Log-in to bookmark & organize content - it's free! Author Andrew Wehrman provides opening remarks for his lecture on how inoculation became a sought-after medical procedure in the 18th century and ...

The roots of American anti-vaccination ideology go way back to 1721, when a smallpox epidemic threatened Boston. Cotton Mather, the Hub’s leading minister, had learned about inoculation — infecting ...

THE MOST dramatic showdown between humans and smallpox probably took place in Europe in the 18th century. The disease had by then been gathering momentum for a couple of hundred years, and despite the ...

Your support goes further this holiday season. When you buy an annual membership or give a one-time contribution, we’ll give a membership to someone who can’t afford access. It’s a simple way for you ...

Exactly 300 years ago, in 1721, Benjamin Franklin and his fellow American colonists faced a deadly smallpox outbreak. Their varying responses constitute an eerily prescient object lesson for today’s ...