ix THE DIMSDALE FAMILY 81 



made in the mode of operation, especially by Dr. Kirkpatrick ; 

 and Heberden exerted himself to make the best method 

 well known. 1 



But it was Daniel and Robert Sutton, the sons of a surgeon 

 at Debenham, Suffolk, who during the years preceding 1765 

 so improved the practice of inoculation as to render it accept- 

 able and popular. The operation was by this time overlaid 

 with many accessories, preparatory and consequent purges, 

 emetics, bleedings, blisters and anodynes so that the process 

 had become a very serious and costly one. Daniel Sutton 

 had the sagacity to select those remedies and means which 

 were really helpful ; and he set up as an empirical inoculator 

 holding an infallible secret. 2 People came to him in crowds, 

 and his success was great. He published in his old age an 

 account of his system : the chief points comprised the use of 

 one puncture only, of spare diet, refrigerant drinks and cool 

 air. The Suttons' ways were closely studied and adopted 

 by another worker, Dr. Thomas Dimsdale, a friend of Fother- 

 gill's, who became one of the leading inoculators in Europe. 

 Before entering further into Dimsdale 's work something must 

 now be said of his origin and history. 



Thomas Dimsdale came of an old medical family. 

 His grandfather, Robert Dimsdale, surgeon, of Theydon 

 Gernon in Essex and later of Bishop Stortford, was an 

 early Quaker confessor and accompanied William Penn 

 on a visit to America in 1684 : an oaken box curiously 

 ornamented with his penknife on the long voyage is still 

 preserved in the family. He printed in that year, " at 

 the Sign of the Book and Three Blackbirds," a small 

 pamphlet : " Advice how to use his medicines, which 

 he chiefly designed for his old friends, who earnestly 

 desired it of him before he left England." 3 His son, 



1 The Royal College of Physicians of London in 1754 declared the practice 

 of inoculation to be " highly salutary to the human race." But even in 1769 

 an anonymous writer opposed inoculation as " perverting the order of nature 

 [and] of the great Disposer of things, who has ordered every disease so as to 

 be for the benefit of his creatures." See The Nature of Inoculation Explained. 



2 Daniel Sutton styled himself in 1769 " Professor of Inoculation in the 

 kingdom of Great Britain, and in all the dominions of his Britannic Majesty." 

 B. Dominiceti, Medical Anecdotes, 1781, p. 449 note. 



3 Joseph Smith, Catalogue of Friends' Books. Much search has failed to 

 reveal a copy of this tract hi any English or American library, public or 

 private. R. Dimsdale was excommunicated in 1663 for practising physic 

 without the Bishop's licence. He also lay long in Hertford gaol (about 1672) 

 on a writ de excommunicate capiendo, i.e. arrested as an excommunicate for 



