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Thesis ID: CBB734927243

Dr. John Jeffries (1745-1819) and the Uncertain Practices of Smallpox Medicine (2016)

Lee, Hyon Ju (Author)
Carmichael, Ann G. (Advisor)

Indiana University
Carmichael, Ann G.

URI: https://search.proquest.com/docview/1836796821?accountid=12964

Publication Date: 2016
Physical Details: 365 pp.
Language: English

Outside Links

Academia.edu

Certainty; uncertainty Public health Public demonstration Vaccines; vaccination Great Britain, colonies Smallpox 18th century 19th century United States Jeffries, John

My dissertation explores the eighteenth-century practice of smallpox medicine by using the surviving case records of John Jeffries (1745–1819) as a lens, using his two notebook volumes on his smallpox practice. Jeffries was a Boston-born doctor educated in Britain and served in the British Army during the Revolutionary War. After about a decade in exile in London, Jeffries returned to Boston and lived there until his death. His loyalist odyssey also allows us to examine unfamiliar historical scenes in the practice of smallpox inoculation. Jeffries inoculated a large number of patients in British occupied Boston and Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, as well as in post-Revolutionary War Boston, then later participated in public vaccination demonstrations in 1802. By focusing on an individual practitioner and the uncommonly found sources he created, my dissertation asks an important question that has received little historical attention: how was smallpox inoculation actually practiced in the eighteenth century? The dissertation argues that Jeffries’s notebooks help us to see prevailing uncertainties in eighteenth-century inoculation practice. First, it contends that the adoption of any inoculation technique was more complex than commonly assumed, because eighteenth-century doctors lacked standardized methodological guidelines. Without consensus about best practices they followed their instincts, which led to confusing and divergent recommendations. Secondly, this research argues that the varying social, political, and military circumstances as well as public health laws and policies that shaped inoculation practice settings, governed a practitioner’s selection of inoculation methods and patient management. In taking a methodological focus, this dissertation shows that early American vaccinators applied the new cowpox vaccination in continuation with previous inoculation technology. The shift from the previous practice to the next was not as abrupt as we have believed.

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