Religious debate

- from Contagion

"The Boston Smallpox Epidemic, 1721

Despite the promise that inoculation seemed to hold for controlling smallpox, the Boston smallpox epidemic of 1721 is known for the passionate controversy over inoculation that erupted in the city, most visibly between Reverend Cotton Mather and Boston physician William Douglass.


The religious debate was also important. Mather, who had lost his wife and three youngest children in a measles epidemic, argued that inoculation was a gift from God. Those opposed to inoculation argued that epidemic diseases afflicted the people for a divine reason, and that to attempt to prevent them was to oppose God’s will. Others argued that inoculation, with its roots in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, was a heathen practice not suitable for Christians."