The 1721 Introduction of Inoculation against smallpox in Boston by a slave

Very recommendable! What we learnt from slaves.

"[slave] Onesimus is known for changing the course of history by spurring the first recorded inoculations in the New World, which helped pave the way for the development of the first vaccines 75 years later.

Cotton Mather, a Puritan minister infamous for his role in the Salem Witch Trials, received Onesimus in 1706 as a gift from his congregation. Mather named him after a slave in the Bible whose name means “useful [, helpful, or profitable]” in Greek. According to a letter Mather later wrote to an English friend, at some point, Mather asked Onesimus if he’d been previously infected with smallpox, as slaves were worth more if they had previous exposure to the virus. Mather wrote that Onesimus replied, “Yes and no,” an answer that left Mather puzzled.

Onesimus elaborated, saying that he’d been deliberately exposed to smallpox back in his home in Africa. Mather wrote that “he had undergone an operation which had given him something of the smallpox, and would forever preserve him from it. . . . He described the operation to me, and showed me in his arm the scar which it had left upon him.” What Onesimus described is now known as inoculation, a precursor to vaccination that was known to folk medicine in remarkably many areas, from Central Asia to Wales, yet had not come to the attention of physicians in England or its American colonies. ..."

Introducing Inoculation, 1721 | The Scientist Magazine® As a deadly smallpox outbreak ravaged Boston, one of the city’s leaders advocated for a preventive measure he’d learned about from Onesimus, an enslaved man.