SICKNESS AND DEATH.
But the patriot cup of woe was not yet filled, and there was still another evil to fight. This was smallpox, which together with dysentery, rheumatism, and assorted “fevers” had victimized hundreds of American troops in 1776. Now the dread disease threatened to run like wildfire through the whole army, old and new recruits alike.
Medical knowledge of that day offered but one real hope of saving the Continental forces from this “greatest of all calamities,” namely, to communicate a mild form of smallpox by inoculation to every soldier who had not yet been touched by the contagion, thus immunizing him against its more virulent effects “when taken in the natural way.” Washington was convinced of this by the time he arrived at Morristown on January 6. He therefore ordered Dr. Nathaniel Bond to prepare at once for handling the business of mass inoculation in northern New Jersey, and instructed Dr. William Shippen, Jr., to inoculate without delay both the American troops then in Philadelphia and the recruits “that shall come in, as fast as they arrive.” During the next 3 months, similar instructions or suggestions were sent to officers and civil authorities connected with recruitment in New York, New Jersey, New England, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.
Undertaken secretly at first, the bold project was soon going full swing throughout Morristown and surrounding villages. Inoculation centers were set up in private houses, with guards placed over them to prevent “natural” spread of the infection. The troops went through the treatment in several “divisions,” at intervals of 5 or 6 days. Washington waxed enthusiastic as the experiment progressed. “Innoculation at Philadelphia and in this Neighbourhood has been attended with amazing Success,” he wrote to the Governor of Connecticut, “and I have not the least doubt but your Troops will meet the same.” As of March 14, however, about 1,000 soldiers and their attendants were still incapacitated in Morristown and vicinity, leaving but 2,000 others as the army’s total effective strength in New Jersey. A blow struck by Sir William Howe at that time might have been disastrous for the Americans. Fortunately, it never came.
The episode was not without its tragic side, however. Since smallpox in any form was highly contagious, civilians in the whole countryside near the camp also had to be inoculated along with the army. Some local people, and a small number of soldiers as well, contracted the disease naturally before the project got under way, or perhaps refused submission to the treatment. Isolation hospitals for these unfortunates were established in the Presbyterian and Baptist Churches at Morristown, and in the Presbyterian Church at Hanover. The patients died like flies. In the congregation of the Morristown Presbyterian Church alone, no less than 68 deaths from smallpox were recorded in 1777. Those who survived the ordeal were almost always pockmarked by it.
Sketches of the Baptist Church (above) and the Presbyterian Church (below) at Morristown, both used as smallpox hospitals in 1777.
