An article published in theconversation.com draws parallels to the resistance that many in Colonial America had toward the “new technology” of the Smallpox Vaccine, with the vaccine hesitancy that is killing Americans, now.
The authors, Mark Canada and Christian Chauret note that in 1721, the Congregational minister, Cotton Mather who they describe as “the most influential man in all of Boston,” was an outspoken supporter of the Smallpox Vaccine. However, “A local newspaper editor named James Franklin had his own affliction – namely an insatiable hunger for controversy. Franklin, who was no fan of Mather, set about attacking inoculation in his newspaper, The New-England Courant.”
James Franklin’s little brother Ben, according to Canada and Chauret, “unlike his brother – and plenty of pundits and politicians in the 21st century – was more interested in discovering the truth than in proving he was right.”
The authors cite Ben Franklin’s response in the Pennsylvania Gazette, to a rumor that had spread about his four-year-old son’s death from Smallpox. Franklin was eager to dispel the notion hat his son had died from an innoculation.