Word: pox
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...settlements: "The Diseases that the English are afflicted with, are the same that they have in England, with some proper to New-England, griping of the belly (accompanied with Feaver and Ague) which turns to the bloudy-flux, a common disease in the Countrey, which together with the small pox hath carried away abundance of their children." This same Josselyn attributed to the Indians "the great pox" (syphilis), consumption of the lungs, the King's Evil (scrofula) and falling sickness-all of which happened to be imports from the Old World...
...them died, whereas there were only six deaths among the 286 who had been inoculated. That was the first large-scale proof that inoculation was effective. As the treatment gained adherents, it became almost a fad. Fashionable ladies in Paris wore bonnets with spotted ribbons (to simulate the pox). Empress Catherine of Russia summoned an English doctor to inoculate her and her courtiers (for which she paid him a fee of ?10,000 plus ?2,000 for expenses, an annuity of ?500 for life, and a barony in the Russian empire). Despite these successes, critics kept insisting that inoculation spread...
...troop movements have spread the disease, demands for inoculation, legal or not, have increased. Says Hannah Winthrop, wife of Natural Philosophy Professor John Winthrop of Harvard: "The reigning subject is the small pox. Men, women and children eagerly crowding to inoculate is I think as modish as running away from the troops of a barbarous George was last year...
Right now the most critical problem is the health of the Continental Army. Among the 8,000 troops who marched to Canada, more than 2,000 fell ill from the small pox. General Washington himself had the disease as a young man and insisted last May that his terrified wife Martha be inoculated -but as Commander of the Continental Army, he must respect all local statutes against the possible spread of infection through inoculation. On May 20, from his headquarters in New York, he issued an order declaring: "No person whatever, belonging to the Army, is to be inoculated...
...more elaborate headdresses are preferred for evening wear. Among this season's most popular styles are the "drowned chicken," "chest of drawers," "mad dog" and "sportsman in the bush." Topical motifs are especially prized; one called "a I'inoculation "hails the controversial new treatment for the small pox. In an effort to reconcile propriety with fashion, a widow will occasionally sport a model of her dead husband's tomb upon her head...