Sourcing: The Inoculation Debate Excerpts
OER PROJECT: WH1750 / LESSON 2.2 ACTIVITYSOURCING EXCERPTS: THE INOCULATION DEBATE1Unless otherwise noted, this work is licensed under CC BY 4.0. Credit: “Sourcing Excerpts: The Inoculation Debate”, OER Project, https://www.oerproject.com/ProcessAs you read these documents, focus on completing the Historical Context and Purpose sections of the Sourcing Tool. Additionally, as you read, keep these questions in mind:What factors may have influenced how each author wrote about inoculation?Source 1: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, 1717IntroductionInoculation was a relatively new discovery in the West but had been practiced in China from about the tenth century. Inoculation methods were being used in various parts of both Asia and Africa by the time Europeans learned of the procedure in the early eighteenth century. These methods had been introduced to European circles through the writings of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1762), the wife of the British ambassador to Turkey. Lady Montagu had contracted smallpox in London in 1715. She also had lost abrother to the disease two years prior to her own illness. In her travels in the Ottoman Empire, she witnessed the inoculation process in the homes of Ottoman women. These women protected themselves and their children from the disease by using pus from someone who had a mild case of smallpox. They infected themselves with the pus and allowed their bodies to developantibodies or immunity to the disease. The practice was controversial, mainly because it was thought that those who had been infected through inoculation would pass the disease on to healthy people.Letter from Lady Montagu to Mrs. S.C., Adrianople, April 1, 1717The small-pox, so fatal, and so general amongst us, is here entirely harmless by the invention of engrafting, which is the term they give it. There is a set of old women who make it their business to perform the operation every autumn, in the month of September, when the great heat is abated [declined]. People send to one another to know if any of their family has a mind to have the small-pox; they make parties for this purpose, and when they are met (commonly fifteen or sixteen altogether) the old woman comes with a nut-shell full of the matter of the best sort of small-pox, and asks what vein you please to have opened. She immediately rips open that you offer to her with a
OER PROJECT: WH1750 / LESSON 2.2 ACTIVITYSOURCING EXCERPTS: THE INOCULATION DEBATE2large needle (which gives you no more pain than a common scratch), and puts into the vein as much matter as can lye upon the head of her needle, and after that binds up the little wound with a hollow bit of shell, and in this manner opens four or five veins. ... The children or young patients play together all the rest of the day, and are in perfect health to the eighth. Then the fever begins to seize them, and they keep their beds two days, very seldom three. They have very rarely above twenty or thirty [smallpox marks] in their faces, which never mark, and in eight days time they are as well as before their illness. ... Every year, thousands undergo this operation, and the French Ambassador says pleasantly, that they take the small-pox here by way of diversion, as they take the waters in other countries. There is no example of any one that has died in it, and you may believe I am well satisfied of the safety of this experiment, since I intend to try it on my dear little son. I am patriot enough to take the pains to bring this useful invention into fashion in England ...Source: Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley. Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e: Written During her Travels in Europe, Asia and Africa. Aix: Anthony Henricy, 1796. From the Internet Modern History Sourcebook, Fordham University, 1998. Accessed July 10, 2019. https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/montagu-smallpox.asp
OER PROJECT: WH1750 / LESSON 2.2 ACTIVITYSOURCING EXCERPTS: THE INOCULATION DEBATE3Source 2: The Inoculation Debate, Boston, 1721IntroductionIn 1721, the town of Boston, Massachusetts, suffered from a smallpox outbreak. About half of the city’s population became infected with the disease, with about 850 dying as a result. Cotton Mather (1663–1728), a Puritan minister, had learned about the benefits of inoculation from Onesimus, an enslaved African. Mather wrote, “Onesimus, who is a pretty intelligent fellow ... 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 among the Guramantese” (Saharan community from present-day Sudan and Libya). There had already been riots in the town of Boston when inoculation was introduced there in 1721. In response to these efforts, those from both the pro-and anti-inoculation sides wrote pamphlets to persuade others. Dr. William Douglass (c. 1689–1752), a Boston physician, presented the anti-inoculation side.Sir,The Inoculation ingrafting or Transplantation of the Smallpox, having lately so much amused this Country [colony], it may be agreeable to some of your Readers to know the History of this affair from its Origins ...Its Origin was in Thessaly in Greece, from thence spreading to Constantinople [Turkey], began to be practiced there by Old Greek Women on Turks and others above 50 Years ago. By private Letter, commerce, and information of Travelers, this Method has been, among the Learned, Universally known in England above 20 Years, but being deemed Wicked and Felonious, was never practiced there ...Excerpts from a pro-inoculation letter whose author is unknown but which has been attributed to Cotton Mather and published in The Boston Gazette, October 23–20, 1721A Faithful Account of what has occurred under the late Experiments of the Small-Pox managed and governed in the way of Inoculation. Published partly to put a stop unto that unaccountable way of Lying, which fills the Town & Country on this occasion ...
OER PROJECT: WH1750 / LESSON 2.2 ACTIVITYSOURCING EXCERPTS: THE INOCULATION DEBATE4The Operation within these four Months past has been undergone by more than Threescore [60] Persons, Among which there have been Old & Young, Strong and Weak, Male and Female, White & Black, Many Serious and virtuous People, some the Children of Eminent Persons among us. ...Of all the number that have passed under the Operation, there has Not so much as One miscarried [died]. It has done well in all, and even beyond Expectation in the most of them. ...Some few have had a considerable Number of Pustules ... The Reasons of this can be as yet no more than Conjectured at. But these have undergone so little Sickness that they declare, They would much rather come under the Operation many times over than suffer the Small-Pox as they see it suffered in the Common way. ...The Patients return to the perfect Health Immediately, and suppose themselves rather better than they were before the Operation. ...Source: “Becoming American: The British Atlantic Colonies, 1690-1763.” National Humanities Center Resource Toolbox. Accessed July 10, 2019. http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/becomingamer/ideas/text5/smallpoxvaccination.pdf