The Speckled Monster (59 page)

In Cambridge, the General Court voted £1,000 to be paid out of the public treasury for the relief of families nearly reduced to gnawing leather.

The following afternoon, the governor and council coaxed the House into issuing a reward of £50 for discovering “the Author and Actor” of the wicked attack upon Dr. Mather's person and property. They did not mention Dr. Boylston.

 

Just east of Fetter Lane, on the north side of Fleet Street, coaches lined up near the entrance to the narrow courtyard of Crane Court. Like an immense ornate egg, each coach in its turn rolled to the entrance, shed lines of footmen in silver lace, and then popped open with a click, hatching gentlemen with luxuriant plumes of hair into the glow of lamplight. One by one, they unfolded themselves to proud stands, retrieved walking sticks and gloves from impassive servants, stowed hats under their arms, and stalked across the courtyard, disappearing up the fanned stairway and into the pale stone house. Emptied of its treasure, each coach pulled away to the crowded coach-house and full stables, and the next coach drew up.

In the foyer, gruff laughter and the long, leaning snorts of snuff-taking mingled briefly with the clink of glasses full of fine old Madeira, but the men soon drifted into the grand meeting hall. Irascible old Sir Isaac Newton limped his way to the president's chair, rapped upon the table, and the meeting of the Royal Society came to order.

Dr. Alexander Stuart waited impatiently through run-of-the-mill reports and ho-hum everyday business. At last, he judged the restlessness to indicate a certain willingness for fireworks, and he rose. “I have here a letter dated September twenty-fifth, from Dr. William Douglass, who writes from Boston, in New England, upon the subject of the smallpox.” He cleared his throat. “On inoculation for the smallpox, to be precise.”

The fidgeting stopped and heads turned. One or two men who had been dozing snorted awake.

“We trained together in Leiden. I can vouchsafe for the man's education and intellectual capacity.” He read the letter through, reveling in the dropped jaws and raised brows certain sentences elicited. “A thousand people ill in the month of September,” for instance. He knew what they were thinking:
Why, London goes years at a time without so many ill of a single distemper in one month—and London must be fifty, maybe sixty times the size of Boston
!

He continued: “Above sixty persons of all ages, sexes, and conditions have there been inoculated—”

A collective gasp swept the room.
Sixty!
Under the leadership of Sir Hans, the Royal College of Physicians had lobbied hard for permission to inoculate six prisoners at a go—and the doctors had thought themselves daring.

Dr. Stuart, a Scottish Tory who disliked Sir Hans and the Whig ministry, purred his way through the end of his sentence: “... of which several had the confluent sort, and one or two have died.”

There was a drumming of feet on the floor, an outburst of hollering, as the Tories faced the Whigs with conquest in their eyes.

Sir Hans sniffed and stood to face Dr. Stuart. “Perhaps now might be an opportune moment to give a report of our own trials of inoculation, at Newgate.” Dr. Stuart sat down, and Sir Hans turned to smile at Dr. Freind and Dr. Wagstaffe, who were looking smugly at nothing.

“They have been an unmitigated success,” Sir Hans continued smoothly. “All those who were inoculated had the distemper communicated thereby in a very gentle degree.”

Dr. Wagstaffe's attention snapped back into focus. “So gentle,” he cried, “that it must be doubted whether what you communicated was indeed the true smallpox!”

“Do stop speaking of ‘the true smallpox' as if it were the true cross, Wagstaffe,” grumbled someone in the back, and a dangerous silence enveloped the room.

“Facetiousness aside,” sniffed Dr. Freind, “you cannot deny that the operation presents grave risks whose nature and consequences you do not understand. What assurance do you have that it works?”

Angry voices and local quarrels erupted across the space. Sir Hans raised his voice above it all. “The question, gentleman, the question has been put whether the inoculated smallpox indeed secures a person from any future return of the infection.” The very walls of the room seemed to hunch in tighter around him.

“I am happy to report that one of the women who suffered the experiment in Newgate has since undertaken to nurse other persons down of the distemper. Mr. Maitland assures me that she has been put to bed with two different patients for six weeks now, without any ill consequence whatsoever.”

More gasps crossed the room, along with some significant
oh-ho's
and a little satisfied chortling as well: the tussle over inoculation appeared to be heating into a royal battle with room for all.

“As for Boston,” said Sir Hans as he sat down, “I am expecting further news imminently.”

 

He had been well prepared for such boisterous nonsense. Only a few days earlier, he had drafted his report for the princess and translated it into French.
One can assuredly communicate the infection to suitable subjects, without danger of any relapse or recurrence. The entire operation is not only absolutely without danger, but also very easy and practicable
.

He had also caught wind of the Boston controversy from Mr. Jeremiah Dummer, who had a letter—no, a treatise—from Dr. Mather.

He sighed. Dr. Mather wrote incessantly and voluminously about American oddities to various Fellows of the Royal Society. That he had chosen this particular moment to approach the Society sideways, through the roundabout door of the provincial agent—and demand anonymity, no less—was vexing indeed. Sir Hans had done his best to persuade Mr. Dummer to ignore that demand, in light of necessity. Surely royal urgency counted for something. The lawyer had promised to consider it.

 

William Hutchinson, selectman and representative for Boston, woke in the night with a splitting headache and spinning nausea. Dr. Thomas Robie, physician and tutor of mathematics, astronomy, and natural philosophy at Harvard, was sent for, but he had no alternative diagnosis to offer. Mr. Hutchinson had come down with the smallpox.

Dr. Clark,
his fellows howled.
Despite all the speaker's care to cleanse himself from the contagion after visiting his patients, he has carried the disease in among us, and passed it to Mr. Hutchinson. Who might be next?
By morning, so many members of the House were packing in panic that the governor found it necessary to put a dignified face on the chaos by proroguing the General Court until March.

The following day, November 18, five people rushed to Dock Square in Boston to put themselves in Dr. Boylston's care.

 

Mr. Dummer regretted it, said his disappointing little note, but he could not countenance the breach of confidence that Sir Hans had requested. He would send back to Boston directly, begging for permission to use Dr. Mather's name on his pamphlet.

Sir Hans took his spectacles off and sighed. Mr. Dummer had intimated that he could make what private use he might of Dr. Mather's glowing report from Boston, but public proclamation would have to wait the length of two ocean crossings. In winter, no less, when the North Atlantic would scream with icy anger that quelled even the bravest hearts from setting sail for long stretches of weeks. It might well be February before he had an answer.

He drummed the table with impatient fingers. Why must proclamations that would do good lie silent, while those aimed at nothing but panic could be plastered through the gossip-mongering papers? Spread before him on his breakfast table were two of the vile rags, both proclaiming a further experiment to be made on every last orphan of St. James's.

He did not know where such leaks came from. Almost certainly not from anyone within the princess's counsel, for they were considering inoculating a few children. The princess had suggested an en masse inoculation, but he and Lord Townshend had reasoned her out of it: until the operation should be known to be safe, they could not make it a requirement. It must at least appear to be voluntary. Besides, they needed a success rate of one hundred percent, and some of those children were already on the downhill slope toward death.

Some!
Sir Hans snorted. His inspection of the charity children of St. James's had presented such a bleak picture of misery that he had postponed the entire affair until a few of the ragamuffins could be given enough food, warmth, and sleep to stand a chance of fighting off even the attenuated infection of inoculation.

 

The appearance of the rash dissolved Mr. Hutchinson's last refuge of hope. Watching the red speckles thicken, he called for paper and ink and made out his will.

The following morning, Dr. Robie inspected him in the gray November light and his face grew grim. Already, the rash had sown itself nearly solid.

“It is not of the best sort, is it?” asked the selectman.

“I am sorry,” said Dr. Robie. “It will be confluent.”

Mr. Hutchinson blinked and looked away out the window. “Have you had news of my wife?” he asked. “And the children?”

“She is distraught for your sake, but still safe. Far in the country, where the air is still clean.”

Dr. Robie heard a sharp intake of breath.
“Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,”
said Mr. Hutchinson with a bitter laugh. “What do you think of Dr. Boylston's operation of inoculation?”

“I do not know what to think. I cannot conceive how it works.”

“But does it work?”

“It would appear that it does.”

Mr. Hutchinson sighed and turned back to the doctor. “It is just retribution—” Dr. Robie moved to protest, but Mr. Hutchinson waved him off. “You do not know what hell we have put him through, in our pride and vainglory.” He leaned across the table. “It is too late for me. But not for others.” He gripped Dr. Robie by the arm; his own was red and thick. “You must learn to inoculate.”

The doctor stepped back, but Mr. Hutchinson's grip strengthened.
“Without delay.”

 

The dissolution of the General Court dispersed panic throughout the province. Even as deaths tapered off in Boston, people began flocking to Dr. Boylston, begging to be inoculated. On the twenty-second of November, Zabdiel inoculated ten people. The next day, Dr. Robie appeared from Cambridge, ushering in three students from Harvard and a plea that Zabdiel had thought he would never hear from a fellow doctor:
Show me how it is done
. “With pleasure, sir,” he said, and two heads bent over the glint of his lancet. The next day Dr. Robie returned with eight more students, a fellow, and Mr. Edward Wigglesworth, the Hollis Professor. The day after that, three more students arrived. In three days, Zabdiel inoculated almost the entire student body and faculty of Harvard—most of those, at any rate, who were still untouched by the speckled beast. In addition to the Bromfields and Fitches, Lorings and Lyndes, he had already inoculated, Sewalls, Foxcrofts, and Danforths now came to call: the most exalted names in the province begged for his time, bowing and scraping about convenience.

They were not alone. Day by day, the number of inoculees rose: 10, then 12, 13, 14—as many as 15 in a day. In the three weeks following the attack on his family, Zabdiel inoculated 119 people in Boston and Roxbury: more than doubling the number in the previous five months. Since the people of Roxbury could no longer come to him, he went to them. When he could, he went to Charlestown and Cambridge as well. Waiting—anything to do with stillness—ceased to be part of his days, which were devoured by inoculating, by checking up on his inoculated patients, by riding back and forth across the Neck, or sailing hither and yon on the Charlestown ferry.

In Cambridge, Mr. Hutchinson's skin swelled and frothed, flushing from red to yellow and then fading to an ominous ashen gray.

The ministers, meanwhile, threw their heads back and roared. Increase Mather published
Several REASONS Proving that Inoculating or Transplanting the Small Pox is a Lawful Practice, and that it has been Blessed by GOD for the Saving of many a Life
. To it was attached another essay:
Sentiments on the Small-Pox Inoculated
. The second, as everyone knew, was by Dr. Cotton Mather, though still he refused to put his name on it. His father's was what was needed, he told himself.

Mr. Colman provided
Some Observations on the New Method of Receiving the Small Pox by Engrafting or Inoculating,
and Mr. Cooper—under the guise of “A Minister of Boston”—offered
A Letter to a Friend in the Country, Attempting a Solution of the Scruples and Objections of a Conscientious or Religious Nature, Commonly Made against the New Way of Receiving the Small-Pox
.

As Boylston gained the rich, the powerful, and the poor, Dr. Douglass's practice drained away. His cold method, a strict interpretation of Dr. Sydenham's theories, was not doing as well as he would like; nor was his liberal use of opiates and the spirit of vitriol. Not that he was doing poorly. There were still so many sick that only the most powerful could be choosy; most people were properly grateful to have a physician (or to have a doctor at all, thought his slave Pompey). “I shall seclude myself from all other company but that of my patients,” sniffed Dr. Douglass to himself as his carriage passed by lines patiently waiting outside Boylston's door, “and commit to writing—for my own reminiscence and private use—the remarkable cases in what is, after all, still a very extensive practice.”