"A Pious Fraud": 20 year update

My ``Pious Fraud'' essay was presented at a conference in 1985, and published in the book Studies on Indian Medical History (1987, reprinted in 2001). 

The article proposed that the source of the Sanskrit passage on cowpox vaccination was probably an document written by someone between 1802 and 1820, in order to promote vaccination.  Trustworthy evidence was cited to show that F. W. Ellis was known at the time to have done exactly this.  However, his actual documents were believed to have been lost, burned by his cook after his death.

Prof. Thomas Trautmann has subsequently discovered an actual vaccination tract that Ellis composed in Tamil with an English translation.   The present note summarizes and documents this confirmation of the 1987 findings.