The Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities reminds us that on yesterday’s date in 1721:
Boston doctor Zabdiel Boylston took a gamble with his young son’s life and inoculated him against smallpox. Puritan minister Cotton Mather had learned from one of his slaves that in Africa people did not fear the disease that so terrified Europeans. The Africans placed a small amount of smallpox pus into a scratch on children’s arms, thus making them immune to the disease. When an epidemic broke out in Boston in 1721, Mather wanted to try this method. He convinced Dr. Boylston, but other physicians and the public thought the idea barbaric, even sinful. However, when those Boylston inoculated survived, the tide of public opinion began to turn. Within a few years, the once-controversial practice would be routine.
Today’s radical religious right, with its dogmatic opposition to science, is in many ways more extremist than the Puritans.
cambridgian says
Don’t imagine that the good old days lacked anti-science fanatics. In the 19th century, there was widespread religious opposition to the use of lightning rods.
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p>According to the New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11… religious folks blamed the 1755 earthquake in Boston on God’s anger over lightning rods:
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dhammer says
We should also remember that it was a left leaning, populist, pacifist and trust buster by the name of William Jennings Bryan who was the attorney against teaching evolution in the Scopes trial.