124 RüdigerKunow
In the following years, the interplay between communicability and
communicationwouldmanifestitself,interalia,onseveraloccasionsin
the larger cities, especially port cities, of colonial North America,
always of course under widely different social and cultural
circumstances but with recognizably similar structures and outcomes.
Sinceachronologyofmedicalemergenciesisnotattemptedhere,abrief
exemplarycasemightsuffice.Suchasalientexampleisthe1721Boston
smallpox epidemic, by most accounts one of the earliest moments in
Colonial North America when infectious diseases were taking on an
eminently public, even publicized face. One of the reasons for this may
have been the fact that one of the principle contenders in the public
debate was himself an eminently public person, the Reverend Cotton
Matherjustmentioned.
Unlike the Philadelphia epidemic discussed in the previous section,
the controversy in Boston was not sparked by speculations about the
origin of the disease and its presumed carriers, nor encumbered by
disputes about the future course of the commonwealth. Instead, an
intense,attimesevenviolentpublicdebateragedaboutthefeasibilityof
apossiblenewtreatmentagainstsmallpox:inoculationormoreprecisely
variolation, now largely superseded in medical practice by vaccination.
Cotton Mather had thrown all his prestige as New England's leading
clericintothebalancetoconvincehisfellowtownspeople,includingthe
medical practitioners, of the feasibility of this new medical practice,
which he believed would be much more effective than all the others
practicedsofarsuchasquarantine,phlebotomy(bleeding).Heevenhad
oneofhischildreninoculated,butwithnoeffectonthepublic.Theanti-
inoculationist side, led by William Douglas, a trained physician with
strong ties to the medical establishment in England, prevailed, perhaps
because in the face of growing numbers of victims (of the 5,889
infected, 844 died; cf. Sivils 55), most Bostonians were not open to
experimentation.
Beginning with Perry Miller, most American Studies scholars have
interpreted the controversy "as a contest for professional authority"
which pitted the clergy (who had long also acted as healers) against the
emerging medical profession (Minardi 50). In other words, what was at
stake in this debate was rather whether or not medicine should
henceforth be "public knowledge instead of the guarded property of an
elite" (Sivils 46). However, for the purposes of the present argument, it