biography
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (fl.1706–21)
|
| biography:
| Slave and servant, probably born in Africa. He was first a slave (1706–16) and then a servant (1716–?) to the Puritan minister, Cotton Mather. When Boston had an epidemic of smallpox (1721), Onesimus told Mather of a form of inoculation practised by his people, the Guramantese. This knowledge, combined with information regarding inoculation that was being done in Constantinople, convinced Mather to advocate inoculation in Boston. Performed by Dr Zabadiel Boylston, the inoculations were the first done in the American colonies. |
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