IT'S A PURITAN NATION:

In the 18th century, however, Boston's colonists met Mather's inoculation proposal with a terror that bordered on hysteria. They didn't understand how inoculation worked, and the notion of choosing to infect yourself with a deadly disease struck them -- perhaps understandably -- as outrageous. Fear of science, suspicion of the ruling elite, and a belief that medicine might meddle with God's will -- these ideas guided the angry mobs in Boston in 1721 and linger today in some form in anti-vaccine movements.

The 1721 smallpox epidemic in Boston began with a single sailor exhibiting signs of the disease, and within a few months, nearly half of the city's 11,000 residents fell ill. Hundreds of deaths followed. The tolling of Boston's 10 church bells was so constant that the town selectman was forced to limit a single bell toll per death. Panic gripped the city where everyone lived in fear of seeing the telltale rash appear on their skin.

Mather, then 58 and one of Boston's best-known men, had learned of a smallpox inoculation process through his slave, Onesimus. The minister was so convinced by Onesimus's description of the inoculation he had undergone in Africa -- scraping a piece of smallpox pus and inserting it under the skin of a healthy person -- that he convinced local physician Zabdiel Boylston to inoculate two more slaves and Boylston's own son. After the process worked, Mather became a public crusader for the cause of inoculation, igniting a fierce debate over inoculation, public health and the role of local leadership in epidemics. The fact that Onesimus came from Africa only stoked racist fears about exotic sorcery.

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