From the East – March 2022
Greetings Brethren,
I recently read an article published on February 16, 2016, by the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) that remains very timely. The original article was inspired by the 2016 Benjamin Franklin Founder Award to Dr. Paul Offit. Dr. Offit is an internationally recognized expert in infectious diseases. I hope you will find the information from this article of interest, especially after Ben Franklin’s visit to Medford Lodge on 2/14/22.
As you know, Benjamin Franklin and Dr. Thomas Bond founded Pennsylvania Hospital, the nation’s first hospital, on May 11, 1751. I was lucky enough to
have had the opportunity of working at the Hall Mercer Hospital of Pennsylvania Hospital and I was able to freely roam the halls of the historic part of the hospital on Pine Street, including the old operating room.
The CHOP article points out that Benjamin Franklin was an “avid supporter of smallpox inoculation in the 1730’s.” This strong interest most likely derived from the death from smallpox of his four-year-old son, Frances. At that time, the primary method of protection from smallpox was through a process called “variolation.” This process involved “taking pus from a smallpox pustule of an infected person and either injecting it into a nonimmune person or drying it for later inhalation as a powder by a nonimmune person.” The product from variolation caused a “mild form of the illness” but it offered “lifelong immunity.”
Needless to say, many found the “purposeful infection through variolation unacceptable; but as was his talent in proscribing enlightenment and nuanced thought to traditional thinking, Franklin educated himself on the matter and came to see the process as groundbreaking.”
Brother Franklin died on April 17, 1790, six years before Edward Jenner invented the smallpox vaccine, the world’s first vaccine, but it took an additional 200 years for smallpox to be finally eradicated. It has been estimated that approximately 500 million died from smallpox in the last 100 years prior to eradication.
Fraternally,
WM John Quintana