Excerpt
about smallpox 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."
