10. Births, deaths and inoculations

Benjamin Waterhouse
Oxford, England; Harvard Medical School, 1772

The flyleaves and end papers of Bibles were often used to note the births, deaths, and marriages of family members. But this Bible, belonging to the Waterhouse family, was used to record Benjamin Waterhouse’s cowpox inoculations of his children, Daniel, Benjamin, Mary, and Elizabeth, and two servants, Samuel Carter and Kesiah Flag, during the summer of 1800—these were the first vaccinations for smallpox in North America. According to Waterhouse, all were again exposed to smallpox seven years later and suffered no ill effects “which was done to convince the faithless, and silence the mischievous.”

Benjamin Waterhouse (1754-1846) was one of the first members of the faculty of Harvard Medical School. His reading of Edward Jenner’s discovery that inoculation with cowpox matter could confer immunity to smallpox—a far deadlier disease—inspired him to enter into correspondence with Jenner. The two became friends, and Jenner sent Waterhouse some of his vaccine matter, allowing him to vaccinate members of his family and household.

English. Paper.
Countway Library of Medicine, Rare Books Collection.