Inoculation

The earliest hints of the practice of inoculation for smallpox in China come during the 10th century.[3] A Song dynasty (960–1279) chancellor of China, Wang Dan (957–1017), lost his eldest son to smallpox and sought a means to spare the rest of his family from the disease, so he summoned physicians, wise men, and magicians from all across the empire to convene at the capital in Kaifeng and share ideas on how to cure patients of it until an allegedly divine man from Mount Emei carried out inoculation. However, the sinologist Joseph Needham states that this information comes from the Zhongdou xinfa (種痘心法) written in 1808 by Zhu Yiliang, centuries after the alleged events.[3]

The first clear and credible reference to smallpox inoculation in China comes from Wan Quan's (1499–1582) Douzhen Xinfa (痘疹心法) of 1549, which states that some women unexpectedly menstruate during the procedure, yet his text did not give details on techniques of inoculation.[4] Inoculation was first vividly described by Yu Chang in his book Yuyi cao (寓意草), or Notes on My Judgment, published in 1643. Inoculation was reportedly not widely practiced in China until the reign of the Longqing Emperor (r. 1567–1572) during the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), as written by Yu Tianchi in his Shadou Jijie (痧痘集解) of 1727, which he alleges was based on Wang Zhangren's Douzhen Jinjing Lu (痘疹金鏡錄) of 1579.[4] From these accounts, it is known that the Chinese banned the practice of using smallpox material from patients who actually had the full-blown disease of Variola major (considered too dangerous); instead they used proxy material of a cotton plug inserted into the nose of a person who had already been inoculated and had only a few scabs, i.e. Variola minor . This was called "to implant the sprouts", an idea of transplanting the disease which fit their conception of beansprouts in germination. Needham quotes an account from Zhang Yan's Zhongdou Xinshu (種痘新書), or New book on smallpox inoculation, written in 1741 during the Qing dynasty (1644–1912), which shows how the Chinese process had become refined up until that point:

Method of storing the material. Wrap the scabs carefully in paper and put them into a small container bottle. Cork it tightly so that the activity is not dissipated. The container must not be exposed to sunlight or warmed beside a fire. It is best to carry it for some time on the person so that the scabs dry naturally and slowly. The container should be marked clearly with the date on which the contents were taken from the patient.

In winter, the material has yang potency within it, so it remains active even after being kept from thirty to forty days. But in summer the yang potency will be lost in approximately twenty days. The best material is that which had not been left too long, for when the yang potency is abundant it will give a 'take' with nine persons out of ten people—and finally it becomes completely inactive, and will not work at all. In situations where new scabs are rare and the requirement great, it is possible to mix new scabs with the more aged ones, but in this case more of the powder should be blown into the nostril when the inoculation is done.[4]

Two reports on the Chinese practice were received by the Royal Society in London in 1700; one by Dr. Martin Lister who received a report by an employee of the East India Company stationed in China and another by Clopton Havers. But no action was taken.[5]

According to Voltaire (1742), the Turks derived their use of inoculation from neighboring Circassia.

The Circassian women have, from time immemorial, communicated the small-pox to their children when not above six months old by making an incision in the arm, and by putting into this incision a pustule, taken carefully from the body of another child. This pustule produces the same effect in the arm it is laid in as yeast in a piece of dough; it ferments, and diffuses through the whole mass of blood the qualities with which it is impregnated. The pustules of the child in whom the artificial small-pox has been thus inoculated are employed to communicate the same distemper to others. There is an almost perpetual circulation of it in Circassia; and when unhappily the small-pox has quite left the country, the inhabitants of it are in as great trouble and perplexity as other nations when their harvest has fallen short...[6]

Voltaire does not speculate on where the Circassians derived their technique from, though he reports that the Chinese have practiced it "these hundred years". The Turkish practice was presented to the Royal Society in 1714 and 1716, when the physicians Emanuel Timoni[7] and Giacomo Pylarini independently sent letters from Istanbul.[8]

The mention of inoculation in the Sact'eya Grantham, an Ayurvedic text, was noted by the French scholar Henri Marie Husson in the journal Dictionaire des sciences médicales.[9] However, the idea that inoculation originated in India has been also taken in account, as few of the ancient Sanskrit medical texts described the process of inoculation.[10] Variolation is documented in India from the eighteenth century, thanks to the 1767 account by the Irish-born surgeon John Zephaniah Holwell.[11] Holwell's extensive 1767 description included the following,[12] that points to the connection between disease and "multitudes of imperceptible animalculae floating in the atmosphere":

They lay it down as a principle, that the immediate cause of the smallpox exists in the mortal part of every human and animal form; that the mediate (or second) acting cause, which stirs up the first, and throws it into a state of fermentation, is multitudes of imperceptible animalculae floating in the atmosphere; that these are the cause of all epidemical diseases, but more particularly of the small pox.[11]

Holwell ascribes this account to his Brahman informants. However, such a theory has not yet been discovered in any Sanskrit or vernacular treatise.[13] Holwell's use of the word "animalculae" suggests that he may have been aware of the observations of Antonie van Leeuwenhoek made in about 1683. Other parts of Holwell's account, especially his use of the idea of "immediate" and "mediate" causation, and the concept of "fermentation," suggest that these notions may not necessarily be entirely of Indian origin but may also be influenced by contemporary developments in microbiology.

Several historians have suggested that variolation may be older than the eighteenth century in India,[14] but historical evidence for this assertion is lacking. The widespread rumour since the nineteenth century that vaccination was documented in India before the discoveries of Edward Jenner can all be traced to propaganda tracts written in Sanskrit and the Indian vernaculars by colonial officers, in the pious hope of convincing Indians to accept the newly discovered Jennerian procedure.[15][16] A landmark anthropological study by Ralph Nicholas described the mid-twentieth century rituals of appeasement to Śītalā, the Indian goddess of smallpox, in Bengal.[17]

Early travellers to Ethiopia report that variolation was practiced by the Amhara and Tigray peoples. The first European to report this was Nathaniel Pearce, who noted in 1831 that it was performed by a debtera who would collect "a quantity of matter" from a person with the most sores from smallpox, then "cuts a small cross with a razor in the arm" of his subject and puts "a little of the matter" into the cut which was afterwards bound up with a bandage. Subsequent visitors who described this practice included the British traveller William Cornwallis Harris and Dr. Petit of the French scientific mission of 1839–1841.[18]

The knowledge of inoculating oneself against smallpox seems to have been known to West Africans, more specifically the Akan people. A slave named Onesimus explained the inoculation procedure to Cotton Mather during the 18th century; he reported to have acquired the knowledge from Africa.[19]