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Vaccination

Anti-smallpox shots in now DR Congo 1962

The African slave who taught America how to vaccinate itself from smallpox

By Reparations

By Carey Baraka, Quartz Africa — In April 1721, a smallpox outbreak swept through Boston. This was the latest in a string of six epidemics that had, since, 1630, laid waste to the city. Cotton Mather, a local slave owner and preacher, claimed to be in possession of a way of preventing contraction of the disease. Mather, who had first come to public prominence as one of the thinkers behind…

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