relatives from Braintree, Massachusetts, the family’s hometown, to Boston,
Massachusetts about 20 miles away, where a smallpox epidemic was raging in June-July
- Abigail undertook this migration for the purpose of getting everyone inoculated
against smallpox. Variolation was a familiar, well-established method in Boston of
immunizing people against smallpox upon subsequent exposure. About 100 years
previously one of the town pastors had learned of this method from a household slave
who described its use in Africa for many years. The procedure consisted of the injection
of a small amount of pus from a smallpox vesicle into the skin of a susceptible vaccinee.
Abigail Adams and her entourage crowded into the Boston home of her uncle Isaac
Smith. The entire household received inoculations of smallpox. The Adams family
acquired smallpox successively and remained ill for two months. Fortunately, all
recovered. Abigail’s husband, John, during this period, was at the Continental Congress
in Philadelphia helping to draft the Declaration of Independence; he was unable to leave
the Congress to assist with the family crisis. John Adams, himself, received variolation
during a previous smallpox outbreak in Boston in 1764 by Dr. Joseph Warren. Dr.
Warren, who was an active pro-independence patriot, became an American
Revolutionary War hero. He died on June 17, 1775 during the Battle of Bunker (Breed’s)
Hill. The American Revolutionary Armies also were immunized by variolation at various
times.
The modern era of vaccination against smallpox began with Dr. Edward Jenner in
1798 (10). Jenner exploited the observation noted in the rural area where he practiced in
England, that persons, who had contracted cowpox, appeared to be immune when later
exposed to smallpox. Jenner was born in Berkeley, Gloucestershire, England, on May 17,