Verily, as Cobbett said, quackery is never without a shuffle. As we shall see, inoculation came to require a preparatory course of very strict regimen--so strict as to be impracticable for the rank and file of the world; but the practice was at first commended without any such conditions. What said Maitland’s patron, Lady Mary, in her famous letter from Adrianople?--
The smallpox, so fatal and so general amongst us, is here entirely harmless by the invention of _ingrafting_.... Every year thousands undergo its operation; and the French ambassador says pleasantly that they take the smallpox here by way of diversion, as they take waters in other countries. There is no example of anyone that has died in it.
It was under cover of such seductive assurances that inoculation was introduced to England, and established in perversity and quackery.
[16] _Letters and Works of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu._ Vol. i. pp. 88-90. Ed. 1861.
[17] _On Smallpox and Measles._ By Dr. Mead. London, 1747.
[18] _Mr. Maitland’s Account of Inoculating the Smallpox._ 2nd. ed. London, 1723.
[19] _A Letter to Dr. Freind showing the Danger and Uncertainty of Inoculating the Smallpox._ By W. Wagstaffe, M.D. London, 1722.
[20] _An Account of Inoculation by Sir Hans Sloane, Bart., given to Mr. Ranby to be published_, 1736. _Philosophical Transactions_, Vol. xlix. p. 516.
[21] Isaac Massey to Sir Hans Sloane, 1722.
As we have seen, it is part of the legend that the introduction of inoculation was fanatically resisted by physicians, clergy, and mob; but the resistance was neither fanatical nor extensive, and is chiefly the invention of the romancing biographers who represent Lady Mary Wortley Montagu as a heroine and martyr of science. To do that shrewd and brilliant woman justice, she made no pretence to the character imputed to her, and in her copious correspondence, there is not a hint of annoyance on the score of her patronage of the Turkish modification of smallpox. On the contrary, it would appear that inoculation brought her a large share of that veiled notoriety in which she had sincere pleasure. Writing to the Countess of Mar in 1723, she says--
Lady Byng has inoculated both her children, and since that experiment has not had any ill effect, the whole town are doing the same thing; and I am so much pulled about, and solicited to visit people, that I am forced to run into the country to hide myself.[25]