Old records shed new light on smallpox outbreaks in 1700s

mypanhandle.com ^ | 05/21/2021 | WILLIAM J. KOLE

[devane617]

BOSTON (AP) — A highly contagious disease originating far from America’s shores triggers deadly outbreaks that spread rapidly, infecting the masses. Shots are available, but a divided public agonizes over getting jabbed.

Sound familiar?

Newly digitized records — including a minister’s diary scanned and posted online by Boston’s Congregational Library and Archives — are shedding fresh light on devastating outbreaks of smallpox that hit the city in the 1700s.

[devane617]

Kind of interesting for historical types.

[Mears]

This was discussed in McCullough’s book John Adams.

.

[rightwingcrazy]

“The fact that we’re finding these similarities in the records of our past is a very interesting parallel,”

Smallpox has a mortality rate of about 30%, and about 80% of the survivors are marked with permanent, deep-pitted marks on their face and elsewhere.

The basics of decision making involve an assessment of likelihoods, uncertainties, and unknowns, as well as the severity of risks. But such matters may be beyond the ken of archivists and journalists with an agenda.

[Sparky1776]

Benjamin Franklin lost his daughter to smallpox, he said not getting her vacinnated was one of his biggest regrets in life.

[Theoria]

'Benjamin Franklin lost his daughter to smallpox, he said not getting her vacinnated was one of his biggest regrets in life.'

Is this a joke or something else?

[logi_cal869]

Duh?

[logi_cal869]

Absolutely no comparison. None whatsoever.

[Rusty0604]

Interesting, thanks for posting.

[Georgia Girl 2]

No its not a joke. George Washington conducted a mass vaccination of his troops. The cut your arm and then placed a piece of thread with small pox puss in the cut. You got a milder case of small pox. Then later they realized you could use cow pox virus so they scraped a place on your arm raw and rubbed some cow pox puss in the scrape. You got cow pox which was mild but were then immune to small pox.

[NonValueAdded]

Reference bump - “Boston’s Congregational Library and Archives.” I’m sure I can find some ancestral records there.

GGG?

[Theoria]

I had thought it was his daughter, not the question of inoculation. Vaccines occurred post Franklin.

[Sparky1776]

No joke, but my mistake, it was his oldest son Franky who died of it at age four in 1736 not a daughter.

[Georgia Girl 2]

I think if you’ll remember that Franklin was around in the 1700’s and the war. People were playing around with this stuff even before the revolutionary war.

[AlmaKing]

I’ll go with variolation, not this fake vaccine crap.

I’ve already had measles, mumps, chicken pox, and even shingles. I’ll take my chances.

[Georgia Girl 2]

Yep.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks NonValueAdded, I've been "working on" a topic about the 19th c cholera outbreaks in Italy, which in Naples in 1884 alone killed thousands and resulted in the ultimate abandonment of their Roman-era water supply. It should be noted that at the time, it had been a while since the Romans had sent maintenance crews, also more to the point, Naples wasn't the only place in Europe to get hammered (with the cholera, I mean). Although this is a topic of modern history, looks like a good choice for the weekly Digest ping as well.

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[Sparky1776]

Lost all respect for the man due to his attacks on Trump and his Biden support going back to 2017:

An hour and half of puke with Charlie Gibson:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDV3xNjHRWA&t=29s

7:25, 27:00 - 29:00, 33:00, 1:02:00, 1:26:30 - 1:28:00 comes to mind.

It is an interesting piece in that it truly demonstrates the bias and nastiness of a “journalist” and a “historian” right after the 2016 election and the predictions of both a pandemic and Biden. Not to mention Gibson I believe sits on the Presidential Debate Commission.

[lizma2]

https://www.armyheritage.org/soldier-stories-information/a-deadly-scourge-smallpox-during-the-revolutionary-war/

[Adder]

And some few did die from the innoculation by contracting a severe case of smallpox. Not sure that happened when they switched to cowpox.

But by and large the scourge of smallpox was very much reduced and eventually eliminated.

Its a pretty big stretch to compare smallpox to a cold...and the reasons for reticence are different.

[Grampa Dave]

Actually he lost his son:

When smallpox came to Philadelphia in 1736, infecting and eventually killing his son, Ben Franklin appeared to have a change of heart about smallpox inoculation when he wrote in his autobiography,

“In 1736 I lost one of my sons, a fine boy of four years old, by the smallpox taken in the common way. I long regretted bitterly and still regret that I had not given it to him by inoculation. This I mention for the sake of the parents who omit that operation, on the supposition that they should never forgive themselves if a child died under it; my example showing that the regret may be the same either way, and that, therefore, the safer should be chosen.”

https://www.chop.edu/centers-programs/vaccine-education-center/just-vax-historicalfamous-figures-and-vaccine-preventable-diseases