Much more was attributed to Sutton’s pills and powders than to his regimen, and these were no more than preparations of antimony and mercury, with which practitioners of all orders were only too familiar. Sutton, however, contrived to maintain his mystery until he had no longer occasion for it, and lived to recognise a successor in Jenner. He removed to London in 1767 in hope of enlarging his income, but like many other provincial celebrities, discovered that he had better have remained where he shone without rivals and detractors.
The Sutton regimen, so far as it might be described as “cool,” came into general favour, whilst what was called the hot regimen of warm rooms, bed, and cordials was correspondingly discredited. Contrasting the two methods, Sir George Baker, writing in 1771, observed—
I found that in the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex, many thousands of people of all ages and constitutions, and some of them with every apparent disadvantage, had been inoculated with general good success; whereas at Blandford, in Dorset, out of 384 who were inoculated, 13 actually died, and many others narrowly escaped with their lives from confluent smallpox.[60]
A famous inoculator was Dr. Thomas Dimsdale of Hertford, a Quaker of easy principles. He published in 1766 a treatise entitled The Present Method of Inoculating for the Smallpox—an exposition of the most approved practice of the time, which, by one of those curious felicities of circumstance, conferred on him a European reputation; and in 1781, Tracts on Inoculation—a record of his opinions and adventures at home and abroad.
Dimsdale desired to universalise inoculation, but with circumspection. He recommended that the inhabitants of a suitable district should be dealt with as a whole and at once. That the names of all should be taken, and on a certain day that everyone, who had not had smallpox, should be inoculated. That the district should then continue in quarantine for about three weeks, at the end of which the danger and the fear of smallpox would cease, until an unpolluted generation should afresh accumulate. The project was not mere dreaming. Dimsdale was a man of influence and energy, and effected several complete inoculations of villages and parishes in Hertfordshire according to his plan. In later years, he combined banking with medicine, and the firm of Dimsdale, Fowler, and Co. of Cornhill originated with him and perpetuates his name.
Dimsdale’s practice lay chiefly among the upper classes, to whom he made matters very comfortable. As he wrote—
I do not enjoin any restriction in respect to diet, nor direct any medicines to be taken before the time of operation by such as appear to be in a proper state of health.[61]
He was satisfied with administering a powder on the evening of the day on which a patient was inoculated, consisting of calomel, tartar emetic, and crabs’ claws.
Whilst labouring to popularise inoculation, Dimsdale was strongly opposed to the trade therein passing to unauthorised hands—simple, safe, and salutary though he asserted it to be. Thus he averred—
The mischiefs arising from the practice of inoculation by the illiterate and ignorant are beyond conception.[62]