256 inoculations in 1725 and ’26, with 4 deaths. 124 ” in 1727 and ’28, with 3 deaths. Dr. Scheuchzer, in 1729 tabulated[48] the cases and results of these years, 1721-28, as follows-- ---------------+--------+---------+---------+-------+------- | No. |Success- | Had | | Age. |operated|fully in-|imperfect|Did not| Died. | upon. |oculated.|Smallpox.| take. | ---------------+--------+---------+---------+-------+------- Under 1 year, | 24 | 24 | 0 | 0 | 2 1 to 2, ” | 34 | 33 | 0 | 1 | 4 2 to 3, ” | 65 | 65 | 0 | 0 | 1 3 to 4, ” | 91 | 88 | 0 | 3 | 1 4 to 5, ” | 65 | 63 | 0 | 2 | 1 5 to 10, ” | 257 | 249 | 3 | 5 | 3 10 to 15, ” | 140 | 131 | 1 | 8 | 1 15 to 20, ” | 104 | 95 | 3 | 6 | 2 20 and upwards,| 110 | 91 | 6 | 13 | 2 Unknown, | 7 | 6 | 0 | 1 | 0 | --- | --- | -- | -- | -- | 897 | 845 | 13 | 39 | 17 ---------------+--------+---------+---------+-------+------- Thus stood the account by the inoculators’ own showing, and it was by no means a satisfactory balance-sheet. What strikes one painfully in looking over it, is the vast preponderance of the young and defenceless (780 out of 897) upon whom the abominable experiment was tried. “Helplessness which commands the protection of the brave is the opportunity of the investigating sneak.” Whilst the inoculators argued laboriously that if some danger attended artificial smallpox, it was trifling to that attached to the spontaneous disease (among other obvious replies), it was maintained that only after much wider experience could it be known what were the precise effects of inoculation. Inoculation, as introduced by Maitland in 1721, had proved vastly different after acquaintance, and there was no telling what remained to be revealed. As Dr. Wagstaffe observed-- Had it always been slight, gentle, safe, and useful, with all those alluring epithets bestowed on it; had none had above a hundred or two hundred pustules, and no one died of it in the space of several years; and had there been no instance of any one’s being ever again infected with smallpox who had any pustules at all, how few soever, raised by inoculation, nobody would sooner have subscribed to the practice than myself.[49]