But that George understood that leaders had to lead.
In the early years of the American Revolution, George Washington faced an invisible killer that he had once battled as a teenager. While the earlier fight had threatened only his life, at stake in this confrontation were thousands, including military and civilian alike, the continued viability of Washington’s army, and the success of the war for independence from Britain.
He also understood that a husband should not neglect a wife.
After Washington left Mount Vernon in 1775, he would not return again for over six years. Every year, during the long winter months when the fighting was at a standstill, the General asked Martha to join him at his winter encampment.
Nor would a good husband ask his dearly beloved to risk her life to the invisible killer.
…the most successful way of combating smallpox before the discovery of vaccination [1798] was inoculation. The word is derived from the Latin inoculare, meaning “to graft.” Inoculation referred to the subcutaneous instillation of smallpox virus into nonimmune individuals. The inoculator usually used a lancet wet with fresh matter taken from a ripe pustule of some person who suffered from smallpox. The material was then subcutaneously introduced on the arms or legs of the nonimmune person. The terms inoculation and variolation were often used interchangeably. The practice of inoculation seems to have arisen independently when people in several countries were faced with the threat of an epidemic.
Primitive in the understanding of the science and in its medical application. Not without treatment side effects either. A period of illness and convalescence. Approximately one in a thousand died from the inoculation. By modern standards that’s a high percentage, but we don’t face the risk of easily communicable diseases with a 30-35% fatality rate.
Before she could make the first trip, however, Martha had to undergo her own ordeal. …She had to be inoculated for smallpox. …Martha could then travel to the soldiers’ camp without fear of contracting the disease or transmitting it to others.
If it was good enough for General Washington’s wife:
…Washington eventually instituted a system where new recruits would be inoculated with smallpox immediately upon enlistment. As a result soldiers would contract the milder form of the disease at the same time that they were being outfitted with uniforms and weapons. Soldiers would consequently be completely healed, inoculated, and supplied by the time they left to join the army.
There would have been no place for today’s teabagger “freedom” warriors and hippie-dippy, all-natural fetishists in the Continental Army. Those types were probably as obnoxious and dangerous to the well-being of others then as they are today.
The last naturally occurring case of smallpox (Variola minor) [in the world] was diagnosed on 26 October 1977.
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The global eradication of smallpox was certified, based on intense verification activities in countries, by a commission of eminent scientists on 9 December 1979 and subsequently endorsed by the World Health Assembly on 8 May 1980.
Routine smallpox vaccination among the American public stopped in 1972 after the disease was eradicated in the United States. Until recently, the U.S. government provided the vaccine only to a few hundred scientists and medical professionals working with smallpox and similar viruses in a research setting.
Thanks to all the scientists, pioneers, and leaders. Real leaders and not the large number of poseurs that now prance around the US national stage.
And thanks to Justices John Marshall Harlan, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Melville Fuller, Henry Brown, and Joseph McKenna (a pox on Rufus Peckham and David Brewer) for the 1905 decision in Jacobson v. Massachusetts.
The Revised Laws of that commonwealth, chap. 75, 137, provide that ‘the board of health of a city or town, if, in its opinion, it is necessary for the public health or safety, shall require and enforce the vaccination and revaccination of all the inhabitants thereof, and shall provide them with the means of free vaccination. Whoever, being over twenty-one years of age and not under guardianship, refuses or neglects to comply with such requirement shall forfeit $5.’
An exception is made in favor of ‘children who present a certificate, signed by a registered physician, that they are unfit subjects for vaccination.’
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…But the liberty secured by the Constitution of the United States to every person within its jurisdiction does not import an absolute right in each person to be, at all times and in all circumstances, wholly freed from restraint. There are manifold restraints to which every person is necessarily subject for the common good. On any other basis organized society could not exist with safety to its members. …
Did public officials and most Americans accept the need for good publc health policies better 110 years ago than they do today? I suspect they did.
