Some lost works of Cotton Mather / by George Lyman Kittredge.
- George Lyman Kittredge
- Date:
- 1912
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Some lost works of Cotton Mather / by George Lyman Kittredge. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.
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![Mather's slave Onesimus was presented to him by some gen- erous parishioners on December 13th, 1707.' How promptly his new master asked him the inevitable question, Have you had the smallpox? we cannot tell. Two facts, however, are now clear: (1) Mather had heard of inoculation, from Onesimus, many months2 before he saw Woodward's abstract of Timonius in the Philosophical Transactions; and (2) the abstract reached him at least five years before the epidemic of 1721 broke out. It is also manifest that the essay of Pylarinus had not come to hand when Mather wrote the letter of Tulv 12, i7i6.» Now there is abundance of testimony that Dr. William Doug- lass 4 did, at some time or other, lend Mather No. 339 of the Philosophical Transactions (containing Timonius) and No. 347 (containing Pylarinus), and that (soon after June 6, 1721) he reclaimed them and kept them close. The evidence comes not only from Douglass himself,5 but from Mather's devoted ! ^ friends,6 so that there can be no doubt that it is trustworthy. 1 Diary, I. 579. 2 Compare The Angel of Belhesda, as quoted on p. 431, infra. 3 This is not surprising. No. 347 of the Philosophical Transactions (containing Pylarinus) was the issue for the Months of Jan. Febr. and March 1716. It was certainly not published before April, and may have been several months late. No. 349 (for July-September, 1716) was not printed (as we learn from the colo- phon, p. 504) until 1717. 4 A valuable (though sometimes inaccurate) Brief Memoir of William Douglass, by Dr. T. L. Jennison, was printed in 1831 in Medical Communications of the Massachusetts Medical Society, v. T95-240. This is utilized by Professor Charles J. Bullock in his Life and Writings of William Douglass (American Economic Association, Economic Studies, 1897, n. 265-290), which furnishes much addi- tional information, but needs to be corrected in some details, particularly in the bibliography (p. 290). For other notices of Douglass, see Bullock, 265, note 1. 6 In an unpublished letter to Alexander Stuart, M.D., September 25, 172T, Douglass says that some time ago he lent these Transactions (Nos. 339 and 347) to a certain credulous vain Preacher of this place called Mather (Royal So- ciety Letter-Book, D. 2, f. 2; Gay MS.,fol. 260). He repeats the statement in a letter to Cadwallader Colden, May 1, 1722 (4 Collections, n. 169): Having, sometime before the small-pox arrived, lent to a credulous preacher Mather, Jr., the Phil- osophical Transactions No. 339 and 377 [i. e. 347], etc. See also the following places in Douglass's published works: Inoculation of the Small Pox as practised in Boston (Boston, 1722), 1-2, 3-4; Postscript to Abuses, &*c. Obviated [Boston, 1722], 2-3, 4-5; A Dissertation concerning Inoculation of the Small-Pox (Boston, 1730), 2; Summary, 11. 409 (Boston, 1751); and a communication, obviously by Douglass, signed W. Philanthropos, in the Boston News-Letter, No. 912 (for July 17-24, 1721). Cf. William Wagstaffe, A Letter to Dr. Freind (London, 1722) [Appendix], 1; Boston News-Letter, No. 945 (for March 5-12, 1722). 6 Zabdiel Boylston, introductory note to Some Account, etc. (Boston, 1721);](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21017633_0015.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
