Enslaved people brought the first vaccine to America — and were used as ‘vaccine mules’ in early immunization experiments

Onesimus. Credit: Melanin Mindscape
Onesimus. Credit: Melanin Mindscape

The history of people becoming sick and dying from epidemics is timeless. But the practice of vaccinating people to prevent the spread of infectious disease is a relatively new phenomenon in the U.S. and Europe.

The first vaccine in the U.S. was introduced by an enslaved African named Onesimus in 1721. To prevent the spread of smallpox in colonial Boston, Zabdiel Boylston, a doctor, followed Onesimus’ instructions and took the lymph, the colorless fluid within a smallpox vesicle, and injected it into the arm of his son and two enslaved people in his home.

This process, known as variolation, infects a susceptible person with the smallpox virus in hopes of their developing a milder version and surviving. In 18th-century Boston, people considered it superstitious and scary. Many initially refused to get vaccinated, but Boylston experimented on other enslaved people and used their results to illustrate the effectiveness of the procedure.

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When smallpox resurfaced in the United States during the Civil War, both Union and Confederate armies lacked vaccine material to protect soldiers. Army medical officials on both sides infected enslaved infants and newly emancipated children with smallpox and harvested vaccine matter off their bodies.

The modern world depends on vaccinations for a range of maladies, distributing them eagerly and praising their effectiveness, without acknowledging that the beginning of these medical interventions can be traced to slavery.

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