THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD THE AGE OF REASONTHES REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD THE AGE OF REASON by Gary Q. Arpin Science in the New World What then is the American, this new man? . . . He is an American, who, leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life she has embraced, the new government he obeys, and the new rank he holds. He becomes an American by being received i the broad lap of our great Alma Mater. Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labors ‘and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world. Americans are the western pilgrims, who are carrying along with them that great mass of arts, sciences, vigor, and indus- try which began long since in the east; they will finish the great circle. —trom Letters from an American Farmer, Michel Guillaume Jean de Crévecoeur Harbor. This was hardly an unusual occurrence, for trade with the West Indies was one of the foundations of New England economic life. This ship was different, though, and the conse- quences of its docking would illustrate some important currents in ‘American social and intellectual life. For in addition to its custom- ary cargo of sugar and molasses, this ship carried smallpox. ‘Smallpox was one of the scourges of civilized life in the seven- teenth and eighteenth centuries. It spread rapidly, disfigured its Victims, and was often fatal. The outbreak in Boston in 1721 was ‘ major public-health problem. What was to be done? The unlikely hero of this story is Cotton Mather (1663-1728), the great Puritan minister and historian, who was fifty-eight years old at the time and nearing the end of his life. Today Mather is commonly thought of as a conservative theologian, one of the last old-style Puritans, But Mather was also interested in natural sci- ence and medicine, He was a member of Britain's renowned Royal Society and the author of hundreds of essays on natural history. At the time of the smallpox epidemic, he was working on what would be the first scholarly essay on medicine written in America The opening sentence reveals his Puritan perspective: “Let us look upon sin as the cause of sickness.” His religious point of view did not, however, prevent Mather from seeking practical cures for specific diseases. He had heard cof a method for dealing with smallpox that had been devised by a Turkish physician. The method seemed illogical, but it apparently worked. It was called inoculation. By this method, doctors infected people with fluid containing the virus, giving them a mild case of the disease. This made them immune to later attacks of the dis- ease. In June of 1721, as the smallpox epidemic spread through: ‘out Boston, Mather began a public campaign for inoculation. I April of 1721, a ship from the West Indies docked in Boston {66 The Revolutionary Period: The Age of ReasonThe opposition was forceful. Boston's medical communi by Dr. William Douglass, was violently oppased to such an exper- iment, especially one borrowed from the Moslems. Mather’s med- ical opponents expressed themselves in language more religious than medical. Inoculation, the doctors argued, would violate ‘the all-wise Providence of God Almighty” by “trusting more the extra groundless machinations of men than to our Preserver in the or dinary course of nature.” That is, human beings were daring to do the work of God. The New England Courant, a newspaper founded by James Franklin (whose younger brother Benjamin had recently begun to assist him), added its voice to the chorus of opponents. Surpri ingly, the clergy by and large supported Mather. The debate was vigorous, raging all that summer and into the fall. Dozens of pam- phlets were written supporting each side of the question. Contro- versy developed into violence: In November, Mather's house was bombed. Despite such fierce opposition, Mather succeeded in inoculating some three hundred people. By the time the epidemic was over, in March of the following year, only six of these had died. Of the five thousand other people who contracted the disease (nearly half ‘of Boston's population), rine hundred had died. The evidence, according to Mather’s figures, was clear: Whether or not inocula tion made much sense to scientists, it worked ‘of interesting points about American life in the early eigh- teenth century. First, it is important to remember that seemingly opposite qualities of the American character often ex isted side by side, A Puritan theologian such as Mather was not necessarily guided only by religious principles. Mather may have been a devout Christian, but he was a practical scientist as well. ‘And what was true of individuals was also true of historical periods. Puritan life was not characterized solely by Bible reading ang witch hunting. Similarly, the period of rationalism that followed the Pu- titan era was not guided solely by the principles of reason. Perhaps more important, Mather's experiment reveals that a practical approach to social change and scientific research was a necessity in America. From the earliest Colonial days, Americans hhad to be tinkerers. The frontier farmer with little access to tools shared a problem with the scientist who had few books and a new world of plants and animals to catalog. They both had to make do with what they had, and they had to get results. European thinkers had the leisure to specialize in nonproductive areas and to study the grand theoretical designs of scientists and philosophers. But Americans had to be generalists, and the evi dence of experience had to come first. As Michel Guillaume Jean de Crévecoeur wrote in his classic Letters from an American Farmer (1782), the American pioneer farmer '‘finds himself suddenly de- prived of the assistance of friends, neighbors, tradesmen, and of all those inferior links which make a well-established society so T: episode of the smallpox controversy illustrates a number An illastration from a book about the Salem witch trials called ‘The Wonders of the Invisible World by Cotton Mather (1693) Rare Books and Manusce [New York Public Library + Divison, An American Pattern: Thought in Action Pe: life was not characterized solely by Bible reading and witch hunting.”” Introduction 67