Excerpt from
Times of Brother Jonathan
By Dudley C. Gould

 "Some shied from the smallpox inoculation because of the three percent fatality rate. Dr. James Thacher, one of the best medical chroniclers of the war, wrote that of 500 soldiers inoculated at the Highlands north of New York Town in 1784, four died. Death rate for the actual disease exceeded 60 percent.

"Until 1782, physicians believed smallpox to be another manifestation of measles, which often occurred side-by-side. About 50,000 died in an outbreak in London in 1664, along with bubonic plague. Queen Mary of England died of smallpox in 1694, as did Queen Anne's only son and heir six years later. Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, smallpox killed more young children than any disease with the possible exception of infantile diarrhea. In London alone from 1769 to 1774, smallpox caused 80 percent of the deaths of children under five.

"Boston still celebrates March 17, not only for St. Patrick but also because it was on that day in 1776 that the British evacuated. Colonel Ebenezer Learned got ready a battalion of immunes, some 500 pockfretten veterans, to snipe and bushwhack the withdrawing force as they had at Lexington, a tactic quickly canceled when General Howe threatened to fire the town.

"Coming down the Neck into smallpox-plagued Boston, Colonel Ebenezer Learned's men found the way strewn with sharpened pine branches facing them, an abatis, and metal crows' feet called caltrops. The caltrops were iron balls with sharp spikes protruding to wound the feet of rapidly moving men and horses. Planted across the main thoroughfares were hogsheads of steaming horseshit under which a sign was hung between two poles in large letters: "Welcome Brother Jonathan.

"Smallpox had the most profound effect on the outcome of the War of Independence when it caused the death of King Louis XV a year before the rebellion began. Had he lived, Americans would certainly never have received the absolutely essential spiritual, military and monetary aid given by his liberal, easily-influenced grandson."