SMALLPOX PLAGUE (The vaccine)

The unlikely hero of America’s first foray into scientific exploration was strict Puritan Cotton Mather (1663-1728), who was interested in natural science and medicine.

As we wrote in the last entrance smallpox was one of the worst diseases of the XVII and XVIII century, it spread rapidly and was often lethal.

Reverend Cotton Mather was a prominent Boston minister who had deard a description of the African practice of inoculation from his Sudanece slave in 1706.

At the of the epidemic of 1721 he was working on what would be th first schoraly medicine essay written in America. His religious point if view didn't stop him from doing researches for cures for specific diseases.

In June of the same year (1721) he started a public campaign for promoting inoculation in Boston.

The medical cummunity of the city was violently opposed to the idea of such an experiment. In November Mather's house was bombed but despite such fierce opposition he succeded at inoculating nearly three hundred people.