Though we’ve suffered waves of contagions during our history, most Americans, because of their age, are experiencing their first deadly epidemic.

Our earliest experience began with European explorers, followed by fishermen who brought smallpox with them in the late-1500s, coming ashore in Maine to establish seasonal fishing stages. The Pilgrims, establishing Plymouth Plantation, moved into an empty Patuket village that had been wiped out by smallpox.

Smallpox originated from a rodent in Africa, 10,000 years before the birth of Christ. It thrives on unsanitary conditions and poor hygiene — including the lack of washing the hands. Its initial symptoms were high fever, chills, rashes, wheezing coughs, and severe back and stomach pain. Later, the rashes became fluid-filled blisters or open sores filled with pus. The victims were racked by excruciating vomiting and diarrhea. Like COVID-19, smallpox crippled the victim’s immune system.

Smallpox was spread by airborne respiratory droplets, direct contact with pus sores, or the victim’s contaminated clothing or bedding. It was continually being brought into the country by ships plying the Caribbean’s lucrative West Indies Trade and by infected slaves forcefully transported from Africa.

In 1721, Boston was stricken by a major smallpox epidemic. Stores were shut and the harbor, the city’s economy, was ordered closed. Social distancing and sheltering at home were practiced. The infected were forcefully quarantined. Many residents escaped the city in their carriages, causing “community transmission” and deaths in the once “safer” towns surrounding Boston. Sound familiar?

Infected people retreated to a Pest House, bringing their food and bedding, so they could be tended by people who were immune to new infections. It was their earlier version of an ICU, except you slept on a filthy, pus-covered floor.

It was a nasty business with a high mortality rate, so there was usually a nearby cemetery where the dead were often buried without clergy, family, or friends present. The speckled monster left the lucky survivors with disfiguring scars, predominantly facial, but they now were immune to new smallpox infections.

Enter the Rev. Cotton Mather of the 1690s Salem Witch Trials. Mather’s strong ties with the English medical and scientific communities led to his interest in the new practice of inoculation. He and a Boston doctor decided to deliberately infect a control group with a milder case of smallpox. Their decision polarized the city.

The antis, led by the Puritan clergy, called it “satinical,” contrary to their predestination beliefs, thus making it a sin to interfere with God’s plan. Passions ran so high, a bomb was thrown into Mather’s home, but it failed to explode.

The number of smallpox-infected locals was 6,000 of the city’s 11,000 residents. The death count ranged between 850 and 1,000. (The COVID death rate, Aug. 11, for Massachusetts is 8,769 total deaths). The death rate for Mather’s group was a little over 2 percent, while the non-inoculated, infected group was 14 percent. The medical and scientific communities on both sides of the Atlantic took note of Mather’s experiment.

George Washington’s first contact with smallpox came in 1751, when he and his older brother Laurence went to Barbados. Nineteen-year old George was infected and was abed for a month, clinging to life. His recovery left him with facial scars and a first-hand experience with the severity of the disease. The what-ifs of a different outcome if George had lost that struggle was that we would have lost our Revolutionary War commander, the President of the Constitutional Convention, and our first President of the United States.

When Gen. Washington arrived in 1775 Boston, smallpox was already nipping at his militia army. Washington believed the Americans had the opportunity to seize unprotected Canada. One army successfully captured Montreal while the second force, led by Benedict Arnold, invaded Canada through the Maine wilderness.

A hurricane, floods, and starvation dogged Arnold’s ragged army and when they neared Quebec, 900 of his men were put in hospital with smallpox. The smallpox, a desperate attack during a raging blizzard and Arnold’s wounding caused their defeat. When Arnold retreated, they had to leave the smallpox soldiers behind. Military historians believe that if smallpox hadn’t ravaged Arnold’s army, Canada would be American today.

During the eight-year long war, Washington’s army was at a disease disadvantage. Most British soldiers had smallpox as children, making them immune and giving them what Dr. Fauci calls “herd protection.” Washington’s strategy was to keep just out of the reach of the British, pick his fights, hit them, and then retreat to survive another day. The British called Washington the fox and they were the hounds who were going to finish him off.

The retreating American army, bogged down by hundreds of smallpox causalities, risked being annihilated. Smallpox was going to win the war for the British, unless he acted. His plan—containment by quarantine and inoculate his army. Disobeying the Congress, he ordered the army’s doctors in Philadelphia not to accept any new recruits unless they had the smallpox scars or agreed to immediate inoculation and quarantine for a month.

When Washington’s army went into Winter Quarters at Morristown, his non-inoculated veterans were separated out and confined to barracks. At bayonet point, they were forced to submit to variolation.

An army doctor made an incision, then packed it with thread, drenched in smallpox pus from a mild case, and sewed it up. The soldiers were put into a month-long quarantine. Five to 10 percent of them died. If anyone attempted escape, the soldiers guarding them had been ordered to shoot them.

Twenty-one years after a Virginia teenager experienced his life-or-death rendezvous with smallpox, his army emerged from winter quarters fully vaccinated, fitter, and more nimble for evading British capture. Washington’s earlier near death encounter with its possible what-if consequences for our country, would lead to a rabble in arms defeating the world’s biggest super power.

Two decades later, scientist Edward Jenner observed that milkmaids appeared to be immune from smallpox. His 1796 experiments with cowpox led to the successful smallpox vaccine. The last natural outbreak of smallpox in the U.S. occurred in 1949. Through world-wide immunization efforts, the World Health Organization in 1980 announced the extinction of smallpox.

History has proven that with the what-ifs epidemics have brought in their wake, the destinies of countries can be easily changed. We don’t yet know what COVID-19’s consequences will mean for our future

Today, as our medical front-liners and scientists struggle against the beast, COVID-19, our hope is that medical history and a vaccine will repeat itself.

Tom Murphy is a former history teacher and state representative. He can be reached at tsmurphy@myfairpoint.net.

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