mankind. But that distemper is too beneficial to
them not to expose to all their resentment the hardy wight that should
undertake to put an end to it. Perhaps, if I live to return, I may,
however, have courage to war with them. Upon this occasion admire the
heroism in the heart of your friend, &c."

The immediate history of inoculation, so far as Lady Mary is concerned,
may here briefly be given. She first heard of the practice in March,
1717, and within a year her faith in its effect was so strong that in
the spring of the following year she had her son inoculated at Pera--he
was the first English person to undergo the operation. "The boy was
engrafted last Tuesday," she wrote to her husband the following Sunday,
"and is at this time singing and playing, and very impatient for his
supper.... I cannot engraft the girl; her nurse has not had the
small-pox." It is amusing to learn that the inoculation of the young
Edward Wortley Montagu proved presently to have an advantage which was
certainly not at the time of the operation present to the mind of the
mother. At the age of six or thereabouts, the child ran away from
Westminster school--he was always running away from school--and a reward
of L20 and expenses was offered to whoever found him. The advertisement
gave the following clue: there are "two marks by which he is easily
known, _viz_., on the back of each arm, about two or three inches above
the wrist, a small roundish scar, less than a silver penny, like a large
mark of the small-pox."

When Lady Mary returned to London, she carried out her intention to
introduce the operation. Dr. Maitland, who had been physician to the
mission to the Porte, set up in practice and inoculated under her
patronage. The "heathen rite" was vigorously preached against by the
clergy and was violently abused by the medical faculty. Undismayed by
the powerful opposition, however, she persevered in season and out,
until her efforts were crowned with success. She was fortunate in
enlisting the co-operation of that distinguished doctor, Richard Mead,
celebrated by Pope in his "Epistle to Bolingbroke,"

"I'll do what Mead and Cheselden advise."

Mead, in 1720, when an epidemic of the plague was feared in London,
published a treatise: "A Short Discourse concerning Pestilential
Contagion and the Methods to be used to Prevent it." It was reprinted
seven times within a year, and an eighth edition appeased in 1722. Lady
Mary obtained permiss