So let’s start with how far back were Africans inoculating against smallpox with this article that addresses just that. We talk about it in the episode, but only briefly. This will go more in-depth about it.
And let’s learn about Onesimus, the Black man who taught the white folks of Massachusetts how to protect themselves against smallpox.
Karen asked during the episode as we learned more about Cotton Mather “Wait, is he actually good?” And because we weren’t here to learn about him, I said we’d revisit him in a future episode. Here’s a link if you want to read about his role in the spread of inoculations among the general population.
Cotton received a huge backlash for, you know, not wanting people to die of smallpox, and then there was an outbreak. This article talks about that outbreak and the fight for inoculations.
Jump forward in time and you have inoculations being used and experimented with in an effort to become what we would know of as vaccines. We didn’t talk about it on the podcast because I think not everything about Black History Month needs to be a discussion about suffering, but there were definitely some bad things done to people of color in the name of making the first vaccines. If you want the further reading, here’s an article about it.
This is just a cool comic illustrating the progression of the smallpox vaccine in the US through time. If you want the same content but in a condensed form, this comic is for you.
And finally, an article from the World Health Organization about the eradication of smallpox, the historic and amazing feat of medicine that was achieved because of the initial effort of Onesimus and all the people of color around the world who developed the inoculation technique so that everyone could live smallpox free.
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