One thing goes to Boylston’s credit: he did not propose to make poxing universal—to poison and sicken everybody, and inflict certain injury to avert future and uncertain danger from a few. He proposed to reserve inoculation for emergencies—
When the smallpox left Boston, inoculation ceased; and when it shall please Providence to send and spread that distemper among us again, may inoculation revive, be better received, and continued a blessing in preserving many from misery, corruption and death.
The narratives of Mather and Boylston are of special importance because we have in them the true lineage of inoculation as introduced from the eastern to the western world. Boylston tells us that when smallpox appeared in Boston—
Dr. Mather, in compassion to the lives of the people, transcribed from the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society the accounts sent them by Dr. Timonius and Pylarinus of inoculating the smallpox in the Levant, and sent them to the practitioners of the town for their consideration thereon.[10]
For some inscrutable reason the true position of Cotton Mather in the history of inoculation is continually overlooked or mis-stated. For instance, in Mather’s biography in the excellent English Cyclopædia, it is said that he derived his information and impulse from the letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu; a statement repeated in the memoirs of that lady, which is entirely fabulous.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Philosophical Transactions, No. 338, 1714.
[2] Nova et Tuta Variolas Excitandi per Transplantationem Methodus. Jacob Pylarinum. Venet. 1715. Reprinted in Philosophical Transactions, No. 347, 1716.
[3] An Essay on External Remedies. By P. Kennedy. London, 1715.
[4] Philosophical Transactions, Vol. xxxii. p. 35.