Americans have a strong tradition of both vaccine advocacy and resistance, and the inceptions of these movements are astonishing. We can gain important insights by going back 300 years — to the Boston Smallpox Epidemic of 1721.
People almost never contracted smallpox twice, and those with a mild infection (typically caused by variola minor) were immune for life.
Accordingly, many societies developed efforts to intentionally expose people to tiny amounts of virus, hoping to induce a short-lived illness that would have very low morbidity and mortality but would induce permanent immunity to serious disease.
The procedure of exposing people to an attenuated load of smallpox virus with the intent of inducing immunity was referred to as variolation.
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As historian Ted Widmer has described:
As word spread of the new medicine, the people of Boston were terrified and angry. According to [Puritan leader Cotton] Mather, they ‘raised an horrid Clamour.’
Their rage came from many sources; fear that inoculation might spread smallpox further… and a righteous fury that it was immoral to tamper with God’s judgment in this way.
