Several reasons proving that inoculation or transplanting the small pox, is a lawful practice, and that it has been blessed by God for the saving of many a life / by Increase Mather. Sentiments on the small pox inoculated. By Cotton Mather. Reprinted from the original folio single sheet printed at Boston in 1721 ; with an introduction by George Lyman Kittredge.

  • Increase Mather
Date:
1921
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Several reasons proving that inoculation or transplanting the small pox, is a lawful practice, and that it has been blessed by God for the saving of many a life / by Increase Mather. Sentiments on the small pox inoculated. By Cotton Mather. Reprinted from the original folio single sheet printed at Boston in 1721 ; with an introduction by George Lyman Kittredge. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    fied. The people, writes Mather in his Diary under date of July 16, rave, rail, they blas¬ pheme ; they talk not only like Ideots but also likcFrantzcks. And not only the Physician who began the Experiment, but I also am an Object of their Fury; their furious Obloquies and In¬ vectives/’ One of the doctors, a Frenchman named Lawrence Dalhonde, who had been a surgeon in the French service, declared before the Se¬ lectmen on July 11 that he had known of hor¬ rible sequelae from inoculation in Italy, Spain, and Flanders.1 His accounts are now regarded as either mistaken or fictitious, but they met with instant acceptance then, and their offi¬ cial publication intensified the people’s terror. They were embodied in a report from the Se¬ lectmen which gave too favorable an account of the state of the epidemic, and which also included a pronouncement from the Physi¬ cians of Boston” declaring that it appears by numerous Instances, That it [i.e. inoculation] has prov’d the Death of many Persons soon after the Operation, and brought Distempers upon many others which have in the End prov’d deadly to ’em.” On July 31a certificate of similar tenor signed by one John Forland 1. Boylston, Historical Account, pp. 58-61.
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