The twin explosions that rocked the finish line of the Boston Marathon took place on one of Boston’s busiest thoroughfares: Boylston Street. Commentators near and far have rightly commended the actions of the first responders – the EMT, police, race officials, fire fighters and others – who sprang upon the scene and dispatched themselves with remarkable professionalism, efficiency and calm. They were there for a different purpose: to attend to thousands of physically drained runners completing the world’s oldest and most prestigious continuously-run marathon. But they shifted their duties so quickly and without objection, applying tourniquets to the wounded, triaging patients to Boston’s many legendary hospitals, commandeering and distributing wheelchairs, stopping the bleeding – physically and emotionally. And they did all this after two bombs had already detonated, not knowing if a third or fourth would take them down too.
Boston is a tough city. It has had to be tough to survive this long. It is one of the few cities in America more than 300 years old and has witnessed calamities, natural and man-made, numerous times over its history. Some of them brought embarrassment and shame. Others brought hope and even revolution. But one catastrophe and the courageous response to it from one man seems especially notable today.
I’m speaking of the small pox outbreak in 1721. One of the greatest and surest killers of the 17th and 18th centuries was the infamous small pox. It nearly wiped out the native inhabitants of the Americas, and it continued to wreck havoc on the European and African populations in the New World. Edward Jenner is generally credited with developing the first smallpox vaccine in 1796. But doctors had experimented with variolation long before that, especially in the Ottoman Empire. The prospect of artificially introducing a form of the virus, for purposes of generating immunity, was deeply controversial to say the least. But some of the African slaves in Boston in the early 1700s had been inoculated by this process, and no less than Cotton Mather took note that some preventable mechanism was at least theoretically available.
Enter Dr. Zabdiel Boylston. Son of an English physician, Zabdiel Boylston grew up in Boston and became one of New England’s most famous surgeons of all. He had already pioneered surgical treatment of breast cancer and gall bladder disease. In 1721, Boston faced a small pox outbreak, which led to panic and despair in the city. At Mather’s urging Dr. Boylston developed a plan to introduce inoculation into the city, which would minimize the outbreak and save countless lives. But few among Boston’s elite medical community agreed, with many expressing violent objection to this untried method. Mobs appeared at his home and he was accused of fomenting mass murder. Some even accused him of interfering with God’s will – that smallpox was the workings of God and had already been used to clear out the land of “heathens” for the new Puritan colony (which had, by 1721, become more defined by Yankee commercialism than religious fervor).
But Dr. Boylston persisted. He applied the inoculation first to his son, and then to two slaves. And then he expanded his experiment to hundreds more. The results were remarkable. Of the larger Boston population untouched by Boylston’s radical experiment, 14% died. Of the 600 men, women and children Boylston inoculated, only 2% died. Despite threats to his life from mobs and from the virus itself, Dr. Boylston bravely persisted and helped usher in a revolution in medical treatment.
His nephew, Ward Nicholas Boylston, would garner more undiluted praise in the city. As a highly successful merchant, the younger Boylston became a philanthropist and major benefactor of Harvard University, and supporter of another of Zabdiel’s nephews – John Adams. Boylston Hall at Harvard would be named for Ward Nicholas Boylston, as would the street that hosts the finish line for the Boston Marathon.
When you hear commentators discuss the horrific bombings and the heroic response to them on Boylston Street, think of the uncle of the man for whom the street was named. A city that has produced more than its share of commercial barons and progressive philanthropists and activists, Boston was as prepared for this disaster as any other. With similar courage, the first responders of the Boston Marathon did what old Dr. Zabdiel Boylston did in 1721 – risked life, limb and reputation to serve his community and humanity.
Hope and courage trumped fear then. It will today as well.