Thomas Jefferson and smallpox vaccination over 200 years ago! Before the testing, testing, testing, testing... And he still lived to become President.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
Autograph Letter Signed : Monticello, Virginia, to Benjamin Waterhouse, Cambridge, Massachusetts, August 21, 1801
countway.med.harvard.edu
After successfully vaccinating his son, Daniel, against smallpox, Benjamin Waterhouse sent a copy of his pamphlet A Prospect of Exterminating the Small-Pox (1800) to Thomas Jefferson, then Vice-President of the United States. Jefferson was keenly interested in Waterhouse’s work, responding that "Every friend of humanity must look with pleasure on this discovery, by which one more evil is withdrawn from the condition of man…. In this line of proceeding you deserve well of your country." Benjamin Waterhouse and Thomas Jefferson then corresponded on the subject for a number of months.
As this letter from 1801 testifies, some vaccine matter from Waterhouse was used by Jefferson in experiments with members of his family and household at Monticello. The President then promoted the use of smallpox innoculation in other cities of Virginia, gave some of his vaccine to Dr. John Redman Coxe to begin work in Philadelphia, and even sent some sample matter with explorers Lewis and Clark to encourage the spread of vaccination throughout the country.
Gift of Mary Ware Sampson and Margaret Thayer Lancaster to the Harvard Medical Library, 1941
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geocities.com
Thomas Jefferson - Lawyer
>>>>After two years at W & M our subject left to study law with George Wythe, a renowned lawyer of Virginia. Jefferson called Wythe his "second father." At the same time he studied French & Italian, as well as English literature and history [surely coming across Locke!]. Jefferson was also fascinated with the emerging idea of inoculation. As such, he traveled to Philadelphia to receive a shot for smallpox. By 1767 he was admitted to practice law in Virginia. During these years of his law practice he oversaw the continued development of Shadwell. With this endeavor, like all others he worked systematically and carefully. He took detailed notes<<<<< |
