In History we have always to suspect the picturesque, for mankind have a fatal preference for handsome error over uncomely fact; and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu as mother of English inoculation, and derivatively of vaccination, is ever so much more graceful than dull Timoni and Pylarini in the Philosophical Transactions, or Cotton Mather in New England. Few condescend to inquire whether Lady Mary, as primary inoculator, was acting independently, or whether she had advisers and prompters. “All of her self and by her self” is the heroic representation—“a woman’s wit against the world;” and judgment surrenders to fancy, as is the way with myths ancient and modern.
But it so happens that what in itself ought to be incredible—that a young Englishwoman should suddenly adopt the strange practice of a strange people—is demonstrably incredible. Lady Mary did not act alone. She had for counsellor and director, Charles Maitland, the physician to the embassy, who, familiar with the fame of inoculation, was glad to observe its practice experimentally. Maitland writes—
In the year 1717, when I had the honour to attend the English Ambassador and his family at Constantinople, I had a fair opportunity fully to inform myself of what I had long before heard, namely, the famous practice of transplanting, or raising the smallpox by inoculation.[13]
Here we may note, too, that Maitland was aware that inoculation did not originate in Turkey. He says—
Whilst universally practised all over Turkey for three-score years past, it has been known in other parts of the East, a hundred, or, for aught we know, some hundreds of years before.[14]
It was Maitland who managed the inoculation of young Montagu, and he thus described the operation—
About this time, the Ambassador’s ingenious lady resolved to submit her only son to it, a very hopeful boy of about six years of age. She first of all ordered me to find out a fit subject to take the matter from, and then sent for an old Greek woman who had practised this way a great many years. After a good deal of trouble and pains, I found a proper subject, and then the good woman went to work; but so awkwardly by the shaking of her hand, and put the child to so much torture with her blunt and rusty needle, that I pitied his cries, who had ever been of such spirit and courage that hardly anything of pain could make him cry before; and, therefore, inoculated the other arm with my own instrument, and with so little pain to him that he did not in the least complain of it. The operation took in both arms, and succeeded perfectly well.... He had about an hundred pox all upon his body. This operation was performed at Pera in the month of March, 1717.
That is to say, almost simultaneously with the Ambassador’s arrival in Turkey.
The embassy returned to England in 1718, after a residence of little over a year in Constantinople. The dates are worth observation; for whilst it appears that the doctor and the lady were in common resolved to recommend the practice of inoculation to their countrymen, the dates prove with what inexperience and levity they assumed the grave responsibility. If quackery be assertion in absence of knowledge or of evidence, then we may accurately stigmatise Maitland and Montagu a couple of quacks. But so far as concerns Maitland we may go farther, for he expressly tells us—
I was assured and saw with my eyes that the smallpox is rather more malignant and epidemic in the Turkish dominions than with us; insomuch that, as some have affirmed, one-half, or at least one-third part of the diseased, at certain times, do die of it; and they that escape are terribly disfigured by it.[15]