A Destroying Angel: The Conquest of Smallpox in Colonial BostonIt seems fitting in 1973, when the World Health Organization has announced that worldwide smallpox will be eradicated completely from the world before the year's end, to tell the story of the long struggle against this killer and defacer of man, of the devastating epidemics in early Boston, and the consequent discovery of inoculation. In eighteenth-century history inoculation for smallpox marked a new beginning. Science entered the picture, stimulating keener observation, a sharper respect for objective fact, and never-ending experimentation. It reshaped American culture from a new center, leading life and thought out in new directions. In our own deeply troubled, revolutionary, and almost incredibly hopeful twentieth century, this once familiar but now only dimly remembered story takes on a timeless relevance. - Foreword. |
Contents
An Unprofessional Medical Background I | 1 |
A Half Century of PastorPhysicians | 12 |
Five Major Outbreaks in One Lifetime Span | 24 |
Copyright | |
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American anatomy Antimonial Cup apothecary appeared began Benjamin Boston brief called century Colony Connecticut contagion Cotton Mather cowpox cure Dalhonde danger deaths diary entry died discovery disease doctors early Edward Jenner Eliot England English experience favorable Franklin Giles Firmin healing hundred inoculation inoculation hospital James Jared Eliot John Winthrop King Philip's War knew Lady Mary later learned letter live London Marblehead Massachusetts Historical Society Mather wrote medicine ment method ministers OLA ELIZABETH WINSLOW operation outbreak pain pamphlet pastor-physicians patients Philosophical Transactions physician Pock practice practitioners preaching printed profession published pustule quarantine readers record residents Rhazes Royal Society Salem selectmen sermon ship sick Small smallpox infection smallpox virus Spectacle Island story suffering symptoms Thacher Thomas Timonius and Pylarinus tion town vaccine Waterhouse William Douglass Wortley young Zabdiel Boylston