Without inoculation we would have lost the Revolutionary War.
Inoculation in America is said to have begun in 1721 in Boston to meet the onset of yet another outbreak of Smallpox, the most dealdy and feared disease in colonial times.
How deadly and how much feared?
Think polio in the first half of this century, think polio fear today in response to the Kenndy/Trump war against science and innoculation and you will understand the depth of terror of smallpox in 18th Century America.
History says it is more likely we lost our 1776 Northern Campaign to conquer Canada because of small pox devastation of the northern army than by any defeat in battle. The one man who stood out in that fiasco as a singular American hero and leader was – are you ready – Benedict Arnold, who first opposed inoculation but later became an advocate.
It is estimated that during the entirety of the American Revolutionary War as many as three times as many American soldiers died from disease as from British/German muskets, rifles, artillery or blade during battle. Disease not the British killed them.
Chief among the many diseases that killed Americans was the dreaded scourge of smallpox, even as the glimpse of relief from this terrible disease came in the form of primitive but effective inoculations with inoculation material drawn from the effusions of pustulant small pox sores of the sick.
John Adams had been inoculated but his family had not. So it was in 1776 that Abigail wrote to tell him she had been so treated and had their children inoculated a well, which of course would have included then young John Quincy Adams. So the U.S. had, as well as an inoculated first president,two future inoculated presidents.
Gen. George Washington considered smallpox a far greater threat than the British to his army – to its continuity, organization and ability to fight. Historians agree and hold that without the action he took regarding mass inoculation, the American Army would have disintegrated and been defeated.
As Washington wrote to Dr. William Shippen, the chief medical officer of his army:
“Finding the smallpox to be spreading much and fearing that no precaution can prevent it from running thro’ the whole of our Army, I have determined that the Troops shall be inoculated. This Expedient may be attended with some inconveniences and some disadvantages, but yet I trust, in its consequences will have the most happy effects. Necessity not only authorizes but seems to require the measure, for should the disorder infect the Army, in the natural way, and rage with its usual Virulence, we should have more to dread from it, than from the sword of the enemy.“
That’s why in 1777 Washington ordered smallpox inoculations for his entire Army and for all those enlisting in it. The historians tell us with inoculation enlistments increased as soldiers feared smallpox more than they did British arms.
It took inoculation five days to take hold in those times. That’s why carrying out the inoculation plan and the plan itself was considered and remained secret. Had the British known that so many American soldiers were isolated and out of action that long they could have attacked and won against diminished American forces.
Intead, of course, inoculted Continental Army soldiers went on to gain decisive victory at Yorktown in 1781 and, with it, American independence.
The lesson? Praise the lord if that’s your thing and – before you pass the ammunition – inoculate.
Peeling the Onion 