Suppose that twenty-five Bluecoat Hospital boys at a medium, one year with another, taken ill of the smallpox.
Suppose we likewise, that the Inoculators take out of the several wards, yearly, as they find them, twenty-five boys, which are inoculated.
Quere, What the difference of success? I solemnly protest that if this could be put in practice, I would lay two to one against the inoculated.
For, as I have said before, we have lost but one smallpox patient these nine years [writing in 1723] although 1800 children have been in the House during that time, and I declare to have met with no unequal success in other families amongst children about the same ages (that is between 8 and 15) where I have been concerned, and I doubt not but many of the Learned Faculty, as well as some others of my profession, can say as much from their own experience and observation.[31]
To appreciate Massey’s contention on this point, we have to remember that smallpox is the designation of a disease of many degrees of intensity; a consideration which Dr. Wagstaffe, another opponent of inoculation, thus enforced--
There is scarcely, I believe, so great a difference between any two distempers in the world, as between the best and worse sort of smallpox, in respect to the dangers which attend them.... So true is that common observation, that there is one sort in which a nurse cannot kill, and another which even a physician can never cure.[32]
Of course the Bills of Mortality were appealed to in evidence of the extent and fatality of smallpox; and as it is matter of common belief that prior to inoculation and Jenner (there is always a haze about the date) people were mown down with smallpox, it may be worth while reviving the table of relative mortality in London during the first twenty-two years of the 18th century.
Burials from all Diseases. From Smallpox. 1701 20,471 1095 1702 19,481 311 1703 20,720 898 1704 22,684 1501 1705 22,097 1095 1706 19,847 721 1707 21,600 1078 1708 21,291 1687 1709 21,800 1024 1710 24,620 3138 1711 19,833 915 1712 21,198 1943 1713 21,057 1614 1714 26,569 2810 1715 22,232 1057 1716 24,436 2427 1717 23,446 2211 1718 26,523 1884 1719 28,347 3229 1720 25,454 1440 1721 26,142 2375 1722 25,750 2167 ------- ------ 505,598 36,620