Introducing Inoculation, 1721

As a deadly smallpox outbreak ravaged Boston, one of the city’s leaders advocated for a preventive measure he’d learned about from Onesimus, an enslaved man.

Written byMax Kozlov

| 4 min read

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ABOVE: An undated bronze plaque depicts Cotton Mather attempting to persuade other people of the utility of inoculation. The work was part of a group of four bronze plaques showing episodes from the history of the Mather family, which were donated to the Art Institute of Chicago in 1926.
UNKNOWN ARTIST. REV. COTTON MATHER (SON OF INCREASE) USING HIS POWERFUL INFLUENCE TO OVERCOME THE PREJUDICE AGAINST INOCULATION FOR SMALLPOX IN BOSTON, 1721, FOUND 1926. THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO

Little is known about Onesimus, one of the thousands of Africans who was kidnapped from his homeland in West Africa, forced into a perilous transcontinental voyage, and sold into the slave trade in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 18th century. Yet Onesimus is known for changing the course of history by spurring the first recorded inoculations in the New World, which helped pave the way for the development of the first ...

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Meet the Author

Max Kozlov
Max is a science journalist from Boston. Though he studied cognitive neuroscience, he now prefers to write about brains rather than research them. Prior to writing for The Scientist as an editorial intern in late 2020 and early 2021, Max worked at the Museum of Science in Boston, where his favorite part of the job was dressing in a giant bee costume and teaching children about honeybees. He was also a AAAS Mass Media Fellow, where he worked as a science reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Read more of his work at www.maxkozlov.com.
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