Exactly 300 years ago, in 1721, Benjamin Franklin and his fellow American colonists faced a deadly smallpox outbreak. Their varying responses constitute an eerily prescient object lesson for today's ...

Log-in to bookmark & organize content - it's free! Author Andrew Wehrman answers questions related to his talk about how inoculation became a sought-after medical procedure in the 18th century and ...

Dr. Benjamin Franklin became a passionate advocate for smallpox inoculation after his son died of the disease in 1736. The great scourge of Thomas Jefferson’s era (1743-1826) was smallpox. Historians ...

WITH the world’s attention on vaccines, now feels like a good moment to sing the praises of an often forgotten contributor to their development. Three hundred years ago this month, Lady Mary Wortley ...

Around 3 a.m. one November morning in 1721, a bomb crashed through the window of Cotton Mather’s Boston home. It had been hurled with such force that the fuse fell off, and it failed to detonate.