Historian Williams (Hurricane of Independence
) explores a fascinating aside to American medical history—how “a Puritan minister and one lone doctor... stood up to the medical establishment” by carrying out the first-ever American inoculation program during Boston’s 1721 smallpox epidemic. Here’s the brilliant Puritan minister Cotton Mather, also a member of the prestigious British Royal Society, and Zabdiel Boylston, the doctor whom Mather persuaded to test out the theories of inoculation. The results were stunning. Out of 242 persons inoculated against smallpox, only six died. Despite this success, the public—including the young and brash Ben Franklin—loudly disapproved. If this account of the raucous, turbulent times is often stilted, the compelling details of the momentous experiment and the epidemic’s devastating human toll speak for themselves. Williams argues that the campaign of Mather, the greatest preacher of his day, for inoculation illustrates the error of assuming that religion has always been “an impediment to the progress of modern science and reason.” But his better story is the one of Mather, a spiritual man and loving father who—despite being the target of an attempted assassin—wanted nothing more than to save his family and city.Map. (Apr.)
