Hardly a family escaped, and in the earliest days whole families were carried off by this terrible disease.

Further from Chronicles of Danvers (old Salem village) Massachusetts, 1632-1923 by Harriet Silvester Tapley. This is a supplement to my post last month, Mass inoculation in 1776 and my surprise at the early and bold innovation in the emerging American Army.

From Chronicles of Danvers (old Salem village) Massachusetts, 1632-1923, there is a description of the same effort at the same time but in the civilian population of Danvers, Massachusetts.

Inoculation; How Received. — For many generations the scourge of this country was the smallpox. Hardly a family escaped, and in the earliest days whole families were carried off by this terrible disease. In England a remedy had been found that would prevent the spread of the malady. It was called the process of inoculation. In 1778, an attempt was made to introduce it into Danvers, and a certain house was set apart for the purpose of inoculating those who so desired, but as in all great movements, there were those in Danvers who were skeptical and treated the matter as absurd.

Feeling on the subject ran high. So great was the opposition that in the following month a special town meeting was held, which quite effectually and in no uncertain tones stopped the practice immediately. After a dozen years, the people evidently had their eyes opened to the beneficial results obtained by the treatment, for from that time there was no further attempt to prevent its use, and, indeed, twenty years later the town entertained such a high opinion of vaccination that a specialist was paid to vaccinate the children of Danvers.

I am still struck at how soon after discovery the idea of inoculation had spread across the Atlantic and was being considered in towns and by generals and their armies.

It also illustrates . . . what? The importance of trust? The people were willing to embrace something new; or at least some were. And yet, despite the very obvious negative consequences, the willingness to act was limited. They saw death from smallpox in a way we do not today. We know that there have been some 50-100,000 deaths in America from Covid-19 (once we sort out the definitions). But we are still at the "I know someone who knows someone . . ." stage of remoteness. It is rare to find someone who has experienced Covid-19 and extremely rare to know of someone within a network who has died of it.

In contrast to the solid burghers of Danvers, Massachusetts who saw whole families carried off with some frequency by smallpox, today, we rarely encounter death at all much less death by contagion.

Of course now, the great majority of modern populations are perfectly familiar with the concept of inoculation and while there is resistance among some small minority, the concept is familiar and additionally broadly complied with and supported.

An interesting case study of public decision-making in an uncertain world.