One of Boston’s most famous historical figures is the Puritan clergyman Cotton Mather.

Most noted for ending the Salem Witch Trials, he is also famous for an experiment for which some religious people condemned him  at the time, and these days forget happened, apparently, as what he established is now claimed to be a violation of religion.

From the spring of 1721 until winter 1722, Boston was mired in a smallpox epidemic. Of the town’s population of 11,000 people, over 6000 cases of small pox were reported with 850 dying from the disease.

After Cotton Mather first learned about inoculation against small pox from his West African slave Onesimus, writing,

“He told me that he had undergone the operation which had given something of the smallpox and would forever preserve him from it, adding that was often used in West Africa”,

and then confirming this account with other West African slaves and reading of similar methods being performed in Turkey, Mather campaigned for the systematic application of inoculation.

What followed was a fierce public debate, but also one of the first widespread and well-documented uses of inoculation to combat such an epidemic in the West.

Many argued that inoculation violated divine law by either inflicting harm on innocent people or by attempting to counter God’s specific plan. There were only two laws of medicine: sympathy and antipathy, and inoculation was neither a sympathy toward a wound or a disease, or an antipathy toward one. But Mather had collected data that made a clear argument for the effectiveness of inoculation and found that the health risks were significantly less fatal than the naturally occurring virus.

The Bible was used to argue against science and any attempt at preventing illness since Matthew 9:12 quotes Jesus as saying,

“It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick”,

And, so, because inoculations, like vaccinations today, introduce the disease into healthy people so they can build up an immunity to keep from becoming sick, it was, therefore, thought better to wait until people became sick and then deal with it.

It was also believed that because the subject of inoculation could not be found in the Bible, it was not the will of God, making it “unlawful.” The prevailing religious view was that smallpox was a judgment of God upon humanity, due to it sins, and trying to prevent smallpox could provoke God, and a wrath of greater consequences might be made on humanity if experimentation occurred.

Mather, however, noted that God did not have good aim or a fair minded approach to His punishment as the victims of small pox were not just the bad people in town, but some who were undeniably above reproach.

Sound familiar?

Mather, however, believed that

 “whether a Christian may not employ this Medicine (let the matter of it be what it will) and humbly give Thanks to God’s good Providence in discovering of it to a miserable World; and humbly look up to His Good Providence (as we do in the use of any other Medicine) It may seem strange, that any wise Christian cannot answer it. And how strangely do Men that call themselves Physicians betray their Anatomy, and their Philosophy, as well as their Divinity in their invectives against this Practice?”^[

So it as that on June 26th 1721, after much research by Reverend Mather, the first inoculation in American history was completed by Doctor Zabdiel Boylston on an adult male slave named Jack, a male two-year old slave named Jackey, and, to show that these were not simply expendable people so who cared about the results, Dr. Boylston inoculated his own six-year old son.

In spite of the positive results, in November that year a small bomb, that failed to explode, was thrown through a window of Mather’s home with the attached note,

However, years old ayurvedic treatment for ED has brought for them a sense of cialis cheap relief. If our time, money and energy were not already stuck to make our life more blissful, we might be getting more unica-web.com purchase viagra of happy sexual life. Drinking Alcohol: while you are consuming Hucog 5000iu Injection, it is recommended not to take Kamagra during high blood pressure, cardiovascular problem, and generic cheap viagra unica-web.com diabetes. Allowing some space and keeping little distances can allow you having a long way bulk generic viagra of journey. “Cotton Mather, you dog, dam you! I’ll inoculate you with this; with a pox to you.”

That lack of reasonable thinking then matches the lack of reasonableness now when it comes to anti-vaxxers, beyond the same religious arguments, as evidenced by the bombers belief that if the bomb hadn’t killed him, Mather would have somehow been able to read the note that would have been destroyed by the intended explosion.

Mather’s research and Boylston’s experiment, not to mention the incredulity of Onesimus that no one in Boston was applying a standard procedure used in West Africa, laid the foundation for the modern techniques of infectious diseases prevention.

The old, Puritan style arguments against vaccinations have made a comeback.

When both houses of the New York state legislature passed a bill that will end New York’s policy of allowing religious exemptions from vaccine requirements, the religious conservatives in the chamber’s gallery went ballistic shouting such things as,

 “We’ll be back for you Jeffrey! (Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, the bill’s sponsor)”,

shouted by a man dressed in Jewish Orthodox livery, while others yelled other threats.

Governor Cuomo signed the bill into law just hours later stating,

“The science is crystal clear: Vaccines are safe, effective and the best way to keep our children safe. This administration has taken aggressive action to contain the measles outbreak, but given its scale, additional steps are needed to end this public health crisis.”

While he might acknowledge and respect the right to freedom of religion, he believes,

“our first job is to protect the public health and by signing this measure into law, we will help prevent further transmissions and stop this outbreak right in its tracks.”

Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz explained,

“This bill was never about [religion], it was about public health, as I said on the floor.It’s going to protect children’s health and we’ll never know which children don’t catch a terrible disease, but we know for this bill it will protect children.”

About the histrionics of the anti-vaxxers he added,

 “I don’t ever remember in all my years here, the screaming in the Assembly chamber and the disruption in the Assembly chamber — people yell and scream outside and that’s fine, that’s fine — but the disrespect, not to me … Forget me … to the institution, to all the members of the state … was frankly a disgrace. And these are the religious people?! Shame on them. Shame on them.”

Some children cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons, but the religious based anti-vaxxers believe that they have the right, based on their religious belief, to expose everyone’s child to a disease that was all but eradicated and no one has the right to prevent that.

The vaccine problem was witnessed first-hand in Williamsburg ,New York, where a school had to be closed by the Health Department for allowing dozens of unvaccinated students to attend classes.

Certainly if a Puritan, and a clergyman at that in a religion as strict as the Puritans, living in a time of limited education when religion ruled society and questioning it was heretical could see the value of applying science and reason when dealing with disease, people living 300 years later, unless they consciously reject science, reason, and education, can learn as he did and accept his idea that a Christian can humbly give thanks to God’s good Providence in discovering disease prevention techniques to a miserable World.