Onesimus
By
John C Abercrombie
With a pandemic raging, we often believe that in earlier days there was no medical knowledge, but this post looks at a stark reversal in the person of a man that introduced inoculation to North America in the early 1700’s. Not only is this an amazing fact, but he was an enslaved African with the name of Onesimus.
There is little written about Onesimus’s early years. His exact place of his birth, and the date are not known with any certainty. This is not uncommon with enslaved persons. Onesimus is first documented living in the colonies in 1706 and was bought here from Africa and enslaved. In 1706 he was bought by the church congregation as a gift to Cotton Mather a Puritan minister. Onesimus is named after a slave mentioned in the bible and the name is translated to mean “useful, helpful and profitable.”
Cotton Mather is familiar in history as a Puritan Minister, prolific author and an intellectual figure in the Colonies. He was known for his scientific contributions on plant hybridization and the production of inoculation as a means of preventing smallpox.
Mather promoted the new Newtonian science movement in America and sent many scientific reports to the Royal Society of London. They elected Mather a fellow in 1723. He sought unsuccessfully to become the president of Harvard University, a post his father had held. His father was an important Puritan intellectual. Mather wrote more than 450 books and pamphlets, making him one of the most influential religious leaders in America.
Contrary to the way Blacks are perceived Mather saw Onesimus as highly intelligent and educated him in reading and writing.
In 1716 Onesimus detailed for Mather the process of inoculation that had been performed on him and others in his African homeland. Mather reported this in a letter. “People take juice of the small-Pox and cut the skin and put in a drop of the juice. In the Style and Satire in 1721 Boston inoculation Controversy that they believed Onesimus had been inoculated before being sold into slavery. Inoculation was long practiced in Africa among sub Saharan people.
Sub Saharan Africa is geographically and ethnoculturally the area of the continent of Africa that It consists of all African countries and territories that are partially or fully South of the Sahara.
The smallpox epidemic was one of the most deadly of the century but was the catalyst for the application of preventive inoculation in the colonies.
Mather followed Onesimus’s medical advice and viewed it as God’s providential gift. Most others did not accept it since the origins were in Africa. This shows90 the depth of belief and suspicion of anything of African origin.
Doctors, ministers, laymen and Boston officials took the position that the practice of inoculating healthy people would spread the disease. They said it would interfere with the working of divine providence. Mather was ridiculed for relying on the testimony of a slave.
A widely held notion is that enslaved Africans would attempt to overthrow White society is the reason Whites saw it as a ploy to poison White people. Boston had race based punishment to prevent slave uprisings and were skeptical of African medicine. This and other contributions by Blacks have been disregarded for the same reason.
Physician Zabdiel Boylston carried out experiments involving sticking a needle into a pustule from an infected person and scratching the infected needle across the healthy person’s skin. He even inoculated his 6 year old son and 2 of his slaves. 280 people were inoculated during the smallpox epidemic. Those inoculated had only 6 deaths, ~2.2% compared to 844 deaths among 5,889 non-inoculated smallpox patients or ~14.3%.
An inscription on Boylston’s headstone identifies him as the person to introduce the practice of inoculation to America.
Recognition for the contribution of Onesimus occurred in 2016 and he has been placed among the 100 Best Bostonians of ALL TIME by Boston magazine when historian Ted Widmer of Macaulay Honors College at CUNY in New York noted that “Onesimus reversed many of the traditional racial assumptions …he had a lot more knowledge medically than most of the Europeans in Boston at that time”
Onesimus was allowed to earn independent wages which he used to support his family of a wife and 2 children. Unfortunately, both children died before reaching the age of 10. Between 1640 and 1759 one of every 4 children died before the age of 10.
Mather was a minister and attempted to convert Onesimus to Christianity. Onesimus rejected the attempts and Mather saw this as a failure. Mather was unhappy with this turn of events and the presence of Onesimus in his household.
In 1716 Onesimus purchased another slave named Obadiah to replace him. Mather accepted with the requirement that Onesimus remain available to perform work at Mather’s command and return 5 pounds that Mather claimed had been stolen.
In 1796 advances in the process were made by the introduction of vaccine, which is a biological preparation that comes from the disease containing a weakened or killed form of the microbe.
In a 2016 Boston magazine survey, Onesimus was declared the number 52 on the list of “Best Bostonians of All Time.”
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Smallpox Inoculation and Onesimus
Inoculation existed for centuries before it was accepted by Western medicine. Onesimus, an African slave in early eighteenth century Boston, played a critical role in legitimizing a procedure that saved millions of lives. The History Guy remembers Onesimus, who has been called one of “the Best Bostonians of All Time.”
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Medical Apartheid:
The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present The first full history of Black America’s shocking mistreatment as unwilling and unwitting experimental subjects at the hands of the medical establishment. No one concerned with issues of public health and racial justice can afford not to read this masterful book that will stir up both controversy and long-needed debate. From the era of slavery to the present day, starting with the earliest encounters between Black Americans and Western medical researchers and the racist pseudoscience that resulted, Medical Apartheid details the ways both slaves and freedmen were used in hospitals for experiments conducted without their knowledge—a tradition that continues today within some black populations.
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Black History Month – Onesimus
How African-born slave Onesimus introduced smallpox vaccination to colonial Boston
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Medical Bondage:
Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology Illustrated Edition The accomplishments of pioneering doctors such as John Peter Mettauer, James Marion Sims, and Nathan Bozeman are well documented. It is also no secret that these nineteenth-century gynecologists performed experimental caesarean sections, ovariotomies, and obstetric fistula repairs primarily on poor and powerless women. Medical Bondage breaks new ground by exploring how and why physicians denied these women their full humanity yet valued them as “medical superbodies” highly suited for medical experimentation.
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Onesimus and the Smallpox Epidemic of 1721
This video shares how a Black man named Onesimus’ insight led to a treatment for the Smallpox disease. Below are sources used to make this video.
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Killing the Black Body:
Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty Killing the Black Body remains a rallying cry for education, awareness, and action on extending reproductive justice to all women. It is as crucial as ever, even two decades after its original publication. “Monumental. . . . An important contribution to the literature of civil rights, reproductive issues, racism and feminism.” —San Francisco Chronicle
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A Biblical View Overview:
Philemon Watch our overview video on the book of Philemon, which breaks down the literary design of the book and its flow of thought. In this letter, Paul helps his friend Philemon to reconcile with his escaped former slave Onesimus and shows that they are equals because of Jesus.
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Vision Care
We all know the value of our sight and the best way to take care of it starts here
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A Terrible Thing to Waste: Environmental Racism and Its Assault on the American Mind
A “powerful and indispensable” look at the devastating consequences of environmental racism (Gerald Markowitz) and what we can do to remedy its toxic effects on marginalized communities — featuring a new preface on COVID-19 risk factors. Did you know… Middle-class African American households with incomes between $50,000 and $60,000 live in neighborhoods that are more polluted than those of very poor white households with incomes below $10,000. When swallowed, a lead-paint chip no larger than a fingernail can send a toddler into a coma — one-tenth of that amount will lower his IQ. Nearly two of every five African American homes in Baltimore are plagued by lead-based paint. Almost all of the 37,500 Baltimore children who suffered lead poisoning between 2003 and 2015 were African American. From injuries caused by lead poisoning to the devastating effects of atmospheric pollution, infectious disease, and industrial waste, Americans of color are harmed by environmental hazards in staggeringly disproportionate numbers. This systemic onslaught of toxic exposure and institutional negligence causes irreparable physical harm to millions of people across the country-cutting lives tragically short and needlessly burdening our health care system. But these deadly environments create another insidious and often overlooked consequence: robbing communities of color, and America as a whole, of intellectual power.
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Onesimus | African Man Who Brought Inoculation to North America
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Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome:
America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing In the 16th century, the beginning of African enslavement in the Americas until the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment and emancipation in 1865, Africans were hunted like animals, captured, sold, tortured, and raped. They experienced the worst kind of physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual abuse. Given such history, isn’t it likely that many of the enslaved were severely traumatized? And did the trauma and the effects of such horrific abuse end with the abolition of slavery?
ABH – Post Tramautic Slave Syndrome
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Black History Month Spotlight: Onesimus
Onesimus was a West-African man purchased as a slave for Puritan minister Cotton Mather by his congregation. Mather thought his new slave was intelligent, but untrustworthy – a popular notion among slaveholders at the time.
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Because of the way Blacks are portrayed, we often believe that there was no culture or intelligence in Africa. This is a gross misstatement as we see in the story of Onesimus. There were thriving universities before the Greek and Roman civilizations. Today there are thousands of books awaiting translation. The more we did into this, the more we find that indicates great knowledge in the African diaspora. There are great people in all civilizations. The problem comes when they are hidden from view. Explore your world and don’t be dismayed. Strive and thrive!
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