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Black Kos, Week In Review - The African American who introduced inoculations to the Western World [1]

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Date: 2025-02-21

Onesimus (late 1600s–1700s) was a black man instrumental in the mitigation of a major 1721 smallpox outbreak in Boston, Massachusetts . Onesimus birth name is unknown. He was at some point enslaved and given in 1706 to a New England Puritan minister named Cotton Mather , who renamed Onesimus. Mather was the Puritan minister of Boston’s North Church (he was also a prominent figure in the Salem Witch Trials ). Mather renamed his slave after a first-century slave mentioned in the Bible . The name, "Onesimus" means useful, helpful, or profitable.

Fears and misinformation surrounding inoculation and vaccination are old themes in American culture. One piece of information lost to history that helps counter this disinformation campaign is that the principles of inoculation were first introduced to the Western world by a enslaved black African in Boston Massachusetts. But then just as now fear, racism, and religious bias lead to inoculation’s widespread rejection in the 1700s just as with the modern antivaxxer campaigns.

I first heard of Onesimus growing up near Boston, but I didn’t know much about him other than he was part of the local black folklore. It was only years later watching PBS that I learned more about him. I was recently think that maybe he should be promoted as an antidote to many antivaxxers who have wormed their way into black cultural spaces.

Little is known of Onesimus early life as he was just one of the millions of Africans kidnapped from West Africa, and forced into a perilous transatlantic slave trade. Yet from these terrible beginnings Onesimus changed the course of history by spurring the first recorded use of inoculation in the New World. Onesimus’ knowledge helped pave the way for the development of the first vaccines 75 years later.

In 1721 a terrifying news swept colonial Massachusetts, Smallpox had arrived in Boston and was spreading rapidly. The first victims, passengers on a ship from the Caribbean, were shut in a house identified only by a red flag reading “God have mercy on this house.” Meanwhile, hundreds of residents of the bustling colonial town started to flee for their lives, terrified of exposing themselves to the deadly disease.

The colony’s fear was palpable as the smallpox virus was extremely contagious, quickly spreading into large epidemics. Smallpox’s victims experienced fever, fatigue and a crusty rash that could leave disfiguring scars. In up to 30 percent of cases, the victims perished.

But this smallpox epidemic of 1721 would be different. As the virus swept the city, killing hundreds, Onesimus suggested a way to keep people from getting infected. In this time before modern medical treatment or a robust understanding of infectious disease, Onesimus was one of the few people in the city with the knowledge to slow the outbreak. Intrigued by Onesimus’ methods, a brave doctor and an outspoken minister undertook a bold experiment to try to stop the smallpox plague.

At first Cotton Mather didn’t trust Onesimus: he wrote about having to watch him carefully due to what he thought was “thievish” behavior, and recorded in his diary that he was “wicked” and “useless.” But in 1716, Onesimus told him something he did believe: That he knew how to prevent smallpox.

Cotton Mather

Onesimus, who “is a pretty intelligent fellow,” Mather wrote, told him he had had smallpox, and then hadn’t. Onesimus said that he “had undergone an operation, which had given him something of the smallpox and would forever preserve him from it...and whoever had the courage to use it was forever free of the fear of contagion.”

Onesimus introduced Mather to the principles and procedures of inoculation to prevent disease. By doing this he laid the foundation for the modern development of vaccines. After a smallpox outbreak began in Boston in 1721, Mather used this knowledge to advocate for inoculation in the population, a practice that eventually spread to other colonies.

Although Onesimus's name at birth and place of birth are not unknown, Mather referred to the ethnicity of Onesimus as "Guaramantee", which may refer to the Coromantee (the Akan people of modern Ghana). Mather described Onesimus as highly intelligent and educated him in reading and writing with the Mather family (for context, according to biographer Kathryn Koo, at that time literacy was primarily associated with religious instruction, and writing as means of note-taking and conducting business).

In 1716 Onesimus described to Mather the process of inoculation that had been performed on him and others in his African society (as Mather later reported in a letter): "People take Juice of Small-Pox; and Cut the Skin, and put in a drop." In the book, African Medical Knowledge, the Plain Style, and Satire in the 1721 Boston Inoculation Controversy, Kelly Wisecup wrote that Onesimus is believed to have been inoculated at some point before being sold into slavery or during the slave trade, as he most likely traveled from the Caribbean to Boston. The process he described, variolation method of inoculation was long practiced in Africa among sub-Saharan people. The practice was widespread among enslaved people from many regions of Africa and, throughout the slave trade in the Americas.

The operation Onesimus referred to consisted of rubbing pus from an infected person into an open wound on the arm. Once the infected material was introduced into the body, the person who underwent the procedure was inoculated against smallpox. It wasn’t a vaccination, which involves exposure to a less dangerous virus to provoke immunity. But it did activate the recipient’s immune response and protected against the disease most of the time.

Mather was fascinated. He verified Onesimus’ story with that of other enslaved people, and learned that the practice had been used in Turkey and China. He became an evangelist for inoculation, also known as variolation, and spread the word throughout Massachusetts and elsewhere in the hopes it would help prevent smallpox.

Mather believed Onesimus's medicinal advice because, as he wrote, "inferiority had not yet been indelibly written onto the bodies of Africans." Additionally, Mather believed that disease, specifically smallpox, was a spiritual and physical punishment, so he saw a cure as "God's providential gift", as well as a means of receiving recognition from New England society and reestablishing the influence of religious figures in politics. But when Boston experienced that smallpox outbreak in 1721, Mather promoted inoculation as protection against it. He cited Onesimus’ African folk medicine as the source of the procedure.

But Mather hadn’t bargained on how unpopular Onesimus's idea would be. The same prejudices that caused him to distrust his servant made other white colonists reluctant to undergo a medical procedure developed by Black people. His advocacy for inoculation met resistance from those suspicious of African medicine. Doctors, ministers, laymen, and Boston city officials argued that the practice of inoculating healthy individuals would spread the disease and that it was immoral to interfere with the working of divine providence

Mather “was vilified,” historian Ted Widmer wrote that “A local newspaper, called The New England Courant, ridiculed him. An explosive device was thrown through his windows with an angry note. There was an ugly racial element to the anger.” Religion also contributed: Other preachers argued that it was against God’s will to expose his creatures to dangerous diseases.

Mather was also publicly ridiculed for relying on the testimony of a slave. It was a commonly fear during colonial times that enslaved Africans would attempt to overthrow of white society. Because of this fear the medicinal wisdom of Onesimus was severely mistrusted and assumed to be a plot to poison white citizens. The fact that the Massachusetts colony had passed The Acts and Resolves which included race-based punishments and codes to prevent slave or servant uprisings was an illustration of a society highly skeptical of African medicine.

But in 1721 Zabdiel Boylston, the only physician in Boston who supported the technique, got their chance to test the power of inoculation. Boylston using Mather’s notes carried out the method Onesimus had described. Boylston stuck a needle into a pustule from an infected person's body and scraping the infected needle across a healthy person's skin. Dr. Boylston inoculated his own six-year-old son and two of his slaves. A total of 280 individuals were inoculated during the 1721-22 Boston smallpox epidemic.

Zabdiel Boylston

Smallpox was one of the era’s deadliest afflictions. “Few diseases at this time were as universal or fatal,” notes historian Susan Pryor. The colonists saw its effects not just among their own countrymen, but among the Native Americans to whom they introduced the disease. Smallpox destroyed Native communities that, with no immunity, were unable to fight off the virus.

But the population of 280 inoculated patients experienced only six deaths (approx. 2.2 percent), compared to 844 deaths among the 5,889 non-inoculated smallpox patients (approx. 14.3 percent). It wasn’t a cure but yielded hope against future epidemics. Onesimus technique also helped set the stage for vaccination. In 1796, Edward Jenner developed an effective vaccine that used cowpox to provoke smallpox immunity.

An inscription on his tomb incorrectly identifies Boylston as the "first" to have introduced the practice of inoculation into America. Recognition for Onesimus contribution to medical science came slowly. But by 2016 he was placed among the 100 Best Bostonians of All Time in a Boston magazine survey. Historian Ted Widmer of CUNY New York noted that “Onesimus reversed many of [the colonists’] traditional racial assumptions... [h]e had a lot more knowledge medically than most of the Europeans in Boston at that time.

Onesimus earned enough independent wages support a household for himself and his wife met while serving the Mather family. It is unclear whether his wife was a free woman. They had two children, both of whom died before they were ten years old. His son, Onesimulus, died in 1714.[Katy, his second child, died due to consumption. After their deaths, Mather attempted to convert Onesimus to Christianity, overtures Onesimus rejected. Mather saw his inability to convert his slave as his failure as a Puritan evangelist and head of his household, as Onesimus’ refusal was supposed to bring God's displeasure on the Mather family. Onesimus’ refusal to convert led to Mather's unhappiness with his presence in the household. Mather's diary reports "stubborn behavior" from Onesimus following the death of his children.

In 1716, Onesimus attempted to buy his freedom from Mather, raising funds to "purchase" another enslaved man, named Obadiah, to take his place. But Mather placed conditions on Onesimus release, requiring that he remain available to perform work in the Mather household at their command and return five pounds that Mather claimed that Onesimus had stolen from him.. Historians at first attributed Onesimus’ release to Mather’s distrust after the alleged theft, but Mather's diaries better support Mather's inability to convert Onesimus as his primary motivation to allowing Onesimus to purchase his freedom.

In 1980, the World Health Organization declared smallpox entirely eradicated due to the spread of immunization worldwide. It remains the only infectious disease to have been entirely wiped out.

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