Daniel Sutton, a forgotten 18th century clinician scientist

The 1760s saw an explosion in the numbers of individuals inoculated for smallpox. This was largely due to the innovations of the Sutton family, which made the procedure almost painless, much safer, and much more convenient. While Robert Sutton Senior modified inoculation technique so that it involved only a tiny stab just through the skin with a sharp lancet, it was the combination of skill and business genius of his son Daniel which really drove the expansion of inoculation. Daniel, with his brothers and several other partners, set up a chain of franchises across England and parts of Europe and North America which offered the now famous ‘Suttonian Method’. Daniel himself inoculated 22,000 people between 1763 and 1766 with only 3 deaths and made a great deal of money from his practice. His contemporaries in the Royal College of Physicians struggled to emulate his approach and often condemned him and his family as ‘men of confined abilities’. But Daniel Sutton was a great deal more than that. In 1796, Daniel Sutton published a collection of his observations and ideas concerning inoculated smallpox in his autobiography, ‘The Inoculator’.1 He intended it as an instruction manual for young practitioners and hoped that they would benefit from his years of experience. He warned his readers that many of his practices appeared trifles but: Despise not trifles, tho they small appear: Sands rise to mountains, moments make the year; and trifles life. Your time to trifles give, or you may die before you learn to live.