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A review by cancermoononhigh
The Fever of 1721: The Epidemic That Revolutionized Medicine and American Politics by Stephen Coss
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.
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.