George Washington Defeated Two Enemies

Our first president had to defeat the British on the battlefield, but to do this, he had to contend with smallpox infections. Smallpox affected directly or indirectly nearly everyone since it was endemic in North America and the Caribbean during the 18th century.

Washington had personal experience with the ravages of smallpox. It almost killed him. It also fatally weakened his half-brother. His near-death experience gave him the courage to eventually order quarantines and inoculations to assemble an army large and healthy enough to defeat the British.

In 1751, when George was 19, he and his half-brother Lawrence visited Barbados on a pleasure trip that might improve Lawrence’s health. On their second day, they had dinner with a wealthy merchant, Gedney Clarke. George’s diary revealed that he was a bit apprehensive: “We went, myself with some reluctance, as the smallpox was in his family.” Within two weeks, both George and Lawrence suffered from the notorious symptoms: high fever, chills, body aches, gut problems, and, of course, oozing rashes. Bedridden for 24 days, Lawrence, already weakened by tuberculosis, died in Virginia a few months later. George recovered, albeit with some permanent facial scarring.

As he was taking command of the Continental Army in 1775, Washington’s first orders were to throw the British out of Boston. He realized that most of his recruits were either sick or susceptible to infection. Washington also knew that most of the British troops were immune, having survived smallpox as children. To defeat the British, he knew that he had to deal with smallpox first, so his first decision was to order quarantines. Sick civilians were sent to nearby Brookline, and sick soldiers were moved to Cambridge, across the Charles River.

The quarantines helped the army regain its strength, and Washington started a siege of Boston in the summer of 1775. The British were chased out by fall.

Next up, Washington was told to conquer Canada, which led to the ill-fated Battle of Quebec in December 1775. Weakened by the battle, the bitter winter, and rampant smallpox, the Continental Army was devastated during its long retreat through New York in early 1776.

By February 1777, Washington ordered the mass inoculation of all the soldiers then camped at Morristown, as well as all new recruits to the army who were sent to Philadelphia to be inoculated. Inoculation was by “variolation,” a method then used in Europe. It consists of placing a thread loaded with virus from an open smallpox pustule or sore into a small incision in the skin of the recipient. After a mild case of smallpox, the recipient gained immunity, although the fatality rate was 5% to 10%. The inoculation program gradually improved the health of his troops. Remarkably, he was able to keep its existence a secret from the British.

When camped at Valley Forge in the winter of 1778, inoculation was again ordered, and by the next spring, most soldiers were finally immune to smallpox, in time for the final battles. Ultimately, even with the inoculation program, more soldiers died of smallpox than from battlefield wounds.

Washington trusted that inoculations against smallpox would save enough lives to let him win the war. Prevention of disease remains the rationale for vaccination programs today. A vaccine merely teaches one’s own immune system how to recognize a virus that is new to the recipient and eliminate it by creating custom antibodies and white blood cells that will subsequently recognize the virus before it leads to disease. Today’s vaccines present your immune system with the information for only a tiny snippet of a viral protein, not the entire virus. Such vaccines can be developed, manufactured, and tested quickly.

As our planet warms, sea levels will rise and weather patterns will change, with many areas becoming much hotter. This is likely to drive more people now living in the global south in Africa, the Middle East, South America, and South Asia to migrate north. They will bring along their viruses, including cousins of COVID-19, Ebola, monkey pox, influenza, Zika, and others.

If vaccines for these new cousins become available and you have questions about safety or side effects, talk to a doctor. Avoid chat rooms, internet influencers, recent government appointees, and cable news. Megadoses of vitamin A won’t stop measles or any other viral infection, but too much will surely harm your liver.

Vaccines are a preeminent accomplishment of modern medicine. They can eradicate some of our most lethal or disfiguring diseases: polio, smallpox, and rabies. So why, I ask, do some want to destroy science and deny what we’ve learned about how immunity works? Is it because science tells people things they don’t want to hear, such as that vaccines don’t cause autism?

Fortunately for the United States, George Washington did not hesitate to order inoculations that helped him win the war.

Richard Gelinas, Ph.D., whose early work earned a Nobel prize, lives in Lakebay.