Smallpox epidemic in Boston 1721
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The Boston smallpox epidemic in 1721 marked the first viral epidemic in North America that used vaccination to contain the disease.
Between April and December 1721 5.889 inhabitants of diseased Boston to smallpox and 844 people died. At that time, it was not generally known that the use of weakened smallpox viruses triggers an immune response, but usually not a disease. In the course of the epidemic, a heated controversy arose over variolation , a vaccination with attenuated live viruses, which focused on the Puritan preacher Cotton Mather and the doctor William Douglass .
The dispute was mainly carried out in the press, with the New England Courant of James Franklin , Benjamin Franklin's brother , mobilizing the anti-vaccine group . Doctor Zabdiel Boylston alone vaccinated a total of 287 patients, including many prominent Boston citizens.
In various writings, the news of the events in Boston and the vaccination dispute that had flared up was also spread in England and other parts of Europe. This led to an increasing number of anti-vaccination users and a temporary decline in vaccination practice in London in the late 1720s.
literature
- swell
- John Williams / James Franklin: Several Arguments, Proving, That Inoculating the Small Pox Is Not Contained in the Law of Physick, Either Natural or Divine, and Therefore Unlawful ... , Second edition, Boston 1721.
- Samuel Grainger / Nicholas Boone: The Imposition of Inoculation as a Duty Religiously Considered in a Leter [Sic] to a Gentleman in the Country Inclin'd to Admit It , Boston 1721.
- William Douglass / Alexander Stuart / James Franklin: The Abuses and Scandals of Some Late Pamphlets in Favor of Inoculation of the Small Pox, Modestly Obviated, and Inoculation Further Consider'd in a Letter to A– S– MD & FRS in London…; Abuses and Scandals of Some Late Pamphlets in Favor of Inoculation , Boston 1722.
- Benjamin Coleman: Detailed information on the nature and success of the Blatter-Beltzens in New England ... Publiciret recently in London and explained with a historical introduction by Mr. Daniel Neal ... Translated from English by Abraham Vater , Wittenberg 1723.
- Zabdiel Boylston: An Historical Account of the Small-pox Inoculated in New England, Upon All Sorts of Persons, Whites, Blacks, and of All Ages and Constitutions ... , Second, corrected edition, Boston 1730 (first edition Boston, 1726).
- Representations
- John B. Blake: The Inoculation Controversy in Boston: 1721-1722 , in: The New England Quarterly 25, 4 (1952), pp. 489-506.
- Genevieve Miller: Smallpox Inoculation in England and America: A Reappraisal , in: The William and Mary Quarterly 13, 4 (1956), pp. 476-492.
- Maxine Van De Wetering: A Reconsideration of the Inoculation Controversy , in: The New England Quarterly 58, 1 (1985), pp. 46-67.
- John D. Burton, “The Awful Judgments of God upon the Land”: Smallpox in Colonial Cambridge, Massachusetts , in: The New England Quarterly, Vol. 74, 3 (2001), pp. 495-506.
- Margot Minardi: The Boston Inoculation Controversy of 1721-1722: An Incident in the History of Race , in: The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, 61, 1 (2004), pp. 47-76.
- Robert Tindol: Getting the Pox off All Their Houses: Cotton Mather and the Rhetoric of Puritan Science , in: Early American Literature 46, 1 (2011), pp. 1-23.
- Amalie M. Kass: Boston's Historic Smallpox Epidemic , in: Massachusetts Historical Review, 14 (2012), pp. 1-51.
Web links
- Harvard University Library Open Collections Program: The Boston Smallpox Epidemic, 1721.
Individual evidence
- ↑ M. Best et al .: Making the right decision: Benjamin Franklin's son dies of smallpox in 1736 . In: Quality & Safety in Health Care . tape 16 , no. 6 , December 2007, pp. 478-480 , doi : 10.1136 / qshc.2007.023465 , PMID 18055894 , PMC 2653186 (free full text).