geeky
Vaccination for smallpox was in its infancy and sometimes the cure seemed more painful than the disease. The smallpox vaccine was first introduced in England by Edward Jenner in 1796, who is credited by the World Health Organization with developing the first successful vaccine for the disease. Jenner had observed that milkmaids who previously had caught cowpox did not catch smallpox, and from this, he was able to figure out that that those inoculated with the vaccine he developed were protected against the smallpox virus.
Both John and Abigail Adams were intimately familiar with smallpox, having seen many family members infected. Abigail made certain to educate her children on the dangers of disease and how to best avoid it. Adams was inoculated before it was a commonly accepted practice. Though techniques were rudimentary at this time, Adams survived the experience, emerging with protective immunity.Even before Jenner's discovery, a procedure known as smallpox variolation was being used and one of its test subjects was future President John Adams. Adams recorded his experience in his autobiography. He described the process as follows (spelling and capitalization are as Adams recorded):
“In the Winter of 1764, the Small Pox prevailing in Boston, I went with my Brother into Town and was inocculated under the Direction of Dr. Nathaniel Perkins and Dr. Joseph Warren. This Distemper was very terrible even by Inocculation at that time. My Physicians dreaded it, and prepared me, by a milk Diet and a Course of Mercurial Preparations, till they reduced me very low before they performed the operation. They continued to feed me with Milk and Mercury through the whole Course of it, and salivated me to such a degree, that every tooth in my head became so loose that I believe I could have pulled them all with my Thumb and finger. By such means they conquered the Small Pox, which I had very lightly, but they rendered me incapable of speaking or eating in my old Age, in short they brought me into the same Situation with my Friend Washington, who attributed his misfortune to cracking of Walnuts in his Youth.”
Another account of the vaccination is contained in a letter that Adams wrote to his wife, in which he makes it seem as if being quarantined was as much fun then as it is now:
"Dr. Perkins demanded my left arm and Dr. Warren my brother's[Peter Boylston Adams]. They took their Launcetts and with their Points divided the skin about a Quarter of an inch and just suffering the blood to appear, buried a thread (infected) about a Quarter of an inch long in the Channell. A little lint was then laid over the scratch and a Piece of Ragg pressed on, and then a Bandage bound over all, and I was bid go where and do what I pleased...Do not conclude from any Thing I have written that I think Inoculation a light matter -- A long and total abstinence from everything in Nature that has any Taste; two long heavy Vomits, one heavy Cathartick, four and twenty Mercurial and Antimonial Pills, and, Three weeks of Close Confinement to an House, are, according to my Estimation, no small matters."
At the time of his inoculation, the practice was still highly controversial and distrusted by most people. In a number of cases, inoculated patients died as a result of the disease. There was still the risk of inoculation patients unintentionally infecting others. In spite of this, Adams shared his progressive beliefs about public health programs such as inoculation with others at that time. In July 1776, Abigail and their four children, Charles, Nabby, Thomas, and John Quincy, were all inoculated.
Years later, as President, Adams was informed about the discovery of vaccination by Jenner. In 1800, Benjamin Waterhouse, a strong advocate and frequent correspondent of Edward Jenner, wrote to President Adams about the new practice of using cowpox as a preventative for smallpox. Adams must have had other things on his mind at the time because did not respond to that correspondence. Waterhouse decided to look for a more receptive correspondent, that being Vice-president Thomas Jefferson. It was this correspondent that led to Jefferson's experimentation, discussed in an earlier article in this series.