New book

[Dominik Wujastyk]

On Wed, 12 Jul 2000, Rajarshi Banerjee wrote:

> Inoculation against chicken pox was practiced in India and China
> before the practice was discovered by western medicine.

I'm afraid this is rather a muddle.  Inoculation against smallpox (not
chicken pox, which isn't normally lethal) was practiced in India at least
as far back as the eighteenth century, when it is reported by Holwell in
1767 (J. Z. Holwell, An account of the manner of inoculating for the small
pox in the East Indies with... observations on the... mode of treating
that disease in those parts, London, 1767.)  Probably the method was
practiced earlier, but there's no historical evidence for it.

The earliest evidence for smallpox inoculation (completely different from
vaccination, of course) comes from Chinese sources.  More on this in
Chang's paper in the recently published Contagion book.

Inoculation was never "discovered" by western medicine.  The practice was
noticed in the bazaars of Istanbul by Lady Wortley Montague in the
mid-eighteenth century, and she had her children inoculated.  She then
carried out a personal campaign to promote inoculation back in
England.  This was partly successful, though controversial.  Inoculation
was eclipsed from the late 1790s by Jenner's famous discoveries.


> A book by dharampal lists extensive records kept by the british on
> innoculation practices in India. Weakened germ cultures were mantained
> in Varanasi and people were sent out as far as bengal to innoculate
> people.

Dharampal's book does not list such records, unfortunately.  At least not
his book on science in the 18th century.  I only wish such "extensive
British records of inoculation practices" did exist, but they don't.  One
has to scour contemporary newspapers (materials from about 1800 onwards),
travellers narratives, and other contemporary sources to find such
information.

Dharampal's book is very interesting, incidentally.  There's much more
written on contagion and epidemics in India.  A quite large secondary
literature.  No excuse not to read (as usual!).  Start with David Arnold's
excellent Colonizing the Body, and continue with Ranger & Slack, Epidemics
and Ideas.  Etc. etc. etc.

--
Dominik Wujastyk
Founder, INDOLOGY list.