Go About Doing Good

In church yesterday we had a high councilman and his wife visit our ward. Their topic: going about doing good. Sister Thueson spoke about service success stories and the like, but Brother Thueson took a slightly different approach. For the majority of his talk he outlined the history of smallpox. Smallpox was once one of the deadliest diseases on the earth. It called almost everyone it came in contact with, but if you were lucky enough to survive it, you almost always went blind. The disease became a problem in the western hemisphere in the beginning of the 17th century, and early treatments left quite a bit to be desired. Noted English doctor Thomas Sydenham developed a treatment for the disease that one of his patients, Thomas Dover, describes in shocking detail:

“Whilst I lived in Dr Sydenham’s house, I had myself the Small Pox, and fell ill on the Twelfth Day. In the beginning I lost twenty two Ounces of Blood [from bloodletting]. He gave me a Vomit, but I find by Experience Purging much better. I went abroad, by his Direction, till I was blind, and then took to my Bed. I had no Fire allowed in my Room, my Windows were constantly open, my Bed-Clothes were ordered to be laid no higher than my Waste. He made me take twelve Bottles of Small Beer, acidulated with Spirit of Vitriol, every twenty Four hours. I had of this Anomalous Kind [of smallpox] to a very great Degree, yet never lost my Senses one Moment.”

So the best they could do was make the patients uncomfortable and give them beer to dull the pain. Fortunately, the practice of variolation eventually took hold. In early 18th century Turkey, the practice was already in full swing. Lady Mary Wortley Mantague wrote to a friend about the practice after having her six-year-old son variolated:

 

“…I am going to tell you a thing that I am sure will make you wish yourself here. The small-pox, so fatal, and so general amongst us, is here entirely harmless by the invention of ingrafting, which is the term they give it. There is a set of old women who make it their business to perform the operation every autumn…. The old woman comes with a nut-shell full of the matter of the best sort of smallpox, and asks what veins you please to have opened…. She immediately rips open that you offer her with a large needle … and puts into the vein as much venom as can lie upon the head of her needle…. Every year thousands undergo this operation…. There is no example of any one that has died in it; and you may believe I am well satisfied of the safety of the experiment…. I am patriot enough to take pains to bring this useful invention into fashion in England; and I should not fail to write to some of our doctors very particularly about it, if I knew any one of them that I thought had virtue enough to destroy such a considerable branch of their revenue for the good of mankind.”

Throughout the 18th century the practice began to spread and take hold in the colonies, and eventually the disease was entirely eradicated from the earth. The point of the story? Somebody did good. Somebody had a crazy idea, and saved a whole bunch of lives.

Well, even though small pox is gone, the world still has problems, just like it always has. The thing is, we are already so advanced that it seems like there isn't a lot of room for improvement. But we can't get discouraged. It's on us to do something good. Maybe someday people will look back on us and have a laugh about the way we treated cancer, or the way we dealt with natural disasters. Who knows what will happen in the future. But let's make it good.