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The Man Who Taught America About Inoculation
In 1706, Boston Massachusetts Puritan preacher Cotton Mather was given a human as a “gift” from his church congregation. Mather renamed him Onesimus, a Greek word for “useful.”
In 1716, Onesimus purchased half of his freedom after being permitted to work for wages outside the home, but was still required to do evening chores at the Mather home. Onesimus was married with two recorded children, who both died in childhood. There are no records about who his wife was, and it is believed that she was enslaved by someone other than Cotton Mather.
Onesimus, likely from modern-day Ghana, saw the smallpox outbreak in 1721. Inoculation was a common practice in his home country, and he described to Mather the practice of inoculation. Mather discussed it with Doctor Zabdiel Boylston. Dr Boylston tested inoculation for himself on his son and enslaved people before he decided it was a safe way to help other people.
Once information began to circulate about inoculation and it was offered to people as protection from smallpox, Mather and Dr Boylston encountered reactions they did not expect: Some people, upon learning that the practice was suggested by an enslaved person, accused inoculation of being a conspiracy by enslaved people to overthrow the enslavers and refused.
Other people refused the inoculation because they believed death from smallpox to be righteous judgement from above for evildoers. Not everyone was against the practice though. George Washington ordered all the troops to be inoculated during the Revolutionary War to prevent the spread of the disease that could weaken the military.
The Contagion of Liberty: The Politics of Smallpost in the American Revolution by Andrew M. Wehrman
American Contagions: Epidemics and the Law from Smallpox to Covid-19 by John Fabian Witt
This is a short read, but an overview of American history and how diseases have effected socioeconomic groups differently.
