the region of
Auvergne, which was inundated by a great flood; he also describes a
similar epidemic in Touraine in 582. Rhazes, or as the Arabs call him,
Abu Beer Mohammed Ibn Zacariya Ar-Razi, in the latter part of the ninth
century wrote a most celebrated work on small-pox and measles, which is
the earliest accurate description of these diseases, although Rhazes
himself mentions several writers who had previously described them, and
who had formulated rules for their cure. He explained these diseases by
the theory of fermentation, and recommended the cooling treatment.
Adams remarks that although it is probable that small-pox existed for
ages in Hindoostan and China, being completely isolated in those
countries from the European world, it was not introduced into the West
until the close of the seventh century. Imported into Egypt by the
Arabians, it followed in the tracks of their conquests, and was in this
way propagated over Europe. The foregoing statement disagrees with
Dupony and others. It is well known that small-pox was prevalent in
Europe before Rhazes's description of it, and after the Crusades it
spread over Central and Western Europe, but did not extend to the
northern countries until some years later. In 1507 the Spaniards
introduced it into San Domingo, and in 1510 into Mexico, where it
proved a more fatal scourge than the swords of Cortez and his
followers, for according to Robertson it swept away in Mexico three
millions and a half of people. In 1707 it appeared in Iceland, and
carried off more than one-fourth of its inhabitants; in 1733, according
to Collinson, it almost depopulated Greenland. The Samoyeds, Ostiaks,
and other natives of Eastern Siberia, have frequently suffered from
devastating epidemics. In Kamchatka the disease was introduced in 1767,
and many villages were completely depopulated. According to Moore, at
the beginning of the eighteenth century nearly one-fourteenth of the
population died from small-pox in England, and at the end of the
century the number of the victims had increased to one-tenth. In the
last century the statement was made in England that one person in every
three was badly pock-marked. The mortality of the disease at the latter
half of the eighteenth century was about three to every thousand
inhabitants annually. India has always been a fertile ground for the
development of small-pox, and according to Rohe the mortality from
small-pox has been exceedingly great for the