variolation, the practice of purposefully infecting a person with a mild case of smallpox in order to prevent more serious illness, was still somewhat novel in England but had been practiced in China and India for hundreds of years. Variolation would ultimately be brought to America from Africa. The procedure was explained to the Puritan minister Cotton Mather by his Libyan slave Onesimus. When Mather asked him if he had ever had smallpox, Onesimus replied, “Yes and no.” What he meant is that he had been inoculated with smallpox as a child, like many other slaves born in Africa.
