Fighting Illness and the British in Colonial Boston

In December of 1774, Edmund Quincy, merchant and justice of the peace in Boston, wrote to his daughter Katy (sister to Dorothy and future sister-in-law to John Hancock) about the “the most threatening evil among us . . . small pox.” Edmund urged Katy to get herself inoculated. Quoting scripture, he advised her to take care of her “Vineyard . . . and [follow] the Truth of Righteousness.”

Inoculations against smallpox had been going on since the early 1700s, started in large part through the efforts of Cotton Mather, better known today for his role in fomenting the hysteria leading to the Salem Witch Trials than for his efforts at stemming smallpox.

Mather had initially learned about the treatment from a slave named Onesimus, who explained to him how the process had been used in Africa as a safeguard against smallpox. Dr. Zabdiel Boylston assisted Mather in his vaccination campaign, inoculating first his own son, and then a slave, and then moving on to successfully treat hundreds.

John Adams had himself inoculated in the spring of 1764. Following treatment with the live virus, he had to self-quarantine in a room in a room in Boston for three weeks. The forced separation from his beloved Abigail Smith made him miserable. He wrote her long letters in his isolation, expressing his feelings verbosely: “the dear…