The Boston Inoculation Controversy: A Revisionist Interpretation

NOTES

• Edwin Emery and Michael Emery, The Press and America, 4th ed., (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1978), p. 33; Frank Luther Mott, American Journalism: A History 1690–1960, 3rd ed., (New York: MacMillan Co., 1962), pp. 16–19. All surviving issues of the Boston Gazette and News-Letter from January, 1721 to August, 1722, and of the New-England Courant from its beginning (August 7, 1921) to August, 1722, were read for this study
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• Ola Elizabeth Winslow, A Destroying Angel: The Conquest of Smallpox in Colonial Boston (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1974).
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• Inoculation procedures made use of smallpox virus. Vaccination, in which the much milder cowpox virus is used, was not developed until Edward Jenner's experiments beginning in 1796.
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• Frederick F. Cartwright in collaboration with Michael D. Biddis, Disease and History (New York: Thomas U. Crowell Co., 1972), p. 123.
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• Philosophical Transactions, v.XXIX, 1714–1716, (London: Royal Society, 1717), No. 339 and No. 347. The authors were Emanuel Timonius and Jacob Pylarinus.
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• Howard F. Fogel, “Colonial Theocracy and a Secular Press,” Journalism Quarterly, XXXVII (Fall, 1960), p. 530.
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• Reginald H. Fitz, “Zabdiel Boylston, Inoculator, and the Epidemic of Smallpox in Boston in 1721,” Bulletin of the Johns Hopkins Hospital, XXII (September 1911), p. 137.
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• Ibid
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• Boston Town Records, XIII “A Report of the Record Commissioners of the City of Boston.” (Boston: Rockwell and Churchill, 1885), p. 81.
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• Diary of Cotton Mather (New York: Frederick Ungar, nd), II: 620–21.
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• Fogel, loc. cit.
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• Diary, p. 628.
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• Fitz, op. cit., p. 318.
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• Thomas Hutchinson, The History of the Colony and Province of Massachusetts Bay, cited in Fitz, op. cit., p. 319.
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• Diary, p. 631.
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• John B. Blake, “The Inoculation Controversy in Boston: 1721–1722,” New England Quarterly, XXXV (December 1952), p. 493.
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• Fitz, op. cit., p. 319.
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• Diary, pp. 631–5, entries for July 16, 18, 30.
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• Fogel, op. cit., p. 530.
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• Clyde Augustus Duniway, The Development of Freedom of the Press in Massachusetts (New York: Burt Franklin, 1906, reprinted 1969), p. 96.
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• Ibid., p. 94; Leonard W. Levy, Freedom of Speech and Press in Early American History (New York: Harper and Row, Torchbooks, 1963), pp. 35–36.
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• Fitz, op. cit., p. 321, and Duniway, op. cit., p. 97, erroneously give Aug. 17 as the date of the first Courant.
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• Willard Grosvenor Bleyer, “The Beginnings of the Franklins' New-England Courant,” Journalism Quarterly, IV (1927), 2: 4.
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• Winslow, op. cit.; Blake, op. cit.; Fisk, op. cit.
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• This and following attributions of authorship of unsigned or pseudonymous Courant articles follow Worthington C. Ford, “Franklin's New-England Courant,” Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, 1923–24. LVII, (Boston: Plimpton. 1924).
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• Mott's statement (op cit., p. 16) that the first number of the Courant reported 50 smallpox deaths daily for the preceeding three weeks is in error. The paragraph containing the statistics concerned the plague in France, and originated at Aix.
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• News-Letter, January 22, 1722.
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• Courant, December 4, 1721
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• For example, Duniway. op. cit., p. 98.
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• Fitz, op. cit., p. 321
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• Diary, pp. 657–8.
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• Boston Town Records, op cit., pp. 90–91.
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• Fitz, op. cit., p. 324.
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• Duniway, op. cit., p. 99; Fitz, op cit., p. 325.
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• Blake, op. cit., p. 506.
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• Otho T. Beall Jr. and Richard Shyrock, Cotton Mather: First Significant Figure in American Medicine (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1954), p. 126
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• Emery and Emery, op. cit.; Mott, op. cit.
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• Jim Allee Hart, Views on the News: The Developing Editorial Syndrome (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1970), p. 98.
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