Onesimus: The Real History of Vaccinations
Hi mamas and daddies! Given the negative impact of racism on the health of people of color, black people specifically, there is a consistent hesitancy and, in some cases, refusal toward vaccinations to immunize our children against communicable diseases. This reluctance, in part, is due to the belief that scientific processes like vaccinating for the purpose of immunizing were established without our consideration or input, and therefore are likely to be detrimental to our well-being.
The truth is our people have contributed to so many revolutionary medical discoveries. These medical discoveries even include methods that lead to the development of processes of immunization. Today, we take a look at Onesimus (oh-nis-see-mus) an enslaved African of colonial Boston who would introduce the concept that would set the stage for the practice of vaccinating for immunization today. So, let’s go there.
“Onesimus” was a man of African descent believed to have been born in the last 17th century. It is not clear, but he may have been a member of the Berber people of South Libya, or the Coromantee people, or also as present-day Akan people of coastal areas of Ghana.
In December 1706, “Onesimus” meaning “profitable,” was purchased and gifted as a slave by the congregation of Boston's Old North Church to their pastor and Onesimus’ slave master, Cotton Mather; yeah, I know, let that sink in. Mather named him after a slave mentioned in the Bible, in Colossians and Philemon.
During his early days with Onesimus, Mather asked him if he had ever been infected with smallpox. At the time, smallpox was the most common communicable disease during the 18th century, and one of the measures of a slave’s value during that time was their resistance- or immunity- to smallpox.
Mathers would learn of the ancient non-European practice of preventing disease in non-infected people. Onesimus explained how the pus of a smallpox lesion taken from an infected person would be rubbed into an open wound of a non-infected person. Once the non-infected person healed, they were forever immune from smallpox. This process was known as variolation, named after the bacteria that cause smallpox “variola,” and it was an early form of vaccinating for the purpose of immunity.
Fifteen years later in April 1721, a British ship carrying a sailor infected with smallpox would trigger colonial Boston’s second small-pox outbreak since 1703. Mather would use the outbreak as a platform to promote Onesimus’ knowledge and urge city physicians to perform the procedure in order to save lives.
Triggering what is considered the start of the “anti-vaccine” sentiment, he was met with resistance by a majority of Boston’s health community, except for one doctor named Zabdiel Bolyston.
Bolyston, an enslaver himself, tested the technique on his son and two humans that he enslaved in order to test its effectiveness. He was jailed and accused of spreading the disease.
The criticism of Mather’s borrowed knowledge about the inoculation technique was rooted in racist ideology. Bostonian “Anti-Vaccine” promoters considered inoculation as an African “heathen practice” and to inoculate would “defile their bodies with African heathenisms.”
Bolyston would go on to inoculate 248 of the 11,000 residents in Boston, and only 6 died which was a death rate of 1 in 40, as opposed to a mortality rate of 1 in 7 at the end of the pandemic. Edward Jenner developed the vaccine for small-pox which was safer than person-to-person inoculation.
Mather is credited by many as the “father of pro-vaccination.” But Onesimus’ knowledge as the catalyst to Mather’s notoriety is usually left out of that discussion. Little is known about Onesimus, other than he bought his freedom from Mather in 1716 just before the Boston pandemic, replacing himself with another enslaved person. His story is important to Black people as it offers the truth about our ancestral, innovative impact on health and science, specifically the original science behind vaccinations and immunizations.
References
Baraka, C. (2020, May, 10). Onesimus: The African slave who taught America how to vaccinate itself from smallpox. QuartzAfrica. https://qz.com/africa/1854780/an-african-slave-taught-america-to-vaccinate-from-smallpox/
Boylston A. (2012). The origins of inoculation. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 105(7), 309–313. https://doi.org/10.1258/jrsm.2012.12k044
Buhr, Shawn (2000) "To Inoculate or Not to Inoculate?: The Debate and the Smallpox Epidemic of Boston in 1721," Constructing the Past: Vol. 1 : Iss. 1 , Article 8. Available at: https://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/constructing/vol1/iss1/8. Retrieved March 27, 2021.
Gill, Joel. (2021, February, 12). The story of vaccines in America starts with an enslaved African man: How Onesimus introduced inoculation to America, saving hundreds of lives during the smallpox epidemic. https://www.vox.com/identities/22278747/vaccine-who-invented-small-pox-onesimus-edward-jenner
Wisecup, K. (2013). Medical Encounters: Knowledge and Identity in Early American Literatures. University of Massachusetts Press. Retrieved March 29, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt5vkb14.
EducatedCamel [@educatedcamel]. (2020, August, 31). SmallPox: A brief history of “the speckled monster.” [Photograph]. Instagram. https://www.instagram.com/p/CEkiD-WF-qY/
