Historical accounts of the practice of smallpox inoculation in
the
late eighteenth century
invariably make a distinction between the widespread general inoculations
carried out
within small rural parishes and the partial inoculations in urban centres
such as London, Manchester, Newcastle and Leeds.
This distinction, moreover, is generally reinforced by
concluding that the rural inoculation programmes were ‘highly
effective’ or ‘successful’ in
contrast with the urban inoculation schemes, which are often seen as
‘marginally effective’
or indeed ‘failing’. Success or failure tends to be judged
by the impact which inoculation
had upon reducing mortality from smallpox, but as a result of this
demographic focus the
motives behind the implementation of urban inoculation have been
overlooked. My paper
readjusts this balance by looking more closely at motives and by judging
success in relation
to aims. To achieve this I have taken a new approach towards the history
of smallpox
inoculation as a whole, and portray the basic idea of giving a
person smallpox in order to
confer subsequent immunity as being modified in the hands of different
people throughout
the course of the century. Hence it is possible to trace the development
of inoculation from
a folk practice carried out within the home with the aim of protecting
individuals, to large-scale general inoculations of an entire community,
which aimed to eradicate the disease altogether.