"It is not necessary," the empress replied; "you come well recommended. The conversation I have had increases my confidence in you. It is impossible that my physicians should have much skill in this operation. My life is my own, and with the utmost cheerfulness I entrust myself to your care. I wish to be inoculated as soon as you judge it convenient, and desire to have it kept a secret."
The anxious physician begged that the experiment might
first be tried by inoculating some of her own sex and age, and, as near as possible, of her own constitutional habits. The empress replied,
"The practice is not novel, and no doubt remains of its general success. It is, therefore, not necessary that there should be any delay on that account."
Catharine was inoculated on the 12th of October, 1768, and went immediately to a secluded private palace at some distance from the city, under the pretense that she wished to superintend some repairs. She took with her only the necessary attendants. Soon, however, several of the nobility, some of whom she suspected had not had the small-pox, followed. As a week was to elapse after the operation before the disease would begin to manifest itself, the empress said to Dr. Dimsdale,
"I must rely on you to give me notice when it is possible for me to communicate the disease. Though I could wish to keep my inoculation a secret, yet far be it from me to conceal it a moment when it may become hazardous to others."
In the mean time she took part in every amusement with her wonted affability and without the slightest indication of alarm. She dined with the rest of the company, and enlivened the whole court with those conversational charms for which she was distinguished. The disease proved light, and she was carried through it very successfully. Soon after, she wrote to Voltaire,
"I have not kept my bed a single instant, and I have received company every day. I am about to have my only son inoculated. Count Orlof, that hero who resembles the ancient Romans in the best times of the republic, both in courage and generosity, doubting whether he had ever had the small-pox, has put himself under the hands of our Englishman, and, the next day after the operation, went to the hunt in a very deep fall of snow. A great number of courtiers have followed his example, and many others are preparing to
do so. Besides this, inoculation is now carried on at Petersburg in three seminaries of education, and in an hospital established under the protection of Dr. Dimsdale."
The empress testified her gratitude for the benefits Dr. Dimsdale had conferred upon Russia by making him a present of fifty thousand dollars, and settling upon him a pension of one thousand dollars a year. On the 3d of December, 1768, a thanksgiving service was performed in the chapel of the palace, in gratitude for the recovery of her majesty and her son Paul from the small-pox.