Stephen Lewis: We have a long history with vaccine politics

The Record-Eagle - 4/25/2021

Apr. 25—Anti-vaxxers include those who believe immunization inoculations cause autism or other medical problems and those whose religion forbids vaccinations. The politicization of the pandemic has intensified these objections so that there is substantial resistance to receiving the newly developed vaccines.

Whatever the reason, anti-vaxxers reject the science underlying vaccinations.

This is not new.

Three hundred years ago, in 1721, Boston was experiencing an outbreak of smallpox. Cotton Mather, the leading cleric of that time, had learned from his servant, a West African native, a primitive form of vaccination that involved scraping off the pox pustule from an infected individual and then injecting it under the skin of a healthy person, prompting that person's immune system to kick in and prevent a full-fledged version of the disease.

Mather promoted this idea as a way of fighting the current outbreak. To demonstrate its safety and effectiveness, he inoculated his own son. His son became seriously ill with the disease but survived. That incident convinced the good people of Boston that their erstwhile highly respected religious leader was now a proponent of a dangerous procedure that was not sanctioned by anything in the Bible. Enraged, and no doubt fearful, a crowd gathered outside of Mather's house, and someone threw a small bomb through his window. Attached to the bomb was a note, "Cotton Mather, you dog, dam you! I'll inoculate you with this; with a pox to you."

Forgetting for a moment the wisdom of attaching a note to an explosive device, the note expresses a violent rejection of vaccination based on the fear that it would spread, rather than contain, the disease.

Fortunately, for Mather and for us, we have the text of the note because the device did not explode.

However, Mather as the target of such anger is remarkably instructive and ties that long ago event to the present. His stature at that time cannot be overstated. He was the third in a line of esteemed Puritan ministers. His first name comes from John Cotton, one of the Puritan leaders of the settlement of Massachusetts in the 1630s. He was prodigiously gifted, having entered Harvard at 12, and receiving his MA at 18. Some 25 years before the bomb incident, Mather was a forceful defender of the necessity of the Salem Trials to eliminate witches, in whose existence as agents of Satan he firmly believed.

Yet, his early career goal was to become a doctor, and he was also a member of the Royal Society, the London based organization of scientists. His membership was based on the publications of his observations of the natural world.

Which apparently included witches.

He thus is a most representative figure, standing at the crossroads of the transition from medieval religious faith based on what cannot be seen to the modern reliance on observation. He had one foot in each world view — witches exist but he warned against using spectral (invisible) evidence against them; inoculate against disease because observation indicates the procedure works albeit not without some risk.

His neighbors in Boston had not advanced their thinking that far. Benjamin Franklin was 15 and still living in Boston at the time of the bomb incident. Thirty years later he would fly his kite. He had already rejected the religious beliefs that Mather retained. Franklin preferred to keep the supernatural and the natural worlds separate.

Centuries later we see this tension between religious and scientific world views playing out as we deal with the pandemic. A significant portion of the American population have expressed their unwillingness to be vaccinated. Among them, perhaps, are at least some who agree with the mob outside Mather's house.

Stephen Lewis, originally from Brooklyn, New York is a retired college English professor and writer whose novels include three mysteries set in northern Michigan. Contact stevelew@charter.net.

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