dresses, and solemn visages made their wisdom appear even profounder
than it was. One after another he acquainted them with the discovery
which he had hit upon.

But the grave and sagacious personages would scarcely listen to him.
The oldest doctor in town contented himself with remarking that no such
thing as inoculation was mentioned by Galen or Hippocrates; and it was
impossible that modern physicians should be wiser than those old sages.
A second held up his hands in dumb astonishment and horror at the
mad-ness of what Cotton Mather proposed to do. A third told him, in
pretty plain terms, that he knew not what he was talking about. A fourth
requested, in the name of the whole medical fraternity, that Cotton
Mather would confine his attention to people's souls, and leave the
physicians to take care of their bodies. In short, there was but a
single doctor among them all who would grant the poor minister so much
as a patient hearing, This was Doctor Zabdiel Boylston. He looked
into the matter like a man of sense, and finding, beyond a doubt,
that inoculation had rescued many from death, he resolved to try the
experiment in his own family.

And so he did. But when the other physicians heard of it they arose
in great fury and began a war of words, written, printed, and spoken,
against Cotton Mather and Doctor Boylston. To hear them talk, you would
have supposed that these two harmless and benevolent men had plotted the
ruin of the country.

The people, also, took the alarm. Many, who thought themselves more
pious than their neighbors, contended that, if Providence had ordained
them to die of the small-pox, it was sinful to aim at preventing it. The
strangest reports were in circulation. Some said that Doctor
Boylston had contrived a method for conveying the gout, rheumatism,
sick-headache, asthma, and all other diseases from one person to
another, and diffusing them through the whole community. Others flatly
affirmed that the evil one had got possession of Cotton Mather, and was
at the bottom of the whole business.

You must observe, children, that Cotton Mather's fellow-citizens were
generally inclined to doubt the wisdom of any measure which he might
propose to them. They recollected how he had led them astray in the old
witchcraft delusion; and now, if he thought and acted ever so wisely, it
was difficult for him to get the credit of it.

The people's wrath grew so hot at his attempt to guard them from the
small