Surprisingly, straight laced Puritain leader Cotton Mather was its strongest proponent:
A promoter of the new experimental science in America, Cotton Mather carried out original research on plant hybridization. He also researched the variolation method of inoculation as a means of preventing smallpox contagion, which he learned about from an African-American slave who he owned, Onesimus. He dispatched many reports on scientific matters to the Royal Society of London, which elected him as a fellow in 1713. [Wikipedia]
And electron microscopes CAN see viruses.