天花是一种由来已久的祸害, known in the Old World and brought to the New by European explorers and settlers. 这是致命的, 但往往是周期性破坏的社区, 随后几年逐渐减弱，然后又卷土重来. 这是在1721年, with Boston’s last major 天花 outbreak 19 years in the past, an entire generation had come of age without personal knowledge of the horrors of the disease. 1721年4月17日至24日波士顿报的读者 公报》 likely saw the announcement that “on Saturday last arrived here, His Majesty’s ship, 海马和其他几艘船 ... ” Little could they imagine that stowing away aboard the 海马 是天花, which would ultimately infect almost 5800 Bostonians and take the lives of 844 that year.

Not all were unprepared for the reappearance of the disease in Boston. 科顿·马瑟(1663-1728), the (in)famous Boston minister and an enthusiastic citizen scientist, 一直在阅读, 太, and when the epidemic began to gain a foothold in 1721, 他准备支持一项新的行动计划. In 1716, Mather had been taken by an account of a successful inoculation of 天花 in the 英国皇家学会哲学汇刊. 这, combined with the testimony of his enslaved person Onesimus, who told Mather of his own inoculation in West Africa, spurred Mather to publicly call for a program of 天花 inoculation in Boston—a suggestion that received positive attention from exactly one Boston doctor—Zabdiel 波依斯顿 (1679-1766).

波依斯顿, 像马瑟, had been afflicted by 天花 during an earlier epidemic and agreed to experiment with inoculation of live 天花—starting with his 6 year old son, 他36岁的奴隶杰克, 和杰克的儿子. 九天之后, with none of the three developing full-blown 天花, 博伊尔斯顿发誓要继续治疗其他病人. 很快, 然而, he was ordered to appear before town authorities who reprimanded 波依斯顿 and “with high menaces warned him against proceeding with his Practice any farther.”马瑟, 太, 受到了公众的严厉批评, culminating in a bomb being thrown through the window of his house.

Resistance to the efforts of 波依斯顿 and Mather was swift and fierce. A trained physician named William Douglass led the charge among Boston’s physicians, 而公众则受到詹姆斯·富兰克林的影响, 的煽动者出版商 新英格兰报. 在她og体育平台波士顿天花疫情的文章里, Amalie Kass介绍了场景, which sounds like it could have been ripped from today’s headlines: “Unfounded rumors, 人身攻击, and public disrespect for traditional leaders of the community made the controversy extremely distasteful.尽管存在争议, 1721年爆发的时候, 大约有287人接种了疫苗, 其中只有6人死亡, contrasted with a 14 percent mortality rate among the general population. 随着每次爆发, more people chose to be inoculated and physicians continued to refine the process. The next major breakthrough arrived at the end of the eighteenth century.

接种或疫苗接种?

Al虽然 the two terms are used interchangeably today, 在19世纪初, 它们有不同的含义. Inoculation or variolation (such as that used by Zabdiel 波依斯顿) meant transferring active 天花 病毒从感染者传染给健康人. Vaccination (from the Latin vacca, or cow) referred to the process of transferring 牛痘 virus, a much milder but related virus, to cause immunity to the more deadly 天花. The process of vaccination was the brainchild of Dr. Edward 詹纳 (1749-1823) of Berkeley, Gloucestershire, England. 詹纳, 谁在8岁时接种过天花疫苗, had a lifelong interest in science and nature and was apprenticed to a local physician, 外科医生丹尼尔·勒德洛, 14岁时. 在这段学徒生涯之后, he moved to London where he apprenticed in surgery and anatomy under famed British physician John Hunter. He returned to Gloucestershire by 1773 and became a successful family physician. 当他在农村社区工作时, he likely heard the lore that dairymaids were immune to 天花 because of their exposure to the related 牛痘 virus common in their bovine companions. 被各种可能性所吸引, by 1796, 他准备用这个假设做实验, injecting an 8 year old boy with matter from a dairymaid’s fresh 牛痘 lesion. The boy recovered and 詹纳 then inoculated him with 天花, which failed to develop. 詹纳 continued his experiments with other patients and in 1798, published his An Inquiry Into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae, which was to prove influential to a daring physician in Cambridge, 质量.

新世纪，新方法

As the 天花 virus had arrived in Boston by sea, so 太 did its remedy. Dr. Benjamin 沃特豪斯 of Harvard University had received a copy of Edward 詹纳’s 1798 An Inquiry Into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae and having read other contemporary pro-vaccination tracts, he resolved to experiment as soon as a way of transporting 牛痘 virus to 麻萨诸塞州 could be arranged (the cow-borne disease being unknown in New England). Al虽然 the 牛痘 virus was virulent, it was also susceptible to damage through handling. 沃特豪斯’s English compatriots decided that the best method of getting the virus to Boston in a viable state was to soak threads in the virus, 把线紧紧地密封在玻璃瓶里, and get them on the next ship from Bristol to Boston.

1800年7月4日，这艘船 芙特 from Bristol arrived in Boston Harbor, believed to be the ship that brought Dr. 在他的药瓶里灌满了牛痘. 就像他之前的扎巴迪尔·博伊尔斯顿, 沃特豪斯 started by vaccinating a member of his own family—his son Daniel Oliver 沃特豪斯, 5岁. The disease progressed exactly as 詹纳 had predicted and within days, 沃特豪斯给他的小儿子和他同名的人接种了疫苗, 还有他年幼的女儿, 她的保姆, 和其他仆人. 所有人都很喜欢接种疫苗. 沃特豪斯, 虽然, needed assurance that the 牛痘 had stimulated immunity to actual 天花 and so sent his son Daniel to the 天花 hospital in Brookline to be exposed to 天花 both through inoculation and close contact with ill patients. Twelve days later, Daniel was released from the hospital free of the dreaded disease. Dr. Aspinwall, who operated the 天花 hospital, exclaimed, “这 is no deception. I rejoice at the discovery as a friend of humanity al虽然 it must deprive me of a very handsome annual income.”

很快 沃特豪斯 was being assailed from all over the area to provide 牛痘 samples for vaccination—by physicians and quacks alike. Mistakes in using degraded 牛痘 matter (or actual 天花 instead of 牛痘) resulted in outbreaks such as that in Marblehead, 麻萨诸塞州, 在1800年秋天, 威胁疫苗接受进程. 在这种情况下, residents vaccinated by 沃特豪斯 remained healthy, while those vaccinated by other practitioners fell ill. Correspondence and viral samples traversed the Atlantic between Doctors 沃特豪斯 and 詹纳 as the success of the vaccine became more and more evident (despite the often antagonistic attitude of 沃特豪斯’s 麻萨诸塞州 medical colleagues, reminiscent of the establishment’s treatment of Mather and 波依斯顿 decades earlier).

希尔瓦纳斯·范希尔到底是谁?

One of the New England practitioners spurred to action by 沃特豪斯’s success with vaccination was “Doctor” Sylvanus Fansher [or Fancher] (1770-1846), 普利茅斯人, 康涅狄格, 上面画的是谁1810年左右的船舷. 范希尔并不是一个有医学学位的人, but an 1828 letter from 沃特豪斯 to “a friend in the city,证明了范希尔在接种疫苗方面的经验, 声称他“给更多的人接种了疫苗”, 到目前为止, 比美国任何一个人都好, 如果在世界上.” He continued that he esteemed Fansher for “the surest method of preserving the virus or matter, in its purest and most efficacious state … together with a spirit of disinterestedness, 诱使他给整个城镇接种疫苗, 为了什么, 最频繁, 难道不能称之为奖赏吗.”

事实上，人们可以找到. Fansher’s advertisements for vaccination services in New England newspapers from Northampton, 质量.从纽约到R州的纽波特.I., throughout the eighteen-teens and later, often citing Fansher’s connection to 沃特豪斯. And as 沃特豪斯 noted, Fansher was not always rewarded for his labors. An example of his challenges in receiving payment for his services is engagingly documented in the diary of Salem, 质量., clergyman William Bentley in the spring and summer of 1815. In 1816, Fansher was contracted by the town of Plymouth, 质量.，为约2800名居民接种疫苗. Despite the many lives Fansher no doubt saved, he died in poverty at Hartford, Conn.1846年6月6日. Dr. William Woodruff somewhat dismissively recalled his career for 沃特伯里镇和城市, 康涅狄格, from the Aboriginal Period to the Year Eighteen Hundred and Ninety-Five.

[Fansher] was descended from one of those improvident families … which after a generation or two are swept away by the beneficent law that involves the “survival of the fittest.” … Singular as it may appear under the circumstances, the idea of vaccination was embraced by Dr. Fancher soon after its introduction … as a pioneer and specialist [he] soon became widely known … and the Royal 詹纳ean Society of London made him an honorary member. 他那一天的报酬是丰厚的, 也许能保证他的独立, had it not been frittered away in useless and foolish inventions. … His appearance, as I remember him, was singular in the extreme. 丝绒小衣服, a parti-colored waistcoat from which dangled a half dozen watch-chains and trinkets for the amusement of the little folks, a faded blue cloak—all these surmounted by a slouched hat overhanging green goggles—made up the figure. No wonder he produced a sensation among the juvenile subjects of his craft when they were brought into his presence …