{"id":7036,"date":"2016-05-27T17:50:35","date_gmt":"2016-05-27T17:50:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/?p=7036"},"modified":"2016-05-28T10:07:14","modified_gmt":"2016-05-28T10:07:14","slug":"who-loves-truth-ought-to-read-james-jurin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/?p=7036","title":{"rendered":"‘. . . who loves truth ought to read . . .’ James Jurin"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"smallpox\"

(source of image: Wikimedia Commons)<\/p><\/div>\n

Smallpox \u2014 which became known\u00a0as \u2018small\u2019 only in the mid-sixteenth century to distinguish it from \u2018great\u2019 or \u2018French\u2019 pox [syphilis] \u2014 was\u00a0a\u00a0scourge of the early modern era. The physician\u00a0whose catalogue\u00a0is published in EMLO this week, James Jurin<\/a>, worked in his capacity as Secretary of The Royal Society to collate statistics both for mortality\u00a0amongst smallpox patients and\u00a0for the immunity and survival of volunteers following variolation, a practice that involved inserting powdered smallpox scabs or fluid from the pustules into scratches made in the skin of a healthy individual.\u00a0Jurin, who held the position of Secretary between 1722 and 1727, advertised in the Philosophical Transactions<\/em> for physicians\u2019 accounts of their trials and experiences with variolation and the subsequent survival or infection rates; from the responses received, he\u00a0calculated the odds of mortality following inoculation. By the early eighteenth century, smallpox was rampant in every known continent. It carried a mean mortality rate that lay somewhere between 25 and 30% and survivors were left with extensive and disfiguring scars and sometimes also blindness. Over sixty individuals across\u00a0Britain\u00a0responded to Jurin’s\u00a0call\u00a0for information\u00a0and, based on the accounts in their letters, he\u00a0compiled mortality figures for instances of inoculated, as well as for naturally contracted, smallpox. He published<\/a>\u00a0these figures annually. Although a physician with practices in London and in Tunbridge Wells, Jurin did not administer variolation himself, and\u00a0he arranged for his own daughters to undergo the procedure with Robert Baker, a surgeon at Guy\u2019s Hospital. Jurin\u2019s statistics were\u00a0important, however, and ultimately played a part\u00a0in the struggle to eradicate this\u00a0disease, contributing to the body of knowledge upon which Edward Jenner was able to build\u00a0later in the century. The last case of naturally occurring smallpox was diagnosed in 1977.<\/p>\n

Although Jurin is known best for his epidemiological work, he was also an active correspondent who maintained\u00a0contacts the length and breadth of Europe and engaged with a number of the public controversies that played out in the early eighteenth-century. In 1741, Voltaire wrote to him<\/a>\u00a0proclaiming: ‘who loves truth ought to read . . . especially mr jurin.\u2019\u00a0The\u00a0calendar of correspondence available\u00a0in EMLO today has been taken from the letters collected\u00a0in Andrea Rusnock\u2019s impressive publication\u00a0(brought out\u00a0in 1996 by Editions Rodopi and in which transcriptions of many of the letters may be consulted), and work to collate this\u00a0metadata in EMLO was undertaken at the suggestion of Richard Aspin at the Wellcome Library<\/a>, London.<\/p>\n

As we celebrate\u00a0the correspondence\u00a0of one secretary of the Royal Society, we are pleased\u00a0to announce also that metadata for an additional 753\u00a0letters in the correspondence of his illustrious predecessor Henry Oldenburg<\/a> have\u00a0been released, bringing the current total in that catalogue\u00a0to 1,956 records. In addition, metadata taken from\u00a0the correspondences of many\u00a0more early fellows of the Royal Society are in preparation at present and will be entered\u00a0into EMLO\u00a0in the course of the coming months.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Smallpox \u2014 which became known\u00a0as \u2018small\u2019 only in the mid-sixteenth century to distinguish it from \u2018great\u2019 or \u2018French\u2019 pox [syphilis] \u2014 was\u00a0a\u00a0scourge of the early modern era. The physician\u00a0whose catalogue\u00a0is published in EMLO this week, James Jurin, worked in his capacity as Secretary of The Royal Society to collate statistics both for mortality\u00a0amongst smallpox patients […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7036\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}