One of the learned physicians who had visited Miss Wortley, having some years since fully informed himself of this method of practice, and being thoroughly satisfied of the safety and reasonableness of it, at length resolved to try it in his own family; he had formerly lost some children in a very malignant kind of the smallpox, and therefore advised me to lose no time to engraft the only son he had left. The boy (who was not quite six years of age) being of a pretty warm and sanguine complexion, the Doctor ordered about five ounces of blood to be taken from him; and then, in ten days after, having found matter which he liked, I inoculated him in both arms. This was performed the 11th of May, 1721.
The learned physician here referred to was Dr. Keith, and the facility wherewith he adopted the novel practice supplies an instructive commentary on Lady Mary’s anticipation of the resentment of “the profession”--her first imitator coming from the ranks of the dreaded self-seeking obstructives. Furthermore, we have to observe how different is Maitland’s account from the heroic myth current of “the one woman confronting the prejudice and ill-will of the world.” Even Lady Louisa Stuart, who made it her business to correct many misconceptions as to her grandmother’s career, writes--
Only the higher motive of hoping to save numberless lives could have given Lady Mary courage to resolve upon bringing home the discovery. For what an arduous, what a fearful, and, we may add, what a thankless enterprise it was, nobody is now in the least aware. Those who have heard her applauded for it ever since they were born, and have also seen how joyfully vaccination was welcomed in their own days, may naturally conclude that when once the experiment had been made, and had been proved successful, she could have nothing to do but to sit down triumphant, and receive the thanks and blessings of her countrymen. But it was far otherwise.... Lady Mary protested that in four or five years immediately succeeding her arrival at home, she seldom passed a day without repenting of her patriotic undertaking; and she vowed that she never would have attempted it, if she had foreseen the vexation, the persecution, and even the obloquy it brought upon her. The clamours raised against the practice, and of course against her, were beyond belief. _The facility rose in arms to a man_, foretelling failure and the most disastrous consequences; the clergy descanted from their pulpits on the impiety of thus seeking to take events out of the hand of Providence; the common people were taught to look at her as an unnatural mother, who had risked the lives of her own children.... We now read in grave medical biography that the discovery was instantly hailed, and the method adopted, by the principal members of the profession.... But what said Lady Mary of the actual fact and actual time? Why, that _the four great physicians deputed by Government to watch the progress of her daughter’s inoculation_, betrayed not only such incredulity as to its success, but such an unwillingness to have it succeed, such an evident spirit of rancour and malignity, that she never cared to leave the child alone with them one second, lest it should in some secret way suffer from their interference.[16]