160 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



cogent against any use of healing means in any disease the words 

 of Hosea : " He hath torn and he will heal us ; he hath smitten 

 and he will bind us up/' 



So bitter was this opposition that Dr. Boylston's life was in 

 danger ; it was considered unsafe for him to be out of his house 

 in the evening ; a lighted grenade was even thrown into the 

 house of Cotton Mather, who had favored the new practice, 

 and had sheltered another clergyman who had submitted him- 

 self to it. 



To the honor of the Puritan clergy of New England, it should 

 be said that many of them were Boylston's strongest supporters. 

 Increase and Cotton Mather had been among the first to move in 

 favor of inoculation, the latter having called Boylston's atten- 

 tion to it; and at the very crisis of affairs six of the leading 

 clergymen of Boston threw their influence on Boylston's side 

 and shared the obloquy brought upon him. Although the gain- 

 sayers were not slow to fling into the faces of the Mathers their 

 action regarding witchcraft, arguing that their credulity in that 

 matter argued credulity in this, they persevered, and among the 

 many services rendered by the clergymen of New England to 

 their country, this ought certainly to be remembered ; for these 

 men had to withstand, shoulder to shoulder with Boylston and 

 Benjamin Franklin, the same weapons which were hurled at the 

 supporters of inoculation in Europe charges of " unfaithfulness 

 to the revealed law of God." 



The facts were soon very strong against the gainsayers : with- 

 in a year or two after the first experiment nearly three hundred 

 persons had been inoculated by Boylston in Boston and neigh- 

 boring towns, and out of these only six had died ; whereas, 

 during the same period, out of nearly six thousand persons who 

 had taken small-pox naturally, and had received only the usual 

 medical treatment, nearly one thousand had died. Yet even 

 here the gainsayers did not despair, and, when obliged to con- 

 fess the success of inoculation, they simply fell back upon a new 

 argument, and answered : " It was good that Satan should be 

 dispossessed of his habitation which he had taken up in men in 

 our Lord's day, but it was not lawful that the children of the 

 Pharisees should cast him out by the help of Beelzebub. We 

 must always have an eye to the matter of what we do as well as 

 the result, if we intend to keep a good conscience toward God." 

 But the facts were too strong ; the new practice made its way in 

 the New World as in the Old, though bitter opposition continued, 

 and in no small degree on vague scriptural grounds, for more 

 than twenty years longer.* 



* For the general subject, see Sprengel, Histoire de la Medocine, vol. vi, pp. 39-80. 

 For the opposition of the Paris Faculty of Theology to inoculation, see the Journal de 



