_12th October, 1721._--I inoculated Joseph and Benjamin, sons of William Heath, of Hertford; the first of about seven, and the second three years of age; both with the same matter and at the same time: the last had a gentle and favourable kind; but the first, namely, Joseph, being a fat, foul, gluttonous boy, who would not be confined to the rules and directions I had strictly charged his mother withal, as to diet and keeping warm, was taken very ill before the eruption, and after it had a great load of the continued small kind, but at last recovered and did well. What a mighty difference is here to be observed between those two boys! The reason of it seems to be plainly this: the younger, who had the favourable kind, was of a clean habit, moderate appetite, and easily governed during the whole process. The elder was not only of a gross foul constitution, but likewise had a voracious appetite, always eating and filling his belly with the coarsest food--as cheese, fat country pudding, cold boiled beef, and the like, which I saw myself as I came in by chance the third day after the operation; nor was there any care taken to restrain or keep him within doors in cold, windy, frosty weather; he once wet his feet in water--insomuch that had he taken the smallpox by infection, the world could not have saved his life. Hence it appears how necessary it is to cleanse thoroughly foul habits before the operation, and, withal, to keep patients to a very strict regimen under it.[24] 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. FOOTNOTES: [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.