1738 Smallpox Outbreak
From a manuscript in the hand-writing, and found among the papers of the venerable Thomas Lamboll who died in 1775, the following particulars are collected relative to this disease. " It first attracted public notice in May 1738. In the next month a fast day was appointed by proclamation. Soon after the disease commenced, a report was circulated that tar water was not only a good preparative for receiving, but a preventive of the small-pox. Many barrels of tar were sold and used for that purpose ; but the author soon after took the infection and died, and his empiristn died with him. "
By an account dated September 30th of the same year, it appeared that the whole number of deaths was 411 ; and the whole number which had taken the small-pox was 2112, of which 833 were whites, and 1279 blacks.
Of the whites, 647 took the disease in the natural way, and of them 157 died. Of 188 whites who took the disease by inoculation, 9 died. Of the 1279 blacks who took the disease 1028 had it in the natural way, and of them 138 died.
The remainder 253 were inoculated, and of them 7 died."
From these facts as stated by Mr. Lambou, it appears that of the white persons who took the small-pox in the natural way, nearly one in four died [25%]; but of such as took it by inoculation, the deaths were only one in twenty [5%].
Of the negroes who took the disease in the natural way, nearly one in seven died [15%]; but of such as took it by inoculation, the deaths were only one in 36 [3%].
It is well known that negroes have the small-pox as bad if not worse than white people where the treatment of both is the same. That they fared better than their owners in this occasion must be referred to their being under less restraint with regard to cold air. In treating the small-pox, an excess of care and confinement is much worse than no care or confinement whatever.
From the same manuscript it appears that on the 21st of September, an act of assembly passed at Ashley ferry against inoculating for the small-pox in Charlestown, or within two miles of it after the 10th of October 1738.
[When the outbreak first began,] Doctor Moybray, surgeon of a british man of war then in the harbor, proposed inoculation; but the physicians opposed it at first. With the exception of doctor Martini they afterwards came in to it. Mr. Philip Prioleau was the first person in, Charlestown who submitted to the operation. The success which attended this first experiment encouraged several others to follow the example. * The disease soon after abated.
1760 Smallpox Outbreak: Ramsay
About the beginning of the year 1760, the small pox was discovered in the house of a pilot on White- Point — guards were placed round the house, and every precaution taken to prevent the spreading of the disease ; but in vain. When the persons first in fected at White-Point were either dead or well, the house in which they had lain was ordered to be cleans ed. In doing this a great smoke was made which, being carried by an easterly wind, propagated the disease extensively to the westward in the line of the smoke. Inoculation was resolved upon and be came general.
When this practice was first introduced, and for several years after, the inoculators loaded their patients with mercury and tortured them with deep crucial incisions in which extraneous substances impregnated with the variolous matter were buried. There were then able physicians in Charlestown ; but they were so mistaken with regard to the proper method of treating the disease that it was no uncommon practice to nail blankets, over the shut windows of closed rooms, to exclude every particle of cool fresh air from their variolous patients whose comfort and safety depended on its free admission. The consequences were fatal.
Charlestown was a scene of the deepest affliction. Almost every family was in distress for the loss of some of its members, but so occupied with their attentions to the sick that they could neither indulge the pomp nor the luxury of grief. The deaths from the small-pox were nearly eleven twelfths of the whole mortality in Charles- town. Only eighty-seven died of other diseases, while the deaths from the small- pox amounted to nine hundred and forty.
Of these only ninety-two died under inoculation. Fifteen hundred persons are said to have been inoculated in one day ; and it is certain from the bills of mortality that 848 per sons died of the disease who were not inoculated. If we allow that only one in four died, as in the year 1738, the whole number who took the disease in the natural way must have been 3392. Precision in numbers is not attainable ; but enough is known and remembered by several persons still alive to prove that the year 1760 was one of the most melancholy and distressing that ever took place in Charlestown.
Eliza Lucas Pinckney Letterbook:
March 15 1760.
To Mrs Erance. A great cloud seems at present to hang over this province, we are continually insulted by the Indians on our back settlements, and a violent kind of small pox that rages in Charles Town almost puts a stop to all business. Several of those I have to transact business with are fled into the country, but by the Divine blessing I hope a month or two will change the prospect; . . . .
I am now at Belmont to keep my people out of [the] way of [the] violent distemper, for the poor blacks have died very fast even by inoculation; but [the] people in Cº Town were inoculation mad, I think I may call it, and rush" into it with such presipitation [that] I think it impossible they could have had either a proper preparation or attendance, had there been 10 Doctors in town to one. The Doctors could not help it the people would not be said nay.
We lose with this fleet our good Governor Lyttelton, he goes home in the Trent Man of Warr, before he goes to his new Government at Jamaica.
Poor John Motte who was inoculated in En land, is now very bad with ye small-pox, it could never have taken then to be sure. [John Motte recovered, so probably the imperfect inoculation helped.]
June 19th 1760
I am just going out of town for a little air and Exercise, having I thank God finished my superintendancy over a little smallpox Hospital; a very small one indeed, as it did not contain more than 15 patients. I lost only one, who took it in [the] natural way.
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Address to the Smallpox (SC Gazette, 1 March 1760)
Spoiler of Beauty! for this once forbear
To print thy vengeance on this blooming fair
Spare those brilliant eyes, that Angel face,
Nor heaven's fair portrait with thy spots disgrace
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The Great Charleston Smallpox Epidemic of 1760
RETURNING SOLDIERS FROM THE INDIAN WARS INTRODUCED smallpox to Charlestown in January 1760. At first there were scattered outbreaks in the Lowcountry among the Indians as well as the whites and blacks.
The South Carolina Council received news that smallpox was "rife" in New York and Philadelphia and immediately ordered the commander of Fort Johnson to quarantine all ships from those ports until health certificates were approved. On January 8 a young woman became ill and was isolated at a private house at White Point. Several citizens under orders of the governor kept guard to prevent her from spreading contagion.
Richard Colymer wrote to Gov. William Lyttleton from Fort Prince George, an Indian trading post, that many of the Keowee had died from smallpox. "The living are all fled to the woods to avoid it," he explained. "It is now got up to Yarasee and Yamasee and I cant help being so inhuman as to wish it spred through the whole nation."
The South-Carolina Gazette, the primary news vehicle of the colony, assured worried country people that despite the incidents they were completely safe in coming to town. Peter Timothy, editor of the Gazette, assured readers he would warn them if the smallpox should become dangerous and he added that one would not catch the disease from reading and handling the newspaper.
In mid-January news of further outbreaks of smallpox in the back country arrived in Charlestown, while several more infected patients underwent quarantine at White Point. Within two weeks there were several reported cases of the disease at the British army's New Barracks outside the city. By early February smallpox had struck the nearly defenseless community with such virulence that all hopes of preventing the spread of the disease by quarantine were abandoned.
The colony's Indian allies were decimated. King Hagler of the Catawbaw was unable to maintain the defensive position against the Cherokee because he had only sixty men left alive.
Public interest in the treatment of smallpox naturally was high. Timothy reprinted in the newspaper Dr. James Kilpatrick's 1738 thesis on the procedure in which he advised taking inoculation after weeks of careful diet. Dr. William Heberden, fellow of the Royal Society, reprinted his 1759 pamphlet on inoculation, in which he gave specific details on the procedure. One should run a thread through the head of one of the pustules, he wrote, until the thread was thoroughly wet. The patient was cut on the arm deeply enough to make blood appear. One then put the infected thread into the incision and bandaged it. Since most physicians were familiar with this and other methods, the information must have appealed to those who wanted to save on doctors' fees.
Eliza Lucas Pinckney, wife of Charles Pinckney, the chief justice of South Carolina, noted that "the people of Charles Town were inoculation mad, I think I may call it, and rushed into it with such persipitation that I think it impossible they could have had either proper preparation or attendance had there been 10 doctors in town to one. The Doctors could not help it ? the people would not be said nay." Mrs. Pinckney had her slaves inoculated, but "they died very fast even by inoculation."
Other prominent families responded similarly to the epidemic. Ann Ashby Manigault, wife of Gabriel Manigault, had all of her family inoculated. Robert Pringle noted that all of his white people had been inoculated and they all had recovered. He also had his slaves inoculated, but two females, Maria and Hagar, died.
Alexander Fraser paid £30 to have his son John and slave Peggy inoculated.
Henry Laurens was too prudent to risk inoculating his new cargo of slaves. He kept 250 slaves quarantined on board a ship in the harbor and guaranteed to prospective purchasers that they had had no communication with the city dwellers. While some slaves may have been immune from African medical practices, Laurens took no chances with his investment.
Home remedies and anecdotes filled the Gazette when professional information fell short. "Philanthropos" reported that Mr. Barnet had considerable success with a treatment of mercury and jalap.
"Carolinensis" snorted at that report. He condemned the concoction and insisted that inoculation was the only proven method of coping successfully with the disease.
"Philadelphis" shared a pamphlet by Dr. Thomas Sydenham which discussed smallpox in general. The work described the progress of the disease, identified the chief stages, distinguished between several kinds of "pox," and recommended treatment and care at each stage of the illness.
One home remedy had a certain charm to it: One should take a mixture of rue, sage, mint, rosemary, wormwood, and lavender, infused in white wine vinegar which had been stored in a stone bottle in warm wood ashes for eight days. This prescription was good as a mouth wash. One could also rub it on the body and breathe it through the nostrils to keep contagion away. Four murderers testified they had used this preparation before they assaulted an infected family. None of the malefactors contracted smallpox and they attributed their deliverance to the preparation. While the concoction may have kept the criminals healthy, it could not keep them from the gallows.
The epidemic affected all levels of social interaction. But while there were a significant number of inoculation enthusiasts, and the physicians were busy night and day with patients, there was a strong current of opposition to the procedure. For one thing, inoculation was still illegal in South Carolina. Governor Lyttleton and the General Assembly were increasingly alarmed with the widespread economic and social effects of the epidemic, coming amid the disappointing Indian war. The Commons House was concerned not only with the welfare of the colony, but also with the health and housing of more than 300 French Acadian immigrants living in a crowded brick tenement and suffering from a variety of contagious diseases, including smallpox.
Fearing that further spread of the epidemic would hurt business even more, the Assembly debated the fate of the French and how to stop smallpox, but were unable to resolve the dilemma. The governor, in time-honored tradition, appointed a committee to study the epidemic. The committee, composed of Rawlins Lowndes, Isaac Mazyck, Daniel Crawford, John Guerard, Henry Laurens, Robert Pringle, and John Moultrie, reported that the epidemic was in several parts of town, and became more general every day. The committee thought that it was futile to try to stop the epidemic.15
Public feeling was running high over the joint calamities of war and plague. "A great cloud seems at present to hang over this province. We are continually insulted by the Indians on our back settlements, and a violent kind of smallpox rages in Charles Town that almost puts a stop to all business," Eliza Lucas Pinckney wrote.
The governor declared a fast day for Tuesday, April 25, to pray for the colony afflicted with a "pestilential and contagious distemper" and beset with a war "begun and carried on by the perfidious and barbarous Cherokee Indians."
Pressure mounted against the mass inoculation efforts which were now thought to spread the disease. On April 8 some Carolinians petitioned the Commons House to do something positive to stop the disease. The petitioners blamed the widespread inoculation of Negroes as the chief reason for the length of the epidemic, and reasoned that if general inoculation did not end, "the disorder will continue through the summer months."
Bowing to pressure, the next day Henry Laurens's committee recommended a bill be drawn up "for preventing (as much as may be) the continuance of the smallpox in Charles Town, and the further spreading of that distemper in this province." The Commons was to act upon its bill within a week, but it did not send the bill to the governor until May 15, and he did not act upon it until May 30.
The bill sought once again to prohibit inoculation. After June 15, anyone inoculated, or who "inflicted" the disease on anyone within two miles of Charlestown was subject to a £100 fine. Anyone infected with the disease should immediately post a sign to warn healthy citizens of the danger. Failure to post such a sign was a £20 fine. Anyone inoculating slaves, or whose slaves caught the disease, might suffer three months imprisonment unless they swore the "offense" took place without their knowledge.
A board of commissioners composed of Othniel Beale, George Austin, Benjamin Smith, John Guerard, Christopher Gadsden, Henry Laurens, and Daniel Crawford were to meet at the State House on the first Monday of every month from August 1760 until the epidemic abated to receive lists of the smallpox victims from every family. Failure to list one's sick could result in a £10 fine, and the commissioners were to publish the lists in the Gazette.
By the time the act went into effect in mid-June the epidemic was nearly spent in the colony. The published lists of smallpox victims consisted of one recovering slave of Othniel Beale. The Catawba survived the plague, but they were seriously affected. King Hagler noted sadly, "the Catawbas were once numerous, but the smallpox and other misfortunes have reduced them to few."
Notices of smallpox in the Gazette were published infrequently during the summer, but it was not until November 1760 that the epidemic was declared officially over. Of a population of 8,000, 6,000 people had been inoculated. The death toll was 650, of whom 300 were white and 350 were black.
The epidemic in Charlestown, even with the use of inoculation, was more severe than the English epidemic of the same year, in which there was no such inoculation effort.21 The great smallpox epidemic of 1760 had several important results. The mass inoculation drive was the last public-health effort in the British colonies before the introduction of vaccination.
The long-range effect of the large-scale, but illegal, inoculation program was a significant decrease in smallpox in the colony for the rest of the colonial period. Lionel Chalmers wrote to a physician in Edinburgh that in the 1762 outbreak in Charlestown 1500 people were inoculated, with very little loss of life.
Because so many people were now immune from the disease, Charlestown was spared another major outbreak. But when smallpox appeared in Savannah in 1764, the South Carolina Assembly reenacted, in many of its essential points, the smallpox bill of 1760 which forbade inoculation. To enter South Carolina from Georgia one had to have a health certificate, or pay a ?100 fine or face corporal punishment. Another smallpox threat in 1768 resulted in the reenactment, in toto, of the 1764 bill. Continued prohibition against inoculation seemed to have little effect on public practice, however
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