1721 Boston Smallpox Epidemic

Welcome to Did You Know a video series about Massachusetts where we take a look at interesting tidbits of state history? Each video will cover a different part of Massachusetts history and culture. Today, we will talk about the Boston smallpox epidemic of 1721. Did you know that the epidemic led to one of the first public inoculation campaigns in the American colonies? Let's find out more.

Smallpox, also called variola, is a disease known for the bodily pustules it produces on those infected, which often lead to permanent scarring. On top of this, it can also cause blindness and has a high death rate of over 50%. The disease was first described in ancient Egypt in 1350 B.C., and it spread through Asia, Europe and North America over the centuries.

Smallpox also devastated Native American and indigenous populations. When European colonists brought it to the Americas and Caribbean in the 1500s and 1600, leading to death rates as high as 90%, this massive population allowed colonists to settle the land more easily, leading some to believe these deaths show divine favor for colonization. Although numerous cures were tried without success, it soon became common knowledge that survivors of smallpox would not contracted to get around before 1000 A.D..

A new treatment for the disease was practiced in China, involving one person blowing ground, smallpox scabs into another. No other methods of inoculation were developed in Asia, Asia, minor and Northern Africa, and by the start of the 18th century, inoculation involving taking matter from a smallpox pustule and inserting it beneath the skin of a non-infected person was widespread in parts of Africa.

Although the procedure involved a risk that the patient could get infected with smallpox or other blood borne diseases like syphilis inoculated patients had a much lower chance of dying or being disfigured by the disease. In 1714, the Journal of the Royal Society of London Philosophical Transactions included a translated letter by Emmanuel Harmonious, a Greek doctor describing how inoculations were practiced in Constantinople, Georgia and the Caucasus region.

The same issue also included a treatise by physician Jacobus Pellegrini describing how he also used inoculation to treat smallpox. Despite inoculation coming into professional knowledge, many doctors in Europe and the American colonies viewed this practice with suspicion and refused to adopt it. On April 22nd, 1721, the British ship HMS Seahorse arrived in Boston from Barbados carrying a deadly disease.

Although a small quarantine hospital had been established on spectacle Island in 1717 to house incoming sailors with illnesses and procedures was set up requiring inbound ships to stop there and report any outbreaks on board. These inspections were sporadically enforced and captains would lie or bypass the island to lend their cargo. One of the seahorses sailors. So symptoms of smallpox. 00:03:39:07 - 00:04:10:23 Unknown A day after arriving and though he was quickly quarantined, he had already exposed several other sailors to the disease. By June, the outbreak had become an epidemic in Boston, the sixth such outbreaks in 1630, leading hundreds of citizens to flee the city, spreading the virus to the countryside. Puritan Minister Cotton Mather was deeply concerned by this crisis, especially since it had been 19 years since the last smallpox outbreak, leaving many younger people unexposed and vulnerable.

He decided to promote an inoculation campaign to attempt to slow the spread of the disease and protect people from death and disability. Major was introduced to inoculation in 1708 when he asked his new slave owner, Themis, if he had had smallpox on a seamless answer yes and no to the question. Explaining that he had an operation were pus from the smallpox of an infected person was put into a scratch on his arm, giving him a mild case of the disease, which would prevent him from having it again.

He also described the procedure as common among Africans in his region. Martha was intrigued and asked other slaves being sold in Boston if they had been inoculated and many confirmed on The Simpsons account showing their smallpox scars as food. In 1714, Mather read Tammany a letter in the Journal of the Royal Society and was excited to see the stories of the slaves he talked to.

Proven true. Convinced that inoculate him could safely prevent smallpox deaths made him go to a friend in the society, Doctor John Woodward, two years later that he would like to see an outbreak of smallpox in Boston so he could have an opportunity to practice inoculation. On June six, 1721, Mazer sent a letter to the medical community of Boston suggesting that they consider using inoculation to prevent deaths from smallpox.

However, many of these physicians distrusted the practice and disagreed with Meijer's belief that inoculation was a divine gift. Dr. William Douglas, the only physician in Boston with a medical degree, argued that inoculation was untested and could spread the disease. While other doctors argued that the procedure was dangerous and went against God's will. These physicians also were suspicious of a treatment recommended by slaves, with some fearing they were spreading lies in a campaign to kill off their white masters.

Only Zap Deo Boylston, a local physician, agreed to inoculate patients in the city. On June 26, Major sent Boylston a letter encouraging him to try inoculation if he deemed it safe. And two days later, Boylston inoculated his six year old son, Thomas, and two of his slaves, Jack and Jackie, all of which survived mild cases without disfigurement. Confident that the procedure was safe, Boylston then began offering it to residents in the Boston area, inoculating seven individuals who expressed interest as the news of inoculations in Boston got out, Boylston and Mather became targets of suspicion and hatred from those who opposed it.

On July 21st, Boston selectmen summoned Boylston to a meeting and disparaged his dangerous experiments, demanding that he stop inoculating citizens immediate early. He was publicly harassed and threatened when he continued, leading him to fear for his safety in hiding his wife's house for 12 days after one of his patients died. Maybe it was also condemned by critics were supportive Boylston and they were further enraged after he inoculated his nephew and two Roxbury men and let them stay in his house instead of sending them to the quarantine hospital.

Early on November 14, 1721, someone threw a failed bomb through a window in Mather's house with a note that said, I will inoculate you with this with a pox on you. Some newspapers at the time also disparaged Boylston, calling him a quack and circulating rumors about the dangers of inoculation. Despite this matter continued to promote inoculation and Boylston continued to perform the procedure, including two Samuel Adams senior and his wife, Mary Fifield, the parents of famous patriot Samuel Adams Junior.

By early 1722, the epidemic had begun to subside in Boston. Mather and Boylston had collected detailed information and data on the 280 people treated, including 13 students and two faculty members at Harvard College in an attempt to prove that inoculation worked. In a letter to the Royal Society, Mason described how only five or six of the people who were inoculated had died, likely from prior health issues. 00:08:23:06 - 00:08:57:19 Unknown The smallpox epidemic ultimately killed over 800 people, but inoculation helped save hundreds of lives. Oilsands data showed that inoculated patients had a 2% mortality rate from smallpox, much lower than those who contracted smallpox by direct contact with an infected person who had a 14.8% mortality rate. On February 22nd, 1722, the Massachusetts General Court announced that no new cases of smallpox had emerged in the city for the first time since the start of the epidemic.

May have been Wilson's experiments helped legitimize inoculation in the English speaking world. Although the procedure still carried a small risk of death, the case for inoculation was also helped by the efforts of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, the wife of the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. After seeing how inoculation was practiced at the Ottoman court, she became determined to use it to protect her children in order to save them from the disease which had infected her and killed her brother.

Lady Montagu had her son inoculated in 1718, and in April 1721, her young daughter was inoculated in front of the Royal Physicians during a smallpox epidemic in Britain. This audience interest in the British royal family in the procedure. And after more experiments, the Princess of Wales daughters were inoculated on April 12, 1722, bringing inoculation into wider public acceptance.

In 1724, Boylston traveled to England, where he was honored by King George, the first for his work during the epidemic, and he was made a Royal Society member two years later. He also published a historical account of the Smallpox inoculation in New England, a report on the epidemic and his part in curtailing it. By the Revolutionary War, smallpox inoculations had become widely accepted.

And in June 1776, Boston suspended its ban on the procedure due to an epidemic in all 13 states. That July future first Lady Abigail Adams bought her four children to Boston to be inoculated following the example of her husband, John Adams, who was inoculated in 1764. General George Washington also advocated the treatment and had all of the troops in the Continental Army inoculated in 1777.

In the first government sponsored disease prevention campaign in the country, although smallpox continued to be a public health threat to the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries, it was eradicated worldwide in 1980, thanks to vaccinations which were first developed by Edward Jenner in 1796 as a safer alternative to inoculation. Khan made them and Gabriel Boyle Stone's work in inoculation and Lady Montague's advocacy for it helped save lives in Massachusetts and beyond and pave the way for future advances in the fight against disease.

Thanks for joining me to learn about the 1721 smallpox epidemic. If you'd like to know more, check out these resources. Thank you for watching.