Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Inoculation in Pennsylvania / by J.M. Toner. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)
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![When the alarm subsided, all further resort to inoculation ceased, and the new remedy was scarcely mentioned for several years. But there was another alarm towards the close of 1736, when the people showed an increased confidence in inoculation, and resorted to it in considerable numbers. According to the Pennsylvania Gazette, there were 129 persons inoculated, 32 of whom were adults, 64 children under twelve years of age, and 32 negroes and mulattoes. There was only one death, which was from among the children.1 It was during this epidemic that Dr. Franklin lost a favorite son, about four years old, over whom he mourned for mauy years, severely blaming himself for not having protected the child by a timely inocu- lation.2 In 1742 a hospital, or, as it was then called, a pest-house, was erected on Fisher's Island, afterwards known as Province Island, because it was purchased by the province, and devoted to the use of the sick arriving from sea. Heretofore waste or deserted houses around the outskirts of the city were used temporarily as hospitals in emergencies for contagious dis- eases. But experience soon showed that an advantage would be gained by separating the better class of patients from the paupers in contagious as well as non-contagious diseases, and particularly in removing the latter to a distance from the city. The earliest hospital established in Philadelphia, distinct from the poor-house, was in Judge Kinsey's old mansion, on Market Street, west of Fifth, and commonly known by the name of Judge Kinsey's dwelling and orchard. 1 We find the foregoing facts in Watson's Annals of Philadelphia. He says : The account was formed by the then practising physicians of the day, to wit, Doctors Kearsly, Zachary, Cadwallader, Shippen, Bond, and Sommers, they being the only physicians who inoculated. 2 This was his second son, Francis Folger Franklin, who appears to have been a great favorite with his father, who says of him that in many respects he was the most knowing and promising child he ever saw. Franklin was a warm advocate of inoculation, but still he could not bear to expose his child to the peril, slight as it was, of inoculation ; and so, when the contagion came, it fastened on the unprotected boy, and medical skill failed to save him. Many years after his death, Dr. Franklin, in writing to his sister Jane, says: My grandson often brings afresh to my mind the idea of my son Franky, though now dead thirty-six years, whom I have seldom seen equalled in every respect, and whom, to this day, I cannot think of without a sigh. In his memoirs he also alludes to his sad loss, thus : 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 him bitterly, and still regret that I had not given it to him by inoculation. This I mention for the sake of parents who omit that operation, in the supposi- tion that they should never forgive themselves if a child died under it. My example shows that the regret may be the same either way, and therefore that the safer should be chosen. [See Parton's Life of Franklin.]](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21159841_0014.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
