I have prevailed with one physician (and for it I have had bloody attempts made upon my life by some of our Energumens) to introduce the practice; and the experiment has been made upon almost 300 Objects in our neighbourhood, young and old (from one year to seventy), weak and strong, male and female, white and black, in midsummer, autumn, and winter, and it succeeds to admiration!
I cannot learn that one has died of it; though the experiment has been made under various and marvellous disadvantages. Five or six have died upon it, or after it, but from other diseases or accidents; chiefly from having taken infection in the common way by inspiration before it could be given in this way by transplantation.
Dr. Leigh, in his _Natural History of Lancashire_, counts it an occurrence worth relating, that there were some catts known to catch the smallpox, and pass regularly through the state of it, and then to die. We have had among us the very same occurrence.
It was generally observed and complained that the pigeon-houses of the City continued unfruitful, and the pigeons did not hatch or lay as they used to do all the while that the smallpox was in its epidemical progress: and it is very strongly affirmed that our dunghill fowl felt much of the like effect upon them.
We have many among us who have been visited with the Plague in other countries many years ago, who have never been arrested with smallpox after it, though they have been exposed as much as any other people to it; whence the belief now begins to prevail among us, that they who have had the Plague will never have the smallpox after it.
Considering the developed evidence that awaits us as to the character and results of inoculation, it would be superfluous to discuss this singular report, but we may remark the consummate audacity with which Mather assumes and maintains his position. What a masterly touch of the quack have we in these words--
I cannot learn that one has died of it. Five or six have died upon it, or after it, but from other diseases or accidents; chiefly from having taken infection in the common way by inspiration before it could be given in the way of transplantation.
We can readily understand how the hand that could give so adroit a turn to awkward disasters could in other days frame irresistible indictments for witchcraft.