28. America’s First Dumb Anti-Vaxxer Movement
The demonstrable success of variolation in controlling the spread of smallpox did not prevent resistance to the method from taking root among some of the public’s more reactionary segments. In 1721, for example, a smallpox outbreak infected more than half of Boston’s population of 10,600 and killed 844 people. In the American Colonies’ first experiment with public inoculation, Puritan minister Cotton Mather partnered up with Harvard physician Zabdiel Boylston to immunize hundreds of Bostonians. The reaction birthed America’s first dumb anti-vaccination movement.
Many outraged New Englanders poured calumny upon the inoculation effort. The New England Courant, one of America’s first newspapers, published sensationalist articles against the endeavor. As one of them put it: “Some have been carrying about instruments of inoculation, and bottles of poisonous humor, to infect all who were willing to submit to it. Can any man infect a family in the morning, and pray to God in the evening that the distemper will not spread?” As seen below, it was the start of a nasty – even compared to modern standards – anti-vaxxer campaign.
