Of course the chief strength of the opponents of inoculation (ere experience gave them stronger ground) lay in the assertion of the folly of incurring a certain injury for an uncertain advantage. Whatever the risk of smallpox to those who have it, yet large numbers, it was argued, pass through life untouched; and why should they make themselves sick, and risk their lives in order to obtain a superfluous security![38]
The frequent assertion that the clergy thundered against inoculation is untrue and invented for effect. The Rev. Edmund Massey, Lecturer of St. Alban, Wood Street, did preach a sermon against the new practice, and a fair sermon it was, according to the standard of sermons. Maitland published some remarks on the sermon, to which Massey rejoined; and if I select a passage from the rejoinder it will prove, better than any description, that the divine was more than a match for the surgeon. Said Massey to Maitland--
Inoculation, in your sense, is an engraftment of a corrupted body into a sound one; an attempt to give a man a disease, who is in perfect health, which disease may prove mortal.
To which you reply, It resembles that of a person who leaps out of a window for fear of fire; and surely that can never be reckoned a mistrust of Providence.
No, certainly, Sir, if his house be really on fire, and the stairs burnt. ’Tis the only probable way of safety left; and if the leap should kill him, the action could neither be called sinful or imprudent. But what should we say to a man, who jumped out of the window when his house was not a-fire, only to try what he might perhaps be forced to do hereafter? This mad action exactly hits the case between us. For if my house be not on fire, that is, if I am in no apparent danger, what need I jump out at the window? What occasion is there to inoculate me?
To carry on your own allegory, I would ask you, Sir, what human or divine authority you have to set a man’s house on fire, that is, put a man who is in perfect health in danger of his life by a fit of illness? His own consent is not sufficient, because he has no more lawful power over his own life or health than you have, to put either of them in hazard.[39]
In short, nothing can be more unfounded than the assumption in literature, popular and professional, that Maitland and Montagu were confronted by a crowd of howling fanatics over whom they triumphed as light over darkness. Marvellous is the imbecility wherewith biographers and historians reproduce the fables of any inventive predecessor.