Upon these trials, and several others in private families [wrote Sir Hans Sloane], the Princess of Wales sent for me to ask my opinion of the inoculation of the Princesses. I told Her Royal Highness, that by what appeared in the several essays, it seemed to be a method to secure people from the great dangers attending smallpox in the natural way. That preparations by diet and necessary precautions being taken, made the practice very desirable; but that not being certain of the consequences which might happen, I would not persuade nor advise the making trials upon patients of such importance to the public. The Princess then asked me if I would dissuade her from it: to which I made answer that I would not, in a matter so likely to be of such advantage. Her reply was, that she was then resolved to have it done, and ordered me to go to the King, who commanded me to wait upon him on the occasion. I told his Majesty my opinion, that it was impossible to be certain, but that raising such a commotion in the blood there might happen dangerous accidents not foreseen: but he replied that such might and had happened to persons who had lost their lives by bleeding in a pleurisy, and taking physic in any distemper, let never so much care be taken. I told his Majesty that I thought this to be the same case, and the matter was concluded upon, and succeeded as usual, without any danger during the operation, or the least ill symptom or disorder since.[20]

The Princess Amelia, aged eleven, and Caroline, aged nine, were therefore inoculated on the 19th of April, 1722.

Let us return to Maitland, whose triumph for the moment appeared complete, and with it his assurance. To his detractors he professed boldly—

I could bring a great many cases of persons inoculated in Turkey to prove the constant and certain success of the practice; in all which I have never seen any miscarriage, except in one, which was wholly due to the rashness and inadvertence of a surgeon at Constantinople.

Is it not a matter of the greatest importance for us to know how to prevent the mighty contagion of the smallpox, and how to preserve our children from the violent attacks and fatal effects of it?

To divine Maitland’s character—to determine how far he was deceiver or deceived is not easy. He obviously made professions in vast excess of his knowledge. One of his contemporaries writes—

I remember Mr. Maitland at Child’s Coffee House, when the experiment was just begun at Newgate, was as confident and positive of the success and security proposed by inoculation as if he had had twenty years experience without any miscarriage, which made those who heard him justly suspect he was more concerned for the employ than for the success of it.[21]

He had not the proper craft of this conscious rogue, for alongside his assertions of absolute competence and safety, he set forth such confessions of ignorance and disaster, that one is impelled to pronounce him a purblind enthusiast. For example, take this case, which he published without apparently any sense of its scope—

2nd October, 1721.—After due preparation of the body, I engrafted Mary Batt, an infant of two years and a half old, daughter of Thomas Batt, a Quaker, living at Temple, within three miles of Hertford. The red spots and flushings appeared on her face and neck the fourth day; and she kept playing about well till the seventh or eighth, when she became a little heavy and thirsty, with a fuller and quicker pulse; then the pustules came out fresh and full, and the incisions discharged a thick and well digested matter. She had not above twenty in all upon her; they continued about three or four days, then dried away and fell off, and the child recovered perfectly.

Thus far all was well; but what happened afterwards was, I must own, not a little surprising to me, not having seen or observed anything like it before. The case was in short this. Six of Mr. Batt’s domestic servants, namely, four men and two maids, who all in their turns were wont to hug and caress this child whilst under the operation, and the pustules were out upon her, never suspected them to be catching, nor indeed did I, were all seized with the right natural smallpox, of several and very different kinds; for some had the round distinct sort, some the small continued, and others the confluent; all of ’em had a great many, but especially the last, with the usual bad symptoms, and very narrowly escaped. But they all (God be thanked) did well (except one maid, that would not be governed under the distemper, who died of it,) and now enjoy a perfect state of health.[22]