all zymotic diseases are preventible, yet it affected Monro with no anxiety or dismay: nor does the rate of mortality of old Edinburgh contrast unfavourably with that of the modern city. The case of Edinburgh, however, serves to show that in all cases when we hear of the ravages of smallpox before Jenner appeared as deliverer, our policy is to insist firmly upon the production of special and adequate evidence: it is monstrous that the assertions of common quacks, whether inoculators or vaccinators, should pass into tradition and be accepted as unquestionable verity.
We have, moreover, to observe that the mortality from smallpox in Edinburgh was infantile mortality: for as Monro testified--
The inhabitants of Scotland generally have the smallpox in their infancy or childhood; very few adults being seen in this disease. Whether this is owing to any particular constitution of the air, or of the people, or to the disease not being so much dreaded as to cause any to fly from the place where it is, or to the great intercourse which must be among the inhabitants of the towns, of which several, nay, many families enter to their houses by one common stair, while in the villages the peasants are generally assistant to their neighbours of whose family any is sick, it is not now necessary to inquire.