The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 (The Revolution Trilogy Book 1)

by Rick Atkinson

Vaccination using cowpox to tame the disease would not be adopted until the end of the eighteenth century, but inoculation had been practiced for centuries in Asia and Africa, and in 1672 it was introduced to Europe from Persia via Istanbul. Pus swabbed from a smallpox sore was deliberately introduced into an open incision on a healthy patient’s arm or thigh. The consequent eruption usually was milder and far less lethal than “natural” infection, although the procedure was risky and could trigger fresh epidemics if those newly inoculated were not isolated. After successful experiments on prisoners and orphans, the British Army inoculated many troops during the Seven Years’ War; the disease, if hardly eradicated, rarely became epidemic among the regulars. Frederick the Great likewise inoculated his Prussian legions. First introduced in America during the Boston smallpox epidemic of 1721, the practice of inoculation was legally restricted in New England because of medical uncertainties and a theological conviction, as the historian Elizabeth A. Fenn would write, that it displayed “a distrust of God’s overruling care.” Few New Englanders had acquired immunity, and colonists elsewhere often could not afford the £3 to £5 cost of inoculation.