Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c16.7

c16.7

The general state of this distemper in the provinces of Bengall (to which these observations are limited) is such that for five and sometimes six years together, it passes in a manner unnoticed, from the few that are attacked with it; for the complexion of it in these years is generally so benign as to cause very little alarm; and notwithstanding the multitudes that are every year inoculated in the usual season, it adds no malignity to the disease taken in the natural way, nor spreads the infection, as is commonly imagined in Europe. Every seventh year, with scarcely any exception, the smallpox rages epidemically in these provinces, during the months of March, April and May; and sometimes until the annual returning rains, about the middle of June, put a stop to its fury. On these periodical returns (to four of which I have been a witness) the disease proves universally of the most malignant confluent kind from which few either of the natives or Europeans escaped, that took the distemper in the natural way, commonly dying on the first, second, or third day of the eruption; and yet, inoculation in the East, has *natural fears* and *superstitious prejudices* to encounter, as well as in the West. The usual resource of the Europeans is to fly from the settlements, and retire into the country before the return of the smallpox season.