Several reasons proving that inoculation or transplanting the small pox, is a lawful practice, and that it has been blessed by God for the saving of many a life / by Increase Mather. Sentiments on the small pox inoculated. By Cotton Mather. Reprinted from the original folio single sheet printed at Boston in 1721 ; with an introduction by George Lyman Kittredge.

  • Mather, Increase, 1639-1723.
Date:
1921
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Several reasons proving that inoculation or transplanting the small pox, is a lawful practice, and that it has been blessed by God for the saving of many a life / by Increase Mather. Sentiments on the small pox inoculated. By Cotton Mather. Reprinted from the original folio single sheet printed at Boston in 1721 ; with an introduction by George Lyman Kittredge. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    and Horror of this frightful Disease well over with ym. I beseech you, syr, to move it, and save more Lives than Dx Sydenham. For my own part, if I should live to see ye Small-Pox again enter into or City, I would immediately procure a Consult of or Physi¬ cians, to Introduce a Practice, which may be of so very happy a Tendency. But could we hear, that you have done it before us, how much would That em¬ bolden us! In this same year (1716) there came out in the Philosophical Transactions1 a further ac¬ count of the Constantinopolitan practice, from the pen of Dr. Jacobus Pylarinus (Pylarini). This Mather had, of course, not yet seen, but it was soon called to his notice by Dr. William Douglass, and it strengthened his resolve to introduce the new method in Boston if the necessity should arise. It is important to ob¬ serve that Mather knew of inoculation many months ” before he saw the letter of Timonius, and that his mind was made up some five years, at least, before the outbreak of smallpox in 1721. His conduct in that year, therefore, was not due to the freakish impulse of a vain and credulous man, intoxicated by recent scientific news from the mother country: it was the out¬ come of a deliberate plan, formed long before, 1 * No- 347> XXIX, 393-399.