{"id":2639,"date":"2019-05-01T16:44:00","date_gmt":"2019-05-01T16:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/?p=2639"},"modified":"2025-04-29T16:46:08","modified_gmt":"2025-04-29T16:46:08","slug":"african-introduced-practice-of-immunization-against-smallpox","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/2019\/05\/01\/african-introduced-practice-of-immunization-against-smallpox\/","title":{"rendered":"African introduced practice of immunization against smallpox"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cI didn’t know I was a slave until I found out I couldn\u2019t do the things I wanted.\u201d \u2014 Frederick Douglass<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

While some may never tire of hearing about the greatness of Civil Rights leaders, famous Black athletes and renowned entertainers, Black History Month also represents a time to focus on the unsung.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In an email, Laurie Endicott Thomas, the author of \u201cNo More Measles: The Truth About Vaccines and Your Health,\u201d said the most important person in the history of American medicine was an enslaved African whose real name we do not know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHis slave name was Onesimus, which means useful in Latin. The Biblical Onesmius ran away from slavery but was persuaded to return to his master,\u201d Thomas said. \u201cThe African-American Onesimus was the person who introduced the practice of immunization against smallpox to North America. This immunization process was called variolation because it involved real smallpox. Variolation led to sharp decreases in the death rate from smallpox and an important decrease in overall death rates,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe was presented to Cotton Mather by his congregation as a gift, which is, of course, extremely troubling,\u201d Brown University history professor Ted Widmer told WGHB.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mather was a true puritan. A towering if controversial figure, especially following the Salem witch hysteria to which his preaching and writings greatly contributed.     <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMather was interested in his slave whom he called Onesimus, which was the name of a slave belonging to St. Paul in the Bible,\u201d explained Widmer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Described by Mather as a \u201cpretty intelligent fellow,\u201d Onesimus had a small scar on his arm, which he explained to Mather was why he had no fear of the era\u2019s single deadliest disease: smallpox.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMather was fascinated by what Onesimus knew of inoculation practices back in Africa where he was from,\u201d said Widmer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Viewed mainly with suspicion by the few Europeans\u2019 of the era who were even aware of inoculation, it\u2019s benefits were known at the time in places in places like China, Turkey and Onesimus\u2019 native West Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur way of thinking of the world is often not accurate,\u201d said Widmer. \u201cFor centuries Europe was behind other parts of the world in its medical practices.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bostonians like Mather were no strangers to smallpox.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Outbreaks in 1690 and 1702 had devastated the colonial city. And Widmer says Mather took a keen interest in Onesimus\u2019 understanding of how the inoculation was done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey would take a small amount of a similar disease, sometimes cowpox, and they would open a cut and put a little drop of the disease into the bloodstream,\u201d explained Widmer. \u201cAnd they knew that that was a way of developing resistance to it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Harvard University report further cemented what Onesimus accomplished after a smallpox outbreak once again gripped Boston in 1721. Although inoculation was already common in certain parts of the world by the early 18th century, it was only just beginning to be discussed in England and colonial America, according to researchers. Mather is largely credited with introducing inoculation to the colonies and doing a great deal to promote the use of this method as standard for smallpox prevention during the 1721 epidemic, Harvard authors wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then, they noted, \u201cMather is believed to have first learned about inoculation from his West African slave Onesimus, writing, \u2018he 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.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After confirming this account with other West African slaves and reading of similar methods being performed in Turkey, Mather became an avid proponent of inoculation. When the 1721 smallpox epidemic struck Boston, Mather took the opportunity to campaign 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA few people who got inoculated did die \u2013 roughly one in 40 did \u2013 and roughly one in seven members of the general population dies, so you had a much worse chance of surviving small pox if you did nothing,\u201d according to WGHB\u2019s research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mather and Boylston both wrote about their findings, which were circulated in America and impressed the scientific elite in London, adding invaluable data at a crucial time that helped lay the groundwork for Edward Jenner\u2019s famed first smallpox vaccine 75 years later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEven though most of the city was on the wrong side and didn\u2019t want inoculation to happen, they were smart enough to realize afterward that they had been wrong,\u201d Widmer said. \u201cAnd so, there was a higher level of respect for science going forward.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scourge of slavery would continue in Massachusetts for another 60 years, but as for the man whose knowledge sparked the breakthrough, \u201cOnesimus was recognized as the savior of a lot of Bostonians and was admired and then was emancipated,\u201d Widmer said. \u201cOnesimus was a hero. He gave of his knowledge freely and was himself freed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thomas, who has worked as an editor in medical and academic publishing for more than 25 years, added that it\u2019s important for African-Americans to understand that immunizations were originally an African practice that Africans brought with them to America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSince then, African-Americans played an important role in making vaccines safer and more effective,\u201d she said, noting that an African-American woman scientist named Loney Gordon played a key role in the development of the vaccine against whooping cough \u2013 or pertussis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI didn’t know I was a slave until I found out I couldn\u2019t do the things I wanted.\u201d \u2014 Frederick Douglass While some may never tire of hearing about the greatness of Civil Rights leaders, famous Black athletes and renowned entertainers, Black History Month also represents a time to focus on the unsung. In an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[374,1658,1659],"class_list":["post-2639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health","tag-civil-rights-leaders","tag-immunization","tag-smallpox","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2639"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2639\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2640,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2639\/revisions\/2640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}