The Complete Works in Philosophy, Politics and Morals of the late Dr. Benjamin Franklin, Vol. 2 [of 3]

Dr. Stark[38].

May 4, 1773.

**** The young physician whom I mentioned is dead, and all the notes which he had left of his curious experiments are by some accident lost between our friends Sir John Pringle and Dr. Huck (Saunders); but these gentlemen, if the papers cannot be recovered, it is to be presumed, will repeat the experiments themselves ****

B. FRANKLIN.

Dr. Lettsom.

London, August 30, 1769.

**** This letter will be forwarded to you by Dr. Lettsom, a young American physician of much merit, and one of the peaceable sect of Quakers: you will therefore at least regard him as a curiosity, even though you should have embraced all the opinions of the majority of your countrymen concerning these people ****

B. FRANKLIN.

FROM DR. ——[39] OF BOSTON, TO BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, ESQ. OF PHILADELPHIA.

Respecting the Number of Deaths in Philadelphia by Inoculation.

Boston, Aug. 3, 1752.

Sir,

This comes to you on account of Dr. Douglass: he desired me to write to you for what you know of the number that died of the inoculation in Philadelphia, telling me he designed to write something on the small-pox shortly. We shall both be obliged to you for a word on this affair.

The chief particulars of our visitation, you have in the public prints. But the less degree of mortality than usual in the common way of infection, seems chiefly owing to the purging method designed to prevent the secondary fever; a method first begun and carried on in this town, and with success beyond expectation. We lost one in eleven one-sixth, but had we been experienced in this way, at the first coming of the distemper, probably the proportion had been but one in thirteen or fourteen. In the year 1730 we lost one in nine, which is more favourable than ever before with us. The distemper pretty much the same then as now, but some circumstances not so kind this time.

If there be any particulars which you want to know, please to signify what they are, and I shall send them.

The number of our inhabitants decreases[40]. On a strict inquiry, the overseers of the poor find but fourteen thousand one hundred and ninety Whites, and one thousand five hundred and forty-four Blacks, including those absent, on account of the small-pox, many of whom, it is probable, will never return.

I pass this opportunity without any particulars of my old theme. One thing, however, I must mention, which is, that perhaps my last letters contained something that seemed to militate with your doctrine of the Origin, &c. But my design was only to relate the phenomena as they appeared to me. I have received so much light and pleasure from your writings, as to prejudice me in favour of every thing from your hand, and leave me only liberty to observe, and a power of dissenting when some great probability might oblige me: and if at any time that be the case, you will certainly hear of it.

I am, Sir, &c.

FROM BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, ESQ. OF PHILADELPHIA.

In Answer to the preceding.

Philadelphia, Aug. 13, 1752.

Sir,

I received your favour of the 3d instant. Some time last winter I procured from one of our physicians an account of the number of persons inoculated during the five visitations of the small-pox we have had in twenty-two years; which account I sent to Mr. W. V. of your town, and have no copy. If I remember right, the number exceeded eight hundred, and the deaths were but four. I suppose Mr. V. will show you the account, if he ever received it. Those four were all that our doctors allow to have died of the small-pox by inoculation, though I think there were two more of the inoculated who died of the distemper; but the eruptions appearing soon after the operation, it is supposed they had taken the infection before, in the common way.

I shall be glad to see what Dr. Douglass may write on the subject. I have a French piece printed at Paris, 1724, entitled, Observations sur la Saignée du Pied, et sur la Purgation au commencement de la Petite Verole, & Raisons de doubte contre l' Inoculation.—A letter of the doctor's is mentioned in it. If he or you have it not, and desire to see it, I will send it.—Please to favour me with the particulars of your purging method, to prevent the secondary fever.

I am indebted for your preceding letter, but business sometimes obliges one to postpone philosophical amusements. Whatever I have wrote of that kind, are really, as they are entitled, but Conjectures and Suppositions; which ought always to give place, when careful observation militates against them. I own I have too strong a penchant to the building of hypotheses; they indulge my natural indolence: I wish I had more of your patience and accuracy in making observations, on which, alone, true philosophy can be founded. And, I assure you, nothing can be more obliging to me, than your kind communication of those you make, however they may disagree with my pre-conceived notions.

I am sorry to hear that the number of your inhabitants decreases. I some time since, wrote a small paper of Thoughts on the peopling of Countries[41], which, if I can find, I will send you, to obtain your sentiments. The favourable opinion you express of my writings, may, you see, occasion you more trouble than you expected from,

Sir, yours, &c.

B. FRANKLIN.

TO BENJAMIN VAUGHAN, ESQ.

On the Effects of Lead upon the human Constitution.[42]

Philadelphia, July 31, 1786.

DEAR FRIEND,

I recollect that when I had last the pleasure of seeing you at Southampton, now a twelvemonth since, we had some conversation on the bad effects of lead taken inwardly; and that at your request I promised to send you in writing a particular account of several facts I then mentioned to you, of which you thought some good use might be made. I now sit down to fulfil that promise.

The first thing I remember of this kind was a general discourse in Boston when I was a boy, of a complaint from North Carolina against New-England rum, that it poisoned their people, giving them the dry-belly-ach, with a loss of the use of their limbs. The distilleries being examined on the occasion, it was found, that several of them used leaden still-heads and worms, and the physicians were of opinion, that the mischief was occasioned by that use of lead. The legislature of Massachussetts thereupon passed an act, prohibiting, under severe penalties, the use of such still-heads and worms hereafter.

In 1724, being in London, I went to work in the printing-house of Mr. Palmer, Bartholomew-close, as a compositor. I there found a practice, I had never seen before, of drying a case of types (which are wet in distribution) by placing it sloping before the fire. I found this had the additional advantage, when the types were not only dried but heated, of being comfortable to the hands working over them in cold weather. I therefore sometimes heated my case when the types did not want drying. But an old workman observing it advised me not to do so, telling me I might lose the use of my hands by it, as two of our companions had nearly done, one of whom, that used to earn his guinea a week, could not then make more than ten shillings, and the other, who had the dangles, but seven and sixpence. This, with a kind of obscure pain, that I had sometimes felt, as it were, in the bones of my hand when working over the types made very hot, induced me to omit the practice. But talking afterwards with Mr. James, a letter-founder in the same Close, and asking him if his people, who worked over the little furnaces of melted metal, were not subject to that disorder; he made light of any danger from the effluvia, but ascribed it to particles of the metal swallowed with their food by slovenly workmen, who went to their meals after handling the metal, without well washing their fingers, so that some of the metalline particles were taken off by their bread and eaten with it. This appeared to have some reason in it. But the pain I had experienced made me still afraid of those effluvia.

Being in Derbyshire at some of the furnaces for smelting of lead ore, I was told, that the smoke of those furnaces was pernicious to the neighbouring grass and other vegetables; but I do not recollect to have heard any thing of the effect of such vegetables eaten by animals. It may be well to make the enquiry.

In America I have often observed, that on the roofs of our shingled-houses, where moss is apt to grow in northern exposures, if there be any thing on the roof painted with white lead, such as balusters, or frames of dormant windows, &c. there is constantly a streak on the shingles from such paint down to the eaves, on which no moss will grow, but the wood remains constantly clean and free from it. We seldom drink rain-water that fall on our houses; and if we did, perhaps the small quantity of lead descending from such paint might not be sufficient to produce any sensible ill-effect on our bodies. But I have been told of a case in Europe, I forget the place, where a whole family was afflicted with what we call the dry-belly-ach, or colica pictorum, by drinking rain-water. It was at a country-seat, which, being situated too high to have the advantage of a well, was supplied with water from a tank, which received the water from the leaded roofs. This had been drank several years without mischief, but some young trees planted near the house growing up above the roof, and shedding their leaves upon it, it was supposed, that an acid in those leaves had corroded the lead they covered, and furnished the water of that year with its baneful particles and qualities.

When I was in Paris with Sir John Pringle in 1767, he visited La Charité, an hospital particularly famous for the cure of that malady, and brought from thence a pamphlet, containing a list of the names of persons, specifying their professions or trades, who had been cured there. I had the curiosity to examine that list, and found, that all the patients were of trades, that some way or other use or work in lead; such as plumbers, glaziers, painters, &c. excepting only two kinds, stone-cutters and soldiers. In them, I could not reconcile it to my notion, that lead was the cause of that disorder. But on my mentioning it to a physician of that hospital, he informed me, that the stone-cutters are continually using melted lead to fix the ends of iron balustrades in stone; and that the soldiers had been employed by painters as labourers in grinding of colours.

This, my dear friend, is all I can at present recollect on the subject. You will see by it, that the opinion of this mischievous effect from lead, is at least above sixty years old; and you will observe with concern how long a useful truth may be known and exist, before it is generally received and practised on.

I am, ever, yours most affectionately,

B. FRANKLIN.