I’ve written before about the scourge of smallpox and the potential risks and rewards of getting inoculated against it in colonial Maryland. Annapolis’s weekly newspaper, the Maryland Gazette, reported any local or regional outbreaks of the disease, seeking to keep readers informed without fueling rumors or panic, and public letter authors presented their arguments for or against mass inoculation.
The May 14, 1772 paper sought to put to rest a false report “spread about the Country, that the Small-Pox is now in this City, which has prevented many Persons, from coming, where Business call them, to the Metropolis.” Such public health rumors were bad for Annapolis’s economic health, so “in order to remove any groundless Apprehensions of the Sort, we can assure the Publick the City is entirely clear of that Disorder.” Yes, there was one “Person who came down from Baltimore Town, and was taken with it here,” but he or she had promptly “been removed on the first Appearance of an Eruption.”
The following week’s Gazette once again assured “the Publick, that the Town is entirely free from the Small Pox.” The managers of the Annapolis lottery to raise money for City Dock improvements could go ahead with their upcoming meeting at the Coffee-House without fear of contracting the disease.
Some colonial physicians scheduled group inoculations so patients could suffer and recover together without putting others in danger. If all went as advertised, each quarantined patient came down with a mild localized case of smallpox, fought off the infection through several unpleasant days, and ultimately returned home in a few weeks with immunity from future illness.
Of course, everything didn’t always go to plan. Some inoculated individuals contracted a more serious case of the disease, which could cause extensive scarring, blindness, or even death. Sometimes lax quarantine procedures allowed the disease to spread outside of an inoculated group into the general unprotected population. That might explain the case of the “Person who came down from Baltimore Town, and was taken with it here” in Annapolis.
The June 11, 1772 Maryland Gazette included a letter by Bob Hint (I suspect that was a pseudonym rather than the writer’s real name), criticizing “the present Practice of Inoculation” in Baltimore, where “a Number most sensibly suffer for the profit of a few” doctors who made money charging for the procedure. Hint warned that should justifiable “Murmurs excited by palpable Injury” be disregarded and reasonable, peaceful “Means of Redress” be ignored, “there is Danger of such, as tend to Disorder and Violence.”
The writer recalled the “Animosity…that disjointed the Town of Norfolk in Virginia,” where, in 1768, anti-inoculation rioters smashed windows and threw rocks at the buildings where quarantined patients recovered. In response to the civic unrest, Virginia’s government passed a law in 1770 to regulate smallpox inoculations in the colony. As a result, Baltimorean Bob Hint feared, his own “Town is become the hospital of Virginia.” Mass inoculations were at the root of all sorts of problems, according to Hint:
Strangers appear in our Streets with the Small-Pox upon them; the Dread of catching the Distemper deters the People from supplying our Market; hence the extravagant Rates of Provision [Hmmm…do supply chain issues and inflation triggered in part by public health concerns sound familiar?]. It hinders the Attendance of Justices, Jurymen, and Witnesses; hence the Course of Justice is stopped, all Police is banished, Delinquents are unpunished, the committing of Offenses encouraged, Injuries remain without Reparation, and Debts without Satisfaction; and to what Degree our Trade may be affected is an alarming Reflection to more than the Inhabitants of the Town.
Hint closed his letter with an earnest recommendation for “a little serious Reflection: For it is not to be imagined that the just Interests of a great Number of People will be tamely sacrificed to the unfair Profit of a very few Individuals.”
Two weeks later, on June 25, “A Friend to Society” pulled no punches in answering this denunciation of smallpox inoculations, writing “that every Word which the said Bob Hint has advanced is a d—n’d Lie, which, I flatter myself, is sufficient Proof to every Gentleman of an unprejudiced Understanding, without going in further Particulars.” The writer then proceeded to go into further particulars.
In addition to continuing smallpox inoculations in Baltimore, the author proposed “that a large and convenient Aedifice be erected in the said Town, as an Hospital or Plague House, for the use of the whole Continent.” So “noble a Project” would undoubtedly be embraced by “the leading patriotic Members in the Assembly,” who “would exert themselves to procure it an effectual parliamentary Sanction.” Preparing for the arrival of any new contagion on the North American continent would “not only be a Means of saving the Lives of Thousands, but will bring into Baltimore-Town per Year twice as much ready Money as the annual Exportation of Wheat from thence.”
Making Baltimore a leader in life-saving public health measures would inspire a “prodigious Conflux of good Company, which will be drawn thither, by the Completion of my Scheme" and “in the End prove a Mine of inexhaustible Riches.” The writer suggested “that it would be the greatest Wisdom, even to select a Number of Apartments for the Purpose of making Experiments on the whole Tribe of contagious Diseases, such as Jail Fever, Flux, &c. &c. which will in the first Place be the likeliest Method of facilitating a thorough Knowledge of their specific Natures, as well as a Discovery of Medicines adapted to their respective Malignancies." As long as shiploads of sickly convict servants continued to arrive in Baltimore, there would never be any shortage of “Subjects for these useful Investigations” into “the Secrets of Nature.”
“A Friend to Society” closed with the assertion “that I have not only supported all my Allegations, but imposed eternal Silence on that frivolous Calumniator Bob Hint, by the Force of my irrefragable Arguments.” Yet despite the writer’s confidence in the strength of the pro-inoculation argument, others continued to question the practice in colonial Maryland.
You can access the May and June, 1772 issues of the Maryland Gazette referenced in the article through this Maryland State Archives webpage: https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc4800/sc4872/001282/html/index.html
Glenn E. Campbell
HA Senior Historian
