In Barbados in March last there were upwards of 3000 persons down in the smallpox, where inoculation is practised with great success.
Such reports, whilst secure from examination, were none the less effective over the public imagination. There was a report published by Dr. Mead in 1747, which derived great credit from his endorsement, and which continues to be cited to the present day as proof for inoculation, but which is a model of convenient and circumstantial vagueness worthy of Defoe. Thus Mead’s story runs--
The following relation was communicated to me by a gentleman of great credit. He was a merchant at St. Christopher’s in the West Indies, and in the making of sugar employed a great number of slaves. In one year, when the smallpox raged with more than ordinary violence in the neighbouring islands, with his own hands he inoculated three hundred of them, from five to sixty years of age, with such success, that not one of them died, though most of them were negroes. And whereas all the Americans suffer this distemper in a most terrible manner, yet experience shows, that it is much more dangerous when it attacks the natives of Africa.[52]
Mead held positions which later and more exact inquiry rendered untenable. He would not allow that the pus of smallpox could communicate any disease but smallpox, _if_ taken from a proper subject--a condition that required supernatural assistance to fulfil. He maintained that inoculation generated true smallpox, and that as no one could have smallpox twice, therefore no one could have smallpox after inoculation, and that reports to the contrary were not credible. It now goes without saying that in this contention Mead was at fault, but at the time his confidence was not inexcusable; and whilst defending and recommending inoculation, he made admissions which fully justified those who resisted and condemned his counsels. Let us not forget that the following passage was published in 1747, and was the fruit of six-and-twenty years of experience in the best London practice. Thus Mead wrote--
It ought not to be omitted, that boils and swellings under the ears and in the arm-pits arise more frequently after the distemper procured by art than after that which comes of its own accord; for this reason, as I suppose, that the venomous matter is pushed forward with less force, which disadvantages Nature makes amends for in this way.