the town bear that Dr. Cutter or Dr. Davis be so treated?" Minister Benjamin Coleman, believing in inoculation, collected inoculation stories from slaves similar to Onesimus's account and published "Some observations on the new method of receiving the small pox by ingrafting or inoculation" in opposition to Douglass. Boston's smallpox outbreak of 1721 is unique for motivating America's first public inoculation campaign, and the controversy that surrounded it. On 22 February 1722, it was officially announced that no new cases of smallpox were appearing in Boston and the disease was in decline. In the outbreak's aftermath, with over 800 Bostonians dead and many more disfigured from smallpox, Boylston's 247 inoculated patients had a 2% death rate versus the 15% of people who died if they got smallpox naturally. Boylston's successful experiments on students and faculty at Harvard led to early acceptance in Boston's powerful academic community for the procedure. After Mather and Boylston's highly-publicized experiments with inoculation, and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's similar experiments during a simultaneous outbreak in London, variolation would become a widespread and well-researched technique in the West decades before Edward Jenner's discovery of vaccination with cowpox. In 1723, Boylston traveled to England and received honors by King George. In London he published an account of his work, An Historical Account of the Smallpox Inoculated in New England. References 1721 disease outbreaks 1722 disease outbreaks 1721 in Massachusetts 1722 in Massachusetts 18th-century epidemics 18th century in Boston Disease outbreaks in the United States Smallpox epidemics Smallpox in the United States Smallpox vaccines Disasters in Boston