From time to time, when itching for a snippet of diversion, I’ll head to one of my book cases and scan the spines, searching for something to perk me up. I found myself doing that this afternoon. While skimming along a neglected lower shelf, I zeroed in on a small paperback I hadn’t touched in years. I pulled out that little treasure, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, thumbed it open, and read the first paragraph my eyes found.
In 1736, I lost one of my sons, a fine boy of four years old, by the smallpox taken in the common way. I long regretted bitterly, and still regret, that I had not given it to him by inoculation. This I mention for the sake of parents who omit that operation on the supposition that they should never forgive themselves if a child died under it – my example showing that the regret may be the same either way, and that therefore the safer should be chosen.
Sad History
As I read that sad bit of history, coincidences and questions flew through my thoughts. One coincidence struck dead center, childhood inoculation. Only hours earlier I had read on the front page of the morning’s newspaper a story headlined Pfizer Vaccine Found Safe For Children as Young as 5 (See it here). As I considered that unusual connection, I began to mull over the time frame of Franklin’s account. It mystified me. Something seemed to be off. As I mentionedin one of my recent comments on this site (See it here), I’d learned in medical school of William Jenner’s successful vaccination of an 8-year-old boy using cowpox in the late 18th century to immunize the boy against smallpox, demonstrating that vaccination worked. But Franklin’s son had died over a half century before Jenner’s accomplishment. So what inoculation was he referring to?
Before I get to that, let’s review some basics. Smallpox was (it’s now considered to be totally eradicated (See it here]) a viral disease (Variola major and Variola minor) transmitted mainly through the air to infect the nose, mouth, and lungs of another person, a transmission pathway essentially identical to that of today’s Covid-19. But smallpox was far deadlier than Covid-19, our current virus from Wuhan (See it here). Smallpox killed about a third of the people it infected. It attacked throughout the body, especially the skin. It left many survivors with ugly scars, blindness, and other infirmities.
Risky Method of Prevention
What Ben Franklin was referring to, I’ve just learned, was a risky method of smallpox prevention that had been discovered centuries earlier in China (See it here). This semi-effective method was commonly called variolation (from variola, the smallpox virus). Franklin used the word inoculation for this method, which was accomplished by taking scabs from the skin of an infected person, crumbling and powdering the scabs, and then administering the powder to a healthy individual by inhalation, or by injection.
This approach was far from perfect. It naturally gave the healthy person a case of smallpox. So why do that? Well, the disease contracted by this method was found to be less lethal. The numbers I saw varied, but usually something like 2% and rarely up to 10% of those sickened in this manner died, a significantly better outcome than the 30% death rate of those getting it “the common way.”
Franklin surely knew these odds, thus his regret for not giving his son the disease by inoculation is understandable. It was from this painful awareness, that he offered his advice to parents, those who did not inoculate their children because they would never forgive themselves if their child died from the inoculation. Franklin made clear that the sting of regret may be equal either way, and he therefore recommended that the safer course be chosen.
Now, nearly four centuries after the death of Franklin’s son, as one considers the rare side effects of Covid-19 vaccines, and the almost zero risk of dying from vaccination, along with the evidence demonstrating how effective those vaccines are in preventing the disease, Ben Franklin’s sage advice is multiplied a thousand-fold. Chose the safer course! Get your family vaccinated!
REQUEST TO MY READERS
If you’ve sampled my essays here, you know that I have a loose focus, that I swing from topic to topic as I try to condense my thoughts and entertain readers. If you know of others who might have an interest in what I post here, please spread the word. The more readers I have, the more I’ll produce. Thanks!
Interesting post. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
I’m glad it interested you, Nancy. Since you’ve posted longer, and far more regularly than I, you doubtless know that putting together a post sometimes happily enlightens the writer, as this one did for me.
Hi Ken,
I just finished reading a book by Brad Meltzer called “The First Conspiracy.” It talks about the secret plot to kill George Washington. The book also discusses the threat of smallpox for the founding of the Continental Army. John Adams referred to smallpox as “an enemy more terrible in my imagination, than all others.” Washington worked with local doctors to administer a system to separate contaminated soldiers and quarantine them in a special hospital. He contemplates an inoculation program for the entire army. The British were sending contaminated individuals out of Boston to attempt to contaminate members of the Continental Army, using smallpox as a biological weapon.
Thanks for mentioning Washington’s interest and concern over smallpox, Marty. I ran across some of his story this afternoon but didn’t include it, mainly to keep the post relatively compact. As you point out, our war of independence was another example of how smallpox terrorized us humans for thousands of years. Thankfully, because of the worldwide effort of vaccination against that scourge, smallpox finally was eradicated in 1980, at least according to Wikipedia article I read this afternoon. That amazing accomplishment is another piece of information I wish those holding anti-vaccination views would take time to evaluate with rational minds.
Ken, like you I have been interested in smallpox and the vaccine (the company I worked for manufactured the vaccine). If my memory is correct, Franklin did have his illegitimate son vaccinated, and he lived. However, his natural issue son, a loyalist, was not vaccinated, and he died. I wonder how many people did not receive the vaccine and died. Tragic.
Mason
Thank you for the added information, Mason. I did not know that Franklin had his illegitimate son immunized. You and I, and many others, agree that way too many people have died of Covid because they were unvaccinated. In one of today’s newspapers, I read that Hong Kong recently has been hard hit by the virus, partly because the local press earlier had focused on a few deaths after vaccination, thus eliciting fear and resistance to the vaccine. In the last couple of months, the city has logged over 500,000 cases (a number health officials admit is vastly undercounted due to testing bottlenecks), and at least 2,365 deaths.