Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c16.25

c16.25

Thus far the system of practice pursued by the Bramins will, I imagine, appear rational enough, and well founded; but they have other reasons for particularly prohibiting the use of these three articles, which to some may appear purely speculative, if not chimerical. They lay it down as a *principle*, that the *immediate* (or instant) cause of the smallpox exists in the mortal part of every human and *animal* form;² 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; that they return at particular seasons in greater or lesser numbers; that these bodies, imperceptible as they are to the human organs of vision, imprison the most malignant tribes of the *fallen angelic spirits*: That these animalculae touch and adhere to every thing, in greater or lesser proportions, according to the nature of the surfaces which they encounter; that they pass and repass in and out of the bodies of all animals in the act of respiration, without injury to themselves, or the bodies they pass through; that such is not the case with those that are taken in with the food, which, by mastication, and the digestive faculties of the stomach and intestines, are crushed and assimilated with the chyle, and conveyed into the blood, where, in a certain time, their malignant juices excite a fermentation peculiar to the *immediate (or instant) cause*, which ends in an eruption on the skin. That they adhere more closely, and in greater numbers, to glutinous, fat, and oily substances, by which they are in a manner taken prisoners; that *fish*, *milk*, and *ghee*, have these qualities in a more eminent and dangerous degree, and attach the animalculae, and convey them in greater quantities into the blood, and for these reasons, added to those before assigned, they are forbid to be taken in food during the preparative course. They add, that the small pox is more or less epidemical, more mild or malignant, in proportion as the air is charged with these animalculae, and the quantity of them received with the food. That though we all receive, with our ailment, a portion of them, yet it is not always sufficient in quantity to raise this peculiar ferment, and yet may be equal to setting the seeds of other diseases in motion; hence the reason why any epidemical disorder seldom appears alone. That when once this peculiar ferment, which produces the smallpox, is raised in the blood, the *immediate (instant) cause* of the disease is totally expelled in the eruptions, or by other channels; and hence it is, that the blood is not susceptible of a second fermentation of the same kind. That inoculating for this disease was originally hinted by the *divinity* presiding over the *immediate (instant) cause*, the thought being much above the reach of human wisdom and foresight. That the great and obvious benefit accruing from it, consists in this, that the fermentation being excited by the action of a small portion of matter (similar to the *immediate cause*) which *had already passed through* a state of fermentation, the effects must be moderate and benign; whereas the fermentation raised by the malignant juices of the animalculae received into the blood with the ailment, gives necessarily additional force and strength to the first efficient cause of the disease.