bravelass85's review against another edition

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informative medium-paced

4.0

The author did a nice job of weaving together different historical stories that intersected in 1721 - Cotton Mather as a post-Salem Witch Trials leader in Boston, the first widespread use of innoculation in Boston, the smallpox outbreak, and the development of American newspapers as they jumped into all these controversies to create an audience.

debbiecuddy's review against another edition

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3.0

I liked it well enough, but was disappointed because this book is really about early struggles for a free press in Massachusetts; smallpox and inoculation were presented as one of the factors in that struggle. I would have enjoyed a more in depth look at the epidemiology of smallpox at that time and the history of inoculation. One of the interesting points, that I wish had been more deeply explored, was that inoculation had been used for hundreds of years in parts of Africa and Asia, yet was rejected by Europeans because they viewed people from these areas as inferior.

cancermoononhigh's review against another edition

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informative reflective medium-paced

3.0

This book was super informative. A lot of players that I was surprised that interacted like Cotton Mathers and Benjamin Franklin. Its also a shame that America doesn't celebrate Dr. Zabdiel Boylston. The newspaper wars during that time completely bored me and I could have done without.

   I am the Burying place may see
   Graves shorter than I
   From death's arrest no age is free
   Young children too may die;
   My God, may such an awful Sight
   Awakening be to me!
   Oh! that by early grace I might
   For death prepared be
A poem from the New England Primer and a required reading for every Boston schoolchild in the 18th century.

  Ever since the Salem witch trials, Cotton Mather was searching for redemption. He was given the chance when Small Pox came to Boston. It would mean staking what was life on his reputation on an obscure medical procedure he had happened upon a few years ago.  Mather read about a doctor in the Royal Society by the name of Emanuel Timoni, a Greek-born physician who extracted matter from a smallpox vesicle on the body of a person with the full blown case of the disease and implanted it into a series of incisions cut into the arm of a healthy person, who subsequently developed a mild and nonlethal case of the disease followed by lifetime immunity. He also heard of a nearly identical procedure done from one of his family slaves. The slave's name was Onesimus. Onesimus explained when he was a young boy in Africa he had undergone an operation which gave him smallpox but it would forever preserve him from it The slave's description and scar on the arm made it the same as Dr. Timoni's procedure.
  He wrote in his dairy "the grievous calamity of small-pox has now entered the town." He spoke with certainty that smallpox would become a worsening problem one only one man was sick and safely contained, although 8 more cases were a three days off from being reported.  The underlying  premise of Mather's appeal that if inoculation seemed drastic the far more drastic consequences of spreading smallpox outbreak warranted a trial. One of the problem was that the newspapers were still minimizing the threat. 
   Dr Zabdiel Boylston asked to see everything that Mather had to recommend on inoculation. As quickly as he could Mather gathered up his notes, copied them and forwarded them along. Dr Boylston sent a message to Mather that he decided to make inoculation experiment. Since time was of the essence he acted immediately. The next morning  he would gather smallpox matter from an afflicted patient and implant it in the skin of three healthy subjects, one was his youngest son. He would be the only doctor in Boston to attempt this practice, all the other doctors were against inoculation. The most critical of them was Dr William Douglass, who declared it a wicked and criminal practice. He wasn't content to just paint Dr Boylston as a dolt and would be propagator he also raised the possibility that the inoculating doctor was fostering the outbreak of a second deadly disease.
   The newspapers finally caught up with the concern of Smallpox. The newspaper , the Courant, stated that the Rhode Island assembly approved a quarantine on all persons and goods arriving from Boston. It was the first evidence that Boston readers had seen that smallpox was causing a fearful, self-protective response among the town's trading partners. Which was exactly what the Massachusetts authorities have been trying to prevent.
   One famous patient of Dr Zabdiel Boylston was Samuel Adams Sr ad his wife. A little more than a year after their inoculations they welcomed a son, Samuel Adams Jr which is conceivable that he owes his birth to the radical experiment. He was the first of many of the Founding Fathers who would benefit from this procedure.
   October 1721 was a horror that left Bostonians stunned. In the space of 31 days nearly a quarter of the town's population, 2500 people fell ill with smallpox. 402 people died about the rate of 13 people a day. The people of Boston began to flock to Dr Boylston.  They came from every part of town and every religious denomination. By May of 1722 would be the final smallpox death. The worse epidemic in that disease in Boston history was over. 6,000 people were stricken and 844 died of smallpox. Untold hundreds were left blinded, mentally disabled, debilitated with arthritis or grotesquely disfigured. Oddly enough Benjamin Franklin who traveled throughout the town delivering newspapers somehow managed to dodge the disease.  
   Dr. Boylston inoculated 280 people although six of them had died under their inoculation which was a 2.4% death rate. Among his contemporaries none of them captured the significance of what he dared and accomplished better than Cotton Mather. Mather introduced inoculation to Boston hoping to please God, earn the gratitude of the people and to expiate the sins of Salem. He would freely and loudly lavish Dr Boylston with full credit. In December of 1724 Boylston sailed to London to be celebrated for his accomplishment.  He would be voted a Fellow of the Royal Society in July of 1726 become the 8th New Englander to receive the honor. It was a stunning achievement by a man who was considered second rate by American standards. 
  Benjamin Franklin would be the link between the 1721 Boston experiment of inoculate and George Washington's bold move to inoculate the troops. Franklin was converted to the procedure by Dr Boylston's success. When smallpox would enter into Philadelphia, Franklin's adopted hometown he would enthusiastically urge the procedure. From 1730 foreword Franklin was regarded as one of the Country's foremost inoculation evangelists.



mbondlamberty's review against another edition

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4.0

Very interesting. I like this approach of combining two narratives (like Erik Larson) - the smallpox thread and the printing thread.
As I try to work my way through Bunker Hill, this gives me a nice backdrop to events preceding those.
Sad to see how personal vendettas like Douglass' affect good science (or politics or work).
Very enjoyable read and love that it was partly written in Ground Zero (a Madison coffee house - live in Mad-town for 10 years).

govmarley's review against another edition

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3.0

Interesting look into the smallpox epidemic, the early history of vaccinations, and the beginnings of America before the revolution. With a good dose of my boy Ben Franklin and freedom of the press.

Do you think we shouldn't vaccinate people? Please, read this book. Smallpox, and the other eradicated diseases, were no joke. Do you believe the press should be regulated and controlled? Please, read this book. It's so interesting to see how times have changed, yet stayed the same, over the past nearly 300 years. Plus we get a glimpse of the Franklin family and other pre-revolutionary players and the lives they led prior to the revolution coming in 50 short years.

Recommend if you enjoy American history, a look into diseases and epidemics, or the history of early newspapers and politics in America. 3 stars.

cheryl6of8's review against another edition

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3.0

This book had a lot of great history in it and it changed my perspective on some pivotal figures in American history, leaving me more favorably inclined toward both Cotton Mather and Benjamin Franklin, neither of whom I really liked at all prior to this. And it sure did have a lot of parallels to the present time and the present pandemic and the political rhetoric and the commercial inclinations of a free press and the role of public figures in private lives. But I would have liked it more if either the writing style had been slightly less academic or the audiopresentation had been slightly less broadcast journalism. One or the other would have made it easier to follow for more than 20 minutes at a stretch without zoning out As it was, some parts were a real struggle and since the audiobook I had was in MP3 format, with tracks of approx 30 minutes a piece, I didn't always want to go back and start a section over to catch what I had missed.

My takeaways were that more of us should know about Dr. Zabdiel Boyleston who risked so much to try innoculation in order to save the lives of his fellow Bostonians during the epidemic. And who performed one of the first successful mastectomies as treatment for breast cancer. Plus he was a clean freak so a lot more of his patients survived surgery before handwashing was a thing for doctors, let alone patients. An excellent and brave man who was mistreated by officials and Dr. Douglas, who had his own interests in seeing more people die and no extraordinary measures undertaken to address the outbreak. Also that James Franklin should be well known in his own right and not as the mean old brother that Ben was apprenticed to -- he is responsible for much of the American style of print journalism and was a boisterous defender of freedom of the press whose ideas, communicated in his newspaper, shaped the ideas of those who 50 years later would sign the Declaration of Independence. He was also quite gutsy if for less noble seeming reasons, probably because he was a cantankerous sort. But he helped to shape much of what was good about Benjamin Franklin (who I still think was a self-centered mysogynistic old bastard).

Definitely worth the read if you are into history, although I think it might be easier to tackle this one in print than to ear-read it as I did.

munchkindad's review against another edition

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informative medium-paced

3.5

intoxicating_reads's review against another edition

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4.0

I just finished reading a book about the Salem with trials and I won this book as a first reads giveaway. It worked perfectly to pick up where my other book left off and to see what was going on in MA following the trials. One of the main individuals in this book is Cotton Mather and I think that with the additional background about his role in the witch trials really helped to understand what he was doing and how he was treated. However, even without knowing about the witch trials, this book was very detailed and informative. It nicely weaved several three different topics: inoculation, the american revolution and freedom of the press together showing how you can never really know how your actions will shape the fate of the future.

bethh609's review against another edition

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4.0

This was an excellent book! Great research was used to construct a rounded narrative that explicated a complex time line with ease and gave life to familiar historical figures. I highly recommend this book.

ellsbeth's review against another edition

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4.0

This is a fascinating book about a pivotal smallpox epidemic in pre-Revolutionary Boston. It delves into this multi-faceted history, explaining the impact of this even on the development of immunizations, the freedom of the press and the 1st amendment, the lead up to the American Revolution, and more. The history seems very relevant to current events. I was happy to learn more about Cotton Mather, Benjamin Franklin, and the significant contributions of James Franklin.

The audio narrator, Bob Sour, lends an authoritative voice to the story that kept my interest. The only drawback I had in listening to this book was that I tried to spread it out. In doing so, I found myself losing track of the various players and events of the story. I suggest a more compact listen to more easily keep track of the various threads. I’ll be recommending this book to others and I look forward to reading more from Stephen Coss. Note: I received a free copy of this book from the LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program.