Lady Mary was eager to spare her children, thus, in March 1718 she had her nearly five-year-old son, Edward, inoculated there with the help of Embassy surgeon Charles Maitland. In fact, her son was the "first English person to undergo the operation." In a letter to a friend in England, Montagu wrote, "There is a set of old women who make it their business to perform the operation, every autumn…when then great heat is abated…thousands undergo this operation...[and there is not one example of anyone that has died in it." Afterwards, she updated the status of Edward to her husband: "The Boy was engrafted last Tuesday, and is at this time singing and playing, and very impatient for his supper. I pray God my next may give as good an account of him." On her return to London, she enthusiastically promoted the procedure, but encountered a great deal of resistance from the medical establishment, because it was an Oriental folk treatment process.