From xxxxxx <[email protected]>
Subject Benjamin Franklin’s Fight Against a Deadly Virus
Date July 26, 2021 7:55 AM
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[Colonial America was divided over smallpox inoculation, but he
championed science to skeptics.] [[link removed]]

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN’S FIGHT AGAINST A DEADLY VIRUS  
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Mark Canada, Christian Chauret
July 1, 2021
The Conversation
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_ Colonial America was divided over smallpox inoculation, but he
championed science to skeptics. _

As a printer’s apprentice in 1721, Franklin had a front-row seat to
the controversy around a new prevention technique.,
ClassicStock/Archive Photos via Getty Images

 

Exactly 300 years ago, in 1721, Benjamin Franklin and his fellow
American colonists faced a deadly smallpox outbreak
[[link removed]].
Their varying responses constitute an eerily prescient object lesson
for today’s world, similarly devastated by a virus and divided over
vaccination three centuries later.

As a microbiologist
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and a Franklin scholar
[[link removed]], we see
some parallels between then and now that could help governments,
journalists and the rest of us cope with the coronavirus pandemic and
future threats.

Smallpox strikes Boston

Smallpox was nothing new in 1721. Known to have affected people for at
least 3,000 years [[link removed]],
it ran rampant in Boston, eventually striking more than half the
city’s population
[[link removed]].
The virus killed about 1 in 13 residents
[[link removed]] – but the death toll
was probably more, since the lack of sophisticated epidemiology made
it impossible to identify the cause of all deaths.

What was new, at least to Boston, was a simple procedure that could
protect people from the disease. It was known as “variolation” or
“inoculation,” and involved deliberately exposing someone to the
smallpox “matter” from a victim’s scabs or pus, injecting the
material into the skin using a needle. This approach typically caused
a mild disease and induced a state of “immunity” against smallpox.

Even today, the exact mechanism is poorly understood
[[link removed]] and not much research
on variolation has been done. Inoculation through the skin seems to
activate an immune response that leads to milder symptoms and less
transmission, possibly because of the route of infection and the lower
dose. Since it relies on activating the immune response with live
smallpox variola virus, inoculation is different from the modern
vaccination that eradicated smallpox
[[link removed]]
using the much less harmful but related vaccinia virus.

The inoculation treatment, which originated in Asia and Africa, came
to be known in Boston thanks to a man named Onesimus
[[link removed]]. By 1721, Onesimus was
enslaved
[[link removed]], owned
by the most influential man in all of Boston, the Rev. Cotton Mather.

[etching of an 18th century man in white wig]
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Cotton Mather heard about variolation from an enslaved West African
man in his household named Onesimus. Bettman via Getty Images
[[link removed]]

Known primarily as a Congregational minister, Mather was also a
scientist [[link removed]] with a
special interest in biology. He paid attention when Onesimus told him
[[link removed]] “he had undergone an
operation, which had given him something of the smallpox and would
forever preserve him from it; adding that it was often used” in West
Africa, where he was from.

Inspired by this information from Onesimus, Mather teamed up with a
Boston physician, Zabdiel Boylston
[[link removed]], to conduct a
scientific study of inoculation’s effectiveness worthy of
21st-century praise. They found that of the approximately 300 people
Boylston had inoculated, 2% had died
[[link removed]], compared with almost 15%
of those who contracted smallpox from nature.

The findings seemed clear: Inoculation could help in the fight against
smallpox. Science won out in this clergyman’s mind. But others were
not convinced.

Stirring up controversy

A local newspaper editor named James Franklin had his own affliction
– namely an insatiable hunger for controversy. Franklin, who was no
fan of Mather, set about attacking inoculation in his newspaper, The
New-England Courant.

[frontpage of a 1721 newspaper]
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From its first edition, The New-England Courant covered inoculation.
Wikimedia Commons
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One article from August 1721 tried to guilt readers into resisting
inoculation. If someone gets inoculated and then spreads the disease
to someone else, who in turn dies of it, the article asked
[[link removed]],
“at whose hands shall their Blood be required?” The same article
went on to say that “Epidemeal Distempers” such as smallpox come
“as Judgments from an angry and displeased God.”

In contrast to Mather and Boylston’s research, the Courant’s
articles were designed not to discover, but to sow doubt and distrust.
The argument that inoculation might help to spread the disease posits
something that was theoretically possible – at least if simple
precautions were not taken – but it seems beside the point. If
inoculation worked, wouldn’t it be worth this small risk, especially
since widespread inoculations would dramatically decrease the
likelihood that one person would infect another?

Franklin, the Courant’s editor, had a kid brother apprenticed to him
at the time – a teenager by the name of Benjamin.

Historians don’t know which side the younger Franklin took in 1721
– or whether he took a side at all – but his subsequent approach
to inoculation years later has lessons for the world’s current
encounter with a deadly virus and a divided response to a vaccine.

Independent thought

You might expect that James’ little brother would have been inclined
to oppose inoculation as well. After all, thinking like family members
and others you identify with
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tendency.

That he was capable of overcoming this inclination shows Benjamin
Franklin’s capacity for independent thought
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an asset that would serve him well throughout his life as a writer,
scientist and statesman. While sticking with social expectations
confers certain advantages in certain settings, being able to shake
off these norms when they are dangerous is also valuable. We believe
the most successful people are the ones who, like Franklin, have the
intellectual flexibility to choose between adherence and independence.

Truth, not victory
[etching of Franklin standing at a table in a lab]
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Franklin matured into a well-known scientist and statesman, with many
successes aided by his open mind. Universal History Archive/Universal
Images Group via Getty Images
[[link removed]]

What happened next shows that Franklin, unlike his brother – and
plenty of pundits and politicians in the 21st century – was more
interested in discovering the truth
[[link removed]]
than in proving he was right
[[link removed]].

Perhaps the inoculation controversy of 1721 had helped him to
understand an unfortunate phenomenon that continues to plague the U.S.
in 2021: When people take sides, progress suffers. Tribes
[[link removed]], whether long-standing or
newly formed around an issue, can devote their energies to demonizing
the other side
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and rallying their own. Instead of attacking the problem, they attack
each other.

Franklin, in fact, became convinced that inoculation was a sound
approach to preventing smallpox. Years later he intended to have his
son Francis inoculated after recovering from a case of diarrhea. But
before inoculation took place, the 4-year-old boy contracted smallpox
and died in 1736. Citing a rumor that Francis had died because of
inoculation and noting that such a rumor might deter parents from
exposing their children to this procedure, Franklin made a point of
setting the record straight, explaining that the child had
“receiv’d the Distemper in the common Way of Infection
[[link removed]].”

Writing his autobiography in 1771, Franklin reflected on the tragedy
and used it to advocate for inoculation. He explained that he
“regretted bitterly and still regret
[[link removed]]” not
inoculating the boy, adding, “This I mention for the sake of parents
who omit that operation, on the supposition that they should never
forgive themselves if a child died under it; my example showing that
the regret may be the same either way, and that, therefore, the safer
should be chosen.”

A scientific perspective

A final lesson from 1721 has to do with the importance of a truly
scientific perspective, one that embraces science, facts and
objectivity.

[19th-century photo of a smallpox patient]
[[link removed]]

Smallpox was characterized by fever and aches and pustules all over
the body. Before eradication, the virus killed about 30% of those it
infected, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention. Sepia Times/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
[[link removed]]

Inoculation was a relatively new procedure for Bostonians in 1721, and
this lifesaving method was not without deadly risks. To address this
paradox, several physicians meticulously collected data and compared
the number of those who died because of natural smallpox with deaths
after smallpox inoculation. Boylston essentially carried out what
today’s researchers would call a clinical study on the efficacy of
inoculation. Knowing he needed to demonstrate the usefulness of
inoculation in a diverse population, he reported in a short book
[[link removed]] how he inoculated nearly 300
individuals and carefully noted their symptoms and conditions over
days and weeks.

The recent emergency-use authorization of mRNA-based
[[link removed]]
and viral-vector vaccines
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for COVID-19 has produced a vast array of hoaxes, false claims and
conspiracy theories
[[link removed]],
especially in various social media. Like 18th-century inoculations,
these vaccines represent new scientific approaches to vaccination, but
ones that are based on decades of scientific research and clinical
studies.

We suspect that if he were alive today, Benjamin Franklin would want
his example to guide modern scientists, politicians, journalists and
everyone else making personal health decisions. Like Mather and
Boylston, Franklin was a scientist with a respect for evidence and
ultimately for truth.

When it comes to a deadly virus and a divided response to a preventive
treatment, Franklin was clear what he would do. It doesn’t take a
visionary like Franklin to accept the evidence of medical science
today.

[_Insight, in your inbox each day._ You can get it with The
Conversation’s email newsletter
[[link removed]].][The
Conversation]

Mark Canada [[link removed]],
Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, _Indiana University
Kokomo
[[link removed]]_
and Christian Chauret
[[link removed]], Dean
of School of Sciences, Professor of Microbiology, _Indiana University
Kokomo
[[link removed]]_

This article is republished from The Conversation
[[link removed]] under a Creative Commons license. Read
the original article
[[link removed]].

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