Volume - The Clarence Darrow Collection

THEOLOGICAL OPPOSITION TO INOCULATION.
To the honour of the Puritan clergy of New England, it
should be said that many of them were Boylston's strongest
supporters.
Increase and Cotton Mather had been among
the first to move in favour of inoculation, the latter having
called Boylston's attention to it ; and at the very crisis of
affairs six of the leading clergymen of Boston threw their
influence on Boylston's side and shared the obloquy brought
upon him. Although the gainsayers were not slow to fling
into the faces of the Mathers their action regarding witch-
craft, urging that their credulity in that matter argued
credulity in this, they persevered, and among the many services
rendered by the clergymen of New England to their
to be remembered for these
country this ought certainly ;
oien had to withstand, shoulder to shoulder with Boylston
md Benjamin Franklin, the same weapons which were hurled
at the supporters of inoculation in Europe charges of "unfaithfulness
to the revealed law of God."
The facts were soon very strong against the gainsayers :
within a year or two after the first experiment nearly three
lundred persons had been inoculated by Boylston in Boston
md neighbouring towns, and out of these only six had died ;
vvhereas, during the same period, out of nearly six thousand
persons who had taken smallpox naturally, and had'received
)nly the usual medical treatment, nearly one thousand had
died. Yet even here the gainsayers did not despair, and,
Arhen obliged to confess the success of inoculation, they simply
fell back upon a new "
argument, and answered : It was
jood that Satan should be dispossessed of his habitation
/vhich he had taken up in men in our Lord's day, but it was
lot lawful that the children of the Pharisees should cast him
)ut by the help of Beelzebub. We must always have an eye
o the matter of what we do as well as the result, if we inend
to keep a good conscience toward God." But the facts
vere too strong the new ;
practice made its way in the New
kVorld as in the Old, though bitter opposition continued,
ind in no small degree on vague scriptural grounds, for
nore than twenty years longer.*
*
For the general subject, see Sprengel, Ilistoire de la M/decine, vol. vi, pp.
9-80. For the opposition of the Paris Faculty of Theology to inoculation, see
he Journal de Barbier^ vol. vi, p. 294; also the Correspondance de Grimm et di
ty