TheMaterialismofBiologicalEncounters 127
even for modern-day Christians it might be beneficial to learn from the
stock of knowledge acquired by "heathens." This time, however, the
"heathens" invoked are of a more respectable because not "racially"
compromised background: "I Enquire, whether ourHippocrateswere
notanHeathen?AndwhetherourGalenwerenotanHeathen?...And
whether wehave notlearntsome of our very Good Medicines from our
Indians?... And, Gentlemen Smokers, I pray, whom did you learn to
Smoke of?" (Timonius and Pylarinus 21; spelling original). As the
course of events would prove, this argument did not convince the good
peopleofBoston.
The Boston smallpox controversy is an early instance of a
thoroughgoingculturalizationofanepidemicdisease.Inviewofthefact
that some of the arguments featuring in the debate were coming from
other cultures, one might even speak here of "transcultural" content (in
many scare quotes) animating this debate. Regardless of how one
weighsthislatteraspect,practicallyallcommunicationaboutthedisease
and its possible cures were channeled through, or at least impacted by,
the cultural media of the day. Such a thoroughgoing culturalization
wouldhavebeenimpossiblewithoutthehighlevelofliteracyinBoston
at that time, a heritage from the days of the Puritans. Practically
everybody, most slaves excepted, could read the pamphlets that were
circulating and on this basis together with the sermons in the churches
and the conversations with peers could form an opinion on this civil-
medical emergency. On this occasion, then, parts of Colonial North
America anticipated and even accelerated some of the "structural
transformations of the public sphere" during the 18thcentury which
Habermaschronicles(StructuralTransformation244-48,266).
During the period of intense social and cultural dissonances that
would soon follow during the Great Awakening, mass medical events
seem not to have played a significant role. But since U.S.-American
history is punctuated, in the words of Samuel P. Huntington, by
intermittent "periods of creedal passion" (American Politics85-91),
communicablediseaseseverynowandthenbothprecipitatedandgavea
distinct coloring to such moments of "moral indignation" (American
Politics91), coupled with intense public excitement and debate. One
suchperiodwastheProgressiveEra,whenthereformativefervorofthis
rather unique period of U.S.-American history depended on the rise of
new media which for the first time in U.S. history were trulymass