The Fever of 1721: The Epidemic That Revolutionized Medicine and American Politics

In general, I felt like Coss was writing two different books which only barely intersected and did not have the cause and effect aspect he proposes. The revolutionary aspect of this smallpox epidemic was that inoculation was used and there was a large battle about whether it was safe or efficacious. The practice was banned despite more success than failure. The idea for inoculation came from African and Asian sources, and the doctor practicing it mostly succeeded (those who died after inoculation were generally the elderly, the weak, and those who had already contracted smallpox prior to being inoculated).

The politics come in due to the battles between the Boston city council and British crown representatives, and the changing of the show more giving way of the Puritan powers. Also, Benjamin Franklin was working in his brother's printing shop in Boston in this period and had some anonymous editorials published. Coss states that the American Revolution started here, and that Boston was in revolt against the tyrannies of the crown, but I feel this is a pretty big stretch.

Stating that this epidemic radicalized Franklin also seems semi-ridiculous to me. His involvement with the inoculation battle came in his brother printing anti-inoculation articles (and other political items subject to censorship and arrest) solely because Cotton Mather (yes, that one) was a force in suggesting and supporting inoculation. So Franklin was radicalized by his brother unfairly vilifying someone based on personal feelings? Okay...

The two stories are interesting, but tacking them together and attempting to turn them into something extra sensational didn't serve either story well. The history of inoculation is really interesting on its own and doesn't need to be dressed up. Likewise the history of early pushbacks against Crown power in the US is plenty interesting (but since it's mostly about personal gains and losses of a few leading figures I think it's unfair to say the Boston city council was revolutionary).

Not recommended. show less

Health is always political

The Fever of 1721: The Epidemic That Revolutionized Medicine and American Politics by Stephen Coss (Simon & Schuster, $28).

If you think vaccinations cause controversy now, you should have seen how wigged out people got over inoculations in the Colonial Period—when they still wore wigs—in this new history of the 1721 smallpox outbreak in Boston.

While the conclusions are a bit forced–he doesn’t make the case for “revolution,” but given the time period under consideration, it was probably hard to resist using that word–Stephen Coss’s The Fever of 1721: The Epidemic That Revolutionized Medicine and American Politics is a fascinating story.

Imagine the sort of superstitious panic that cable news can show more make from something like Ebola or Zika, and then quadruple it. If anything, this narrative is proof positive that while technology changes, people don’t: infected passengers escaped quarantine and spread the disease they were trying to avoid; public controversy over the use of inoculation as a preventative measure caused disruption to the community; and media mogul James Franklin (Benjamin’s big brother) made outrageous use of public angst to increase circulation of his newspaper.

All one needs to do is remember the parade of proud science-deniers and their unvaccinated children in the California statehouse a year ago to understand that the more we change, the more we stay the same.

Reviewed on Lit/Rant: www.litrant.tumblr.com show less

This is a fascinating snapshot of New England society during the early 1700s. While the book's central point is the smallpox epidemic and eventual inoculation, the focus is not at all that narrow. Within and surrounding this topic, we explore relationships, politics, medical care, and religion.

The writing is clear and concise, and the content exceptionally well researched. I found the author's style thoroughly engaging. It's not at all a dry, textbook kind of read. Instead, I felt like I was immersed in the era, meeting the people, experiencing the terror of the epidemic and the fear of the unknown. Having grown up minutes from where much of this took place, I was surprised at how little detail I knew. We learn a bunch of dates and show more facts in history classes, but rarely the full, human story. And this is a remarkable, human story.

*I received an advance ebook copy from the publisher, via NetGalley, in exchange for my honest review.* show less

I went back and listened to the introduction and the prologue after I finished the book and it brought it together for me as I felt this book was interesting but the author tended to go off on tangents.
I have a theory of why this may have happened. It sounded to me that the author did extensive research of the newspapers of the period for his story. It seemed that when he did he got interested in other stories in the paper and wanted to fit them all in even though many didn't really tie coherently into his story lines. The lines being the politics of the time, the development of the smallpox inoculation, and rise of independent newspapers. It sometimes seemed like he was reading you the daily papers.
I rank the information covered show more very high but my ranking also reflects the poor transitions and extraneous information included that didn't hold my attention. It was definitely an interesting time in history and I think the story could have been told in a way that would better hold one's interest. show less

A lively tale of the 1721 smallpox epidemic in Boston. During this epidemic Ben Franklin got his start as a newspaperman and Cotton Mather pursued the cause of science and becomes a member of the Royal Society. A useful reminder that Boston was an uppity pain to Great Britain a good 50 years before the Tea Party and Massacre. The story also reminds us that nutters were attacking people because of what they had read about them then as now.

A lengthy epilogue probably exaggerates the importance of some of the events, but is nonetheless interesting.

Probably the most important character in the book is not Boylston, the doctor who inoculated roughly 100 Bostonians, or the governor of Massachusetts, but James Franklin, the publisher of the show more newspaper "The Boston Courant", and Ben Franklin's older and more alcoholic brother.

James Franklin's anti-Harvard diatribes (he called just about everybody associated with Harvard a bunch of stuck-up plagiarists) are kind of on the ball today.

The Puritan vs. Anglican battle was pretty funny.

It is alway nice to be reminded that a good many Protestants considered the celebration of Christmas to be a form of idolatry.

The reader went in for a few mispronunciations, the most irritating being reading "ye" as "ye" instead of "the". show less

I received a free advanced readers copy of this audiobook through the Library Thing Early Reviewers program in exchange for an honest review.

1721 is a pivotal year in Boston history. Coss details how a popular party of elected representatives challenge the rule of the Royal Governor establishing the ideology and some of the organizations that would be used by the Revolutionary generation 50 years later. At the same time, The New England Courant is launched as the first colonial newspaper completely independent of the government's imprimatur and challenges the political and religious leaders of the time. Tying them together is an epidemic of smallpox and the effort of some learned people in the town to try to fight it using a new idea, show more inoculation.

There are five pivotal figures in this book:

• Elisha Cooke, Jr., the popular party politician whose election as Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representative leads to a showdown with Royal Governor Samuel Shute, who dissolves the House and calls for new elections.


• James Franklin, publisher of The New England Courant, who publishes opinions that scandalize the established elites and religious leaders of the colony, while also aiming for a more entertaining and literary journalism than offered by the two existing newspapers. While generally on the side of reason against tradition and superstition, Franklin's Courant comes out strongly against inoculation.


• Benjamin Franklin, James' much younger brother and apprentice who educates himself with materials at the print shop and makes his first impression by anonymously submitting the Courant's most popular opinion pieces under the pseudonym of Silence Dogood. Franklin, of course, is a direct connection to the Revolutionary period of the 1760s & 1770s.


• Cotton Mather, the conservative Puritan preacher and theologian, seeking redemption for his part in the Salem Witch hysteria. Surprisingly he is also a man of science who initiates the call to attempt inoculation against small pox which he learns of from his African slave Onesimus and the writings of physicians in Europe.


• Dr. Zabdiel Boylston, a middling physician who answers the call to attempt inoculation and continues to do so despite strong opposition in the town and threats to his life. Boylston ends up successfully inoculating nearly 250 people for smallpox despite being a provincial doctor with no formal training and doing so before anyone in Britain had attempted to do so.

While I was familiar with a lot of the aspects of this history, I found it fascinating how Coss tied them together and showed how they influenced one another and lasting impact on Boston and Colonial America. It's a fascinating and engaging historical work. show less

The Fever of 1721 should be about the smallpox epidemic of 1721, and it is, but it also draws on other subjects such as freedom of the press when newspapers were just starting out, piracy, colonial politics with the crown, early biography of Ben Franklin and the printing press, Cotton Mather. It's not what I expected, but it's hard to complain when I kept learning new things. Coss brings it alive through the judicial use of period language. This is a Club Sandwich of a book, however if you already know many of the incidents it may not hold together as a whole.