The history of vaccination in the United States dates to the colonial period, continuing a longer global tradition of using exposure to disease to protect people from contracting it. The practice of smallpox variolation – deliberate exposure to the disease to build immunity – originated in ancient times. Inoculation, variolation using a lancet or needle, was introduced in Europe in the early 1720s. Around the same time in the American colonies, Boston conducted the first mass inoculation in what would become the United States amidst a smallpox outbreak. West Africans had long practiced inoculation, and through their enslavement and transport to America, brought their knowledge to the colonies. Onesimus, one of these enslaved Africans, shared the technique with his owner, the influential minster Cotton Mather. A leader of the Puritan community in Boston, Mather publicized and promoted inoculation during this outbreak. Despite Mather’s influence within the community, many Bostonian clergymen opposed inoculation, arguing that the epidemic was divine punishment and thus should not be interfered with. The controversy was so great that opponents to inoculation threw explosives into the homes of Mather and Dr. Zabdiel Boylston, the surgeon pioneering inoculation. Attached to the bomb thrown into Mather’s house was a note: “Cotton Mather, You Dog, Dam[sic] you, I’ll inoculate you with this, with a Pox to you.”[1]
