over the country. it's not a lot of people but given the objective conditions in mexico for out of every ten workers who had a job don't have a job now. millions of mexicans never had a job so when you say four out of ten the organized work force. and my calculation i will look striplight on this tomorrow is that 10 million people have been forced off their land to to this influx of genetically modified cornyn to mexico can't compete in the marketplace and is now run by the cargo corporation, the largest privately-owned corporation in the world. those conditions exist in the country right now. ..

>> with that dialect in mind, what do you see going on next to the city?

do you see the organization or are you seeing old party systems? >> well, there's no question that the party system is the enemy of revolution. and the parties have had a lock on power, including the party that i actually was a founder of, according to the democratic revolution, you know? but these parties devolve into hallow shelfs that are only defending their subsidies because they all get money for it. if it comes to business to do politics that way. it doesn't make very long. and prd actually was quite clever in being able to get community leaders all over the city into city government right away. the idea of it, now we have power. you know? because we're in government. of course, once you're in government if you are trapped inside government, you know, you lose contact with your base, you know? so that's, you know, it's also a destructive -- it's destructive of the power. you know? i think we have to learn that.

mexico city right now is involved in a very stirring example of the class struggle. limited class struggle. last october 11, felipe calderon, the president of mexico, sent in 100 electricity generating plants in mexico city and five surrounding states and dissolved the state company for electricity, the company which was unionized, virtually completely unionized expect for one small administrative class. [speaking spanish] >> the electricity workers union. oldest union in mexico. 95 years old. born in the height of the revolution and a strike against transnational company that ran

mexico city health care generation. and a union that can always be counted on to put 20,000 people on the street when there's social problems to deal with. every day since last october we have today -- there are 3,000 on hunger strike. you know? yesterday was something right in front of the supreme court but every single day there is people in motion and in confrontation with government forces, the federal police around the generating plants and the government has resorted to some, i think, some underhanded and necessary techniques such as gassing 500 kids in a school right across the street from one of these generating plants where they were pickets. no one ever said that governments are smart. you know? they like to repress, oppress, and whatever all of the press is. and, you know, i get anticipate that the government will open

fire on electricity workers and some demonstration and not too distant future or put their leaders in jail or doing something egregious which it could be given the bad gas in mexico at this point and in mexico city as well could be that spark that starts the prairie fire, you know? the situation is so unstable that any one of these things could set off further reaction and the government will overreact again and, you know, then we're off to the races. i can't see from the lights. i know somebody else must have their hands up there. and raise some kind of provocative point. must be something that i said that troubled you. >> pat? >> yeah. >> i was wondering if you could talk a little bit more of what's happening with the race and

death and people occupying and if you could talk more about the war? >> one of the reasons i don't like to talk about the drug war i think it's often what people want to hear. oh, tell us about the drug war. and this whole drug war scenario that keeps unfolding in the front pages of our newspaper is really a form of mexico bashing. oh, those mexicans, they are all alike, drug dealers and violent and they kill each other and mexico's civilization, you know? but that's of course what grabs the headlines here. and it grabs the headlines because the media is indeed a construct of corporate america. and the u.s. government uses the drug war to pressure mexico into concessions on security and economic issues. right now my feelings is that's being used to pressure mexico on

oil, on the privatization of the state oil company and particularly looking at deep sea drilling in the gulf of mexico. that's the economic point from the security point, the military, the u.s. military and the u.s. homeland security, or the u.s. security forces want more leverage to place troupes on the ground in latin america and mexico is a place to begin for them as well as columbia and peru, this access that they have developed in countries that are favorable to washington. having said that, juarez, i don't know how much people were killed there today. the average runs about one on hour. 2300 -- 2700 people were killed in juarez last year. that was in the year 1909. it's going to be much worse. you've had a lot of wholesale

killings in that city. the battle is between a couple of cartels, the couple of cartels and the military and the military doesn't seem to be able to distinguish who's in the drug gangs and who's walking on the street. who we've had dozens and dozens of killings of human rights violations, disappeared people, this isn't my observation, every major human rights organization and amnesty international, human rights first which is another report the other day, all of them talking about how the military is out of control in the north of mexico, you know? we've completely forgetten in the blood bath that occurs in juarez, the murder of over 300 women beginning in 1993 through the present that have never been

resolved. the prosecutor in juarez during that period of time, during the height of those murders who said that women were to blame because they wore mini skirts are now in politics in mexico. that's been obliterated. the body count isn't enough. only finding one or two women a week. there's so many other people dead each day. also the women who was the real voice for the mothers of the mothers of the disappearing after garcia passed away recently. her voice had been stolen from us for this. keep remembering it, you know? because this stuff gets lost. it's just like iraq. you know? this country, we can't even remember what was the last country we destroyed. we've gone on to the next egregious violation in human

rights of afghanistan. well, it's the same thing in juarez, you know? we can't -- you know, we don't have the capacity to remember the fact that 300 women has been brutally raped and murdered in that city. no? and to put that together with the drug war in the city right now. that's all i know. major response, but i don't know if i responded to your question at all. yeah? >> do you think calderon has the, you know, is in a position to get way of privatizing? >> not really. not at this point. but he does have -- we went through this a couple of years ago. the year after he was elected president, he submitted privatization legislation. and i'm proud to say that we stopped him. we, i mean literally, the members of the prd in the senate took over the senate roster and wouldn't let anybody else up there on the stage. and then the men and women forming themselves into

brigades, calls them [speaking spanish] with long skirts and sombreros on their chest. that went on for a number of days until the two major parties finally agreed to a series of debates about the privatization of pemex. it was 70 disstink debates. all of them broadcast on the huge screen. everybody would show up, that's our oil. boo the bad guys. you know, it was like this is really community participation. in the end, a bill passed that didn't privatize and it made some end roads in modifying the structure for privatization, but it didn't grant what calderon

wanted at all. having said that, one caveat is pemex has been privatized in the expiration and development sector, much of haliburton has been a major spier. but it still remains a symbol. the state has the right to control the resources. these things belong to the people. we're not going to give that fight up very easily. i don't think that calderon will have much leverage trying to do something and that. march 18, the anniversary of the great in the great president in the 1930s nationalized oil, it's a national holiday. oil means national sovereignty. as bad as it is for everything else, in mexico, oil is a symbol

of national sovereignty. you know? >> well? >> yeah, you were talking about describing protest back to the community and also throughout mexico, i'm wondering, acknowledging that the political process is pretty much broken, and throughout, how are they making their progress. where are they making their strides? do you have any advice? >> one note on the process, no? in the last election, other 3 million voters went to the polls and wrote on their ballots things like, you know, this is a joke. this is a farce. there was a candidate, a fake kand date who's named meant wilted hoax. so they actively went to the

polls and took their ballots and vote on them the system can no longer control the political process. that's what's next. we need to be able to change that law so that parties don't control the electoral process can run and independent people can participate in the democracy in the way to deal with government. to have some control over their government. that has to work. on the other hand, i think the question of getting off of the grid, just rejecting, you know, it's intervention. it's supposed aid. it's influence in the movements and doing for ourselves, growing food in mexico city, you know? mexico city has three delegations that are rural delegations, you know? there are a lot of farmers in mexico city. but i'm talking about growing farm just like in south central l.a. at the south central farms

on rooftops and grows farms in the cities. that's happening in mexico city. it's another aspect of taking back the land and turning it into something that's productive to feed the people. >> well, have we run out of questions here? >> i think so. >> let's go over here. >> you got to shout. >> all right. >> i've heard it said that one of the side effects of the iraq war is kind of the feeding of the neoliberal policies in the central and south america. and such that america is not projecting the influence as much. is there on the ground any evidence that this american influence on what there is is different? for the past six or seven years? >> well, the iraq war without a question is, you know, a -- if

anybody still believes in america, in mexico, you know, you have to understand the united states has invaded mexico five times. they teach the scenario about how the u.s. is going to invade mexico on any given day. we've never had a great reputation. accept for those kind of people generally called [speaking spanish] . that have always looked for some place else as the model. they reject mexico as a model. based on [speaking spanish] the wife of cortez who was the first indigenous person to come over to the conquistadors. he has a bad name. on the other hand, there are a lot of people twittering, there are a lot of people that richest man in the world has made his fortune on cell phones, there is a commercial overlay in mexico that i think is dangerous in terms of cultural imperillism.

although, i'd like to point out that mexico is a civilization. right? civilization for millenniums, it's like granite imposed upon the u.s. culture. so you can cover up the granite, but the granite will always be there, you'll always know it's there. take me back to where you came from. what was the question? >> all right. the question being the -- it was america in the past 8 years, we haven't invaded mexico. >> in terms of people's ability to deal with transnationals and nafta and all of that, you know, trade liberalization, it is represented by washington and washington's policy? mexico. it has been a disaster for the country. millions of people have lost

their land and lost their jobs. and the people that nafta was going to bring us, they have all gone to china, because they pay 1/4 to the amount that they pay the people in mexico. the u.s. stock is not very high in mexico these days. it's never been high. it may be modified, as i mention, by the kind of commercial glitter that, you know, that we see kind of sprinkled in urban centers more than anything else. also, i think there's no question that the number of mexicans working in the u.s., you know, they spread that. they spread that, you know, what they have found that america con conscienceness in terms of what they bring home and the money they make. let's be clear that people aren't sending money home now.

because of the economic conditions in this country, people are not working. they are not eating and paying their rent. families in mexico are sending money to their people here in the u.s. to be able to make the nut on a daily basis here. we've found families that are sending money up here to them. so i don't think -- i think things have gotten -- if anything, it's always constant. anti-americanism, yankeeism, it's is constant in mexico. whether it's increased or decreased, i would say it's the change is inperceptible. i'm going to look over here first. okay. >> i was wondering, what mechanisms does the u.s. residents use to extract from the drug war in the mexico government and do you think any ewe lateral legalization of drugs on the part of mexico government? >> we've had a slight manifest

manifestation for personal use. four skinny joints. and couple of flakes of cocaine. but, you know, that's the law and the books and the cop still do exactly what they have always done, anyway? you know, you've got this stuff. pay me money. i won't make any trouble with you. basically, that's street law. even that when it was first passed, bush called the then president on the phone and said you can't do that. and actually calderon did sign off on modification of small amounts, and i mean small amounts for personal usage. you know? there is, i think a very active movement to legalize marijuana in mexico, no? you know, first of all, like, we look in terms of the trade in

marijuana, no? u.s. produces more marijuana tan any other country in the world? you know? doesn't make any sense for mexican drug gangs to be involved in shipping large amounts of marijuana to the united states. it's bulky, you have to get big trucks to do it. you have to have a lot of people harvesting and planting this stuff. and mexican marijuana is not very good. and the price you get for it is minimal, no? what happens with marijuana in mexico, is this. it's used as a decoy. so you get, you know, a truck taken down with say 400 kilos, no? you know, maybe 1,000 pounds. a sizable haul. well, that's sacrifice. the drug guys are sacrificing, because the car right in back of that is going to be carrying cocaine. it's an old trick within the mexican drug trade to send up the decoy and send the stuff in

by another route. that's basically, it's pleases the drug enforcement people to take down a load of 400 kilos of marijuana, you know? and the drug lords are able to use it as a substitute. so that game goes on. you know, right there. but i don't -- i don't think there's enough at this point to legalize all drugs. and mexico city we have kind of decriminalized marijuana at this point. it's way ahead of the curve. of course, the only way to deal with this is to take the profit out of the, you know, out of drugs. mexico doesn't roll cocaine. cocaine in mexico is a trampoline by which the klumian drug lords have been able to get cocaine into the u.s. because they contacted very early in the game with the wows who owned the

heroin routes going north with traditional poppy before that. they own the routes. they contacted those guys to show them how to do it. pretty soon they were saying, we have the routes here. we should have a part of the trade. pretty soon they have taken over what columbian drug lords. you know? >> one more question. >> more questions. is c-span getting this down? [laughter] >> i had a question related to the previous question asked in terms of what is the sense of more radical groups in mexico to

have immigration reform here in america. you have the border and the horrible conditions for the mexico immigrant giving america faith. so on the flip side, you have the idea of, you know, opening up that shine of capitalize to america, that that's really doing things in the idea, you know, of course of america immigration form for the social pressures in mexico that could produce revolution. what is some of the more radical people in mexico towards the immigration? >> i don't think that's going to matter. was that has here is there's a change in the congressional vote on immigration reform. on the border, they need the people working. no? they need to have money sent back home. it's their cheap source of income here in mexico, no? those remissions, as i recall, they are down by 1/5 last year and they are going to be down much more.

as you say, out migration is a safety valve. if you can't get across the border and can't get across the border now. cost you $5,000 and you might not get across even if you pay that $5,000. that kind of locks people into a situation that's like a pressure cooker, no? what's important here is mexicans in this country, undocumented workers known as illegal, undocumented workers in the country and mexican americans and people of all races, creeds, and color that is are in this country because that is what made this country in fact is people coming here and doing the dirty work that one group after another would have to do because, let's face it, whitey doesn't like to do it. you know? so in the end, it is for those immigrant workers here to be able to align with organizized labor, to be able to align people with good will everywhere

and put the pressures on congress. that almost happened in 2006. we had a million people on the straight in may 1st in 2006. what we got after that was lou dobbs, ice raids, you know, real time mexico bashing people. people were getting knifed and bottles and things thrown as people just for the color of their skin. we have a series of repressive instants that drove people back into the shadows. they thought they were going to be sent home if they continued on the street. just march 21 in front of the congress, 200,000 people were there talking about immigration reform. that to me tells me that people are coming back out of the shadows. people are -- maybe they see obama, some hope, they maybe the last people in america to see some hope there. you know? maybe they see hope there.

thinking that this is the time to make a move. the bill that is before congress, forget about it. you know? they have to say they are guiltiy of a crime and have to pay $20,000 in fine and back taxes for every member of their family in the country, it instituted a guess workers program which will allow u.s. employees to bring in people on starving wedges and got some terrible things in it, no. a lot of broken promises in there. the struggle is on. what we hear, what we can do here to modify what congress intends to do, that's our work. [applause]

>> in event took place at redd -- red emma's coffee house. to learn more visit redemma redemmas.org. >> next the story of the first ever inoculation program, tony williams tells the story of the the pox and the government. >> thank you very much. thank you for the kind

introduction. i'm glad we have a full house. thanks for coming out for the independent book sellers. delightful. i am almost tempted to leave the podium and arrange the shelfs for a couple of hours and join me for a cup of coffee. there is the 20 year an very tear. congratulations to the bookstore, and hopefully i'll be able to come back on their 40th anniversary in a couple of decades, god willing. anyway, it's interesting, i'm going out on the book tour and speaking to a lot of audiences about both of my books. it's always interesting to see the kind of reaction you'll get to the books. most of it positive. most of the interesting comments from a friend of mine in

williamsburg that came up and said, tony, i have to admit, i really didn't like history very much in school. because it was kind of boring. but you make it come alive. i love your book. i feel like i'm there. i feel like i'm in new hampshire fishing and i'm so engrossed in the book. i feel like i'm there. of course, i was appreciative and said thank you. :

i think it is a great story and i'm really glad to be here to share with you. if you'll indulge me, i will start by doing just a little reading from the beginning of the book. the killer escaped notice because it was microscopic, a virus. it did not yet have a human-- but that did not matter. the virus could survive for weeks outside of the human body such as in a blanket or an article of clothing. because of the timing of the voyage and the appearance of symptoms it is likely that no sailor was infected until halfway through the voyage. it would not be difficult under some circumstances where sailor to read and millions of very small viruses and such items as

a blanket or an article of clothing. the virus of course is not conscious of its actions. the organism simply knew that a human host so that i could reproduce. in order for a sailor to catch the disease, he needed to have been free of the disease from the moment of infection, because you receive immunity for life if you survive smallpox. even if the light self-awareness of the virus-- one of the sailors, the voice to america normally lasted about two weeks. the virus infected a sailor too early in the voyage, it would kill several sailors but the infection would be confined to a single ship because the captain would not-- if the ship was full of confusion. the sailor could contract the disease and would enter a population of susceptible people and spread it without realizing it. the disaster is result of his

innocent action. shipped off at malevolence and the royal navy as well as merchant ships traverse the atlantic between europe, africa, the caribbean and british north america. they regularly stopped at ports for supplies and trade. the interconnected global nature of these imperial networks gave the virus the potential to unleash a major pandemic that can kill many thousands of people. and in fact, a sailor did contract a bond in a british warship coming from a convoy of ships that were headed for angwin and stopped off in boston for repairs and to trade, and it was aboard the hms seahorse. the seahorse was set for boston, massachusetts, the center of american puritanism since its founding exact way a century before. puritanism was shaped like a

covenant of theology and the puritans understanding in reaction to the disease would be completely shaped by their puritan outlook. puritanism was its greatest challenge because of the outbreak. bishop holding the boston harbor and many of the crew went ashore including this one sailor who had smallpox, and he didn't know what. he went ashore and frequented probably the taverns of boston which sailors would want to do on occasion and he also probably went into some other shops and was interacting with a lot of people and with every cough, with every sneeze, every handshake, with every interaction with other people he was spreading smallpox around boston. and in fact, he came down with symptoms a few days later and so did another person in town.

it came to the notice of the town authorities and they reacted very quick way, because smallpox had ravaged boston and other port cities about every generation. people had been born who had no immunity to the smallpox. a ship would come in, bring the disease and inept atomic would happen about every 20 years. in this case, they reacted. they send the nurse to their homes. they put the guards at the doors at the two victims and they also flew a flag outside the house which was a red flag which said god have mercy on this house. and they thought they had successfully isolated these people. of course-- within a few more weeks in early may they noticed that there were eight more cases of smallpox around the town, and i charted them on maps from 1722

, and i found most tragically, they were in every single corner of boston. again, those people were going to bear fruit in meeting houses, going to the angling-- anglican church in town. they interacted with their family members, with their neighbors and again spreading smallpox all over the town. now, an unlikely person stepped into this mix. he was perhaps the most famous scientist and the most renowned scientists in all of america. he was a member of the british royal society and regularly send contributions to the royal society. he had a library with some 3000 books and had studied medicine at harvard. he had worked out an almanac and even started the first scientific society in all of the

american colonies. he left an autobiography for his children and also wrote essays i'm doing good. now, of course you know who i am talking about, right? benjamin franklin, right? of course he would be wrong. the answer is surprisingly, cotton mathers. a lot of people don't know that. he was one of the most advanced scientist at the stake. preaching centrism and the idea of the scientific revolution right from the pulpit. back in 1716, he had talked to one of his slaves, and he asked him, did you have smallpox? and the slave answered, well yes and no. and you can see that the slave confounded this great scientist. he probably had a quizzical look on his face and mather asked him, what do you mean?

the slave patiently explained the matter. yes i had smallpox, but not probably in the way that you think. i was inoculated, and he actually showed in the scar on his arm. and he told mather about inoculation. mather also writes about a practice in greece and turkey a few months later from the british royal society. what inoculation was, unless you have seen the john adams video and you would have seen abigail and the children being inoculated, they would simply make an incision in the arm. they would squeeze out smallpox virus from a victim and mix it in with the blood and you would get smallpox. but usually the symptoms were mild or and the death rate was much, much lower. as you will see it was down around one to 3% for getting inoculated and up around 15 to

30% which was pretty normal for getting it through the respiratory system in the common way. now, completely virgin populations who never had any exposure to it, the death rate was tragically 70, 80, 90% so it was very tragic for them and really their pearland. now that-- mather learned about this and he said next time there is an epidemic involve, i'm going to call together physicians, meeting of the doctors and get them to practice inoculation. of course mather was a man of enlightenment, a man of reason and he just assumed everyone would go along with his idea. and he was a bit vain, a bit vain and assumed everyone would follow along. in fact when the epidemic hit and mather learned about it in this town of only 11,000 people, he did write a letter to the doctors asking them to practice

inoculation. and he was met with stony silence. nobody responded. and he was probably quite confused by that, and so sent them another letter. one bone dr., dr. boyle, responded. we don't have a record of the meeting that we can imagine the meeting may be at the home conferring about it, maybe talking exactly about how inoculation is done in thinking about their plan for practicing it. he could not be inoculated himself. he had had smallpox before and they knew enough that the inoculation, he could not get smallpox again so he tested it out on his own six-year-old son. now i have a six-year-old son and i can imagine having the courage to actually test of this untested medical procedure on him that might possibly kill him.

he also tested it out very interesting way on his two slaves, a father and a son. i don't know whether this slaves actually consented or not and it raises all kinds of interesting questions about the nature of slavery. i would like to imagine getting to know dr. boylston across 300 years in the course of my research, that he did ask them for their consent. but i have no evidence of that. i can confirm it either way. it raises a lot of interesting questions. he tested it out on the trio, and infected worked. boylston's son took a turn for the worst but he does survive and boylston shows that it works. so other people in the small town, although it was the largest city in america at the time with 11,000 people, other people hear about it. mather boylston, they didn't try to hide the fact that they were inoculated and seven other

people come and they are inoculated too. well, the town goes berserk. everyone goes ballistic. there was outrage. 1000 people fled boston for their lives in fear of the smallpox virus, and people were outraged. they said how when the world can you give people smallpox when they are already getting it? this didn't make sense to them. you are just going to spread it around and kill everybody. and boylston was confronted in the streets of boston and mather was confronted. they were assaulted in the streets and let me give you a little-- mather felt under a great deal of pressure from everyone and this is what he wrote. he said, the destroyer being enraged at the proposal, talking about the devil, the embrace of the proposal of anything that may rescue the lives of our poor

people from hamm has taken a strange possession of the-- on this occasion. they raise, they real, they blasphemed. they talk not only like idiots but also like frantic and not only be positioned began the experiment, but also by and the object of your fury. and 18th century language he says. [inaudible] than a one on to say another day, the clamor of of the people strangely and fiercely possessing the devil will probably prevent the lives of my own two children from the smallpox in the way of transplantation. his own two children. we can imagine cotton mather, his own two children had never had smallpox and he was afraid for their lives. he wanted them to get inoculated and was afraid that his own children would die if the town put an end to it.

in fact, boylston a few weeks later was halted for the town authorities and selectmen. they heard some evidence about the terrors of inoculation and they ordered him to stop. but boylston, like a good fiercely independent new englander, ignore them and persisted, rejected their authority and persisted. he wanted to save lives. he saw that it worked and he wanted to continue. again the town went crazy and set up a huge debate, because in the newspapers of austen, and the pamphlets in this very literate city, with newspapers, a lot of publishers to publish pamphlets, the puritans were highly literate and really valued education, to read the bible and other books. they believed in sol a script dora and were highly literate. and so it sets up a debate for

the people very publicly. and they debate against and for inoculation. this is where the story gets even more fascinating. it is so curious. the main proponents of inoculation, as i said, where the puritan ministers, not just cotton mather but the other puritan ministers and oslo dr. dr. boylston. the opponents of inoculation were all the other doctors that of boston. here are their reasons. the doctors said, why are you giving people smallpox when it is our ready raging in town? they couldn't think of-- dogmatic framework. their paradigm, their way of thinking, they couldn't embrace a new way of doing things. even more interestingly, they said they quoted scripture against it.

they quoted scripture against inoculation and also made religious arguments against it with puritan predestination. they said look, this is god's will from the beginning of time. people were getting sick and you can't intervene in that and if you do you will bring down greater plagues among us. and they said, just like in the book of job with the epidemic for our collective sense. don't bring down greater wrath from heaven. the doctors were saying that. cotton mather in his argument takes the natural law approach. he says no, god gave us reason to discover medical to pick truth than discoveries so that we can help people. and he also counters by saying, oh, we can't intervene and yet the will of god can kill people? maybe we shouldn't have doctors at all. it makes perfect sense, makes perfect sense.

because mather brand information from one of his slaves, the doctors also made despicable very lovely racist arguments against it. they said, you have gotten your information from a slave? and mather, to his credit, even when he was attacked for it, he never said i never had an ah-hah moment, never claimed credit. always said yes, i learned this information. the doctors are saying, you can't learn from that. they are slaves, they lack reason. they are not fully human. they are sneaky, they are liars. mather said no, god gave them reason. they are human beings. we can learn from them and in fact god gave them a special care that as advanced europeans don't even have. also, the doctor said you

learned this information from greece and turkey. the muslims are pagans. you can't learn from them either. and so, cotton mather and the ministers responded, we can't learn from pagans? you mean ancient pagans like hypocrisies and galen, those ancient doctors who shaped the entire dogmatic way of practicing medicine? those pagans? it is a very fierce debate. and you know, the doctors also were attacking learning from native americans and mather said no, the learn how to cure snake bax-- rattlesnake bites from them. god gave them a special affliction, a special disease but he also gave them a special care and we can learn from all of these non-western people. mather in this whole debate comes across as really pretty liberal minded, open-minded and

even by 2010 standards. it is really quite amazing. and while the doctors-- it is a crazy debate. the doctors refuse to even examined one patient, even under completely isolated conditions out on an island in boston harbor. they said, we are not going to see patients, even if they have smallpox. they refuse to see patients. mather said, and boylston said come see one patient. we want you to. the doctors, especially dr. william douglas who was a primary opponent of inoculation also have a copy of the 1760 journal. mather said, i don't have mind. can we please borrow yours to make sure we are doing this correctly? just to make sure because we don't want anyone to die if we do it wrong.

what do you think douglas' answer was? i am not going to let you see it. whetted boylston and mather do? they form a hypothesis based upon this information that they gather around throughout observation and through reading. they form a hypothesis and they tested. it works, they retested and then they retested again and retested and they form a theory about inoculation, that this is the way to save lives. i am not a scientist. i am an historian. you know that the scientific method, right? i know my sixth grade science vaguely, but i know enough about it to know that that is a scientific matter. mather in boylston come across as extremely scientific so this debate raises this very curious debate.

and he steps into the fray in august of 1721? you are going to love this. these brother started newspaper called the new england current, and who are these brothers? a young james and benjamin franklin. and their paper is started for the primary purpose of opposing inoculation. they serve as a mouthpiece for the opposition and they print every scurrilous attack on inoculation upon the power of the ministers. they print every piece of scandalous and vicious verse against the ministers and just go after their jugular. now, let me be very clear that james and benjamin franklin don't necessarily write themselves against smallpox. but, they do serve as the mouthpiece for the opposition, and this goes down right into the gutter, right into the mud. they are viciously attacking

each other personally, calling each other names. the partisanship of today would look like to boy scouts talking in comparison to these tax that they were launching at each other. it was just a vicious debate. so to continue, the debate rages. now, meanwhile people are dying of smallpox. june and july, about a dozen people die. more more people are getting smallpox. in august, about 26 people die. in september the numbers are up to 101. people are dying, hundreds and hundreds. it is raging in the fault. thousands are sick in october. as many as 411 people die of smallpox in october. now there is another group that didn't engage in this very public debate. they didn't really leave a lot of records of how they felt about all this, but i thought their story was really

important. when you got smallpox you could barely eat or drink if they got into your throat and you can imagine them dripping a few drops of water into these children's throats. may be staying up far into the night tending them by the fireside come even to their own detriment. you can imagine how tired they were. maybe they even had smallpox but were still tending to the children. they went out of their gardens to get curbs, for they had rescue books passed down from their mothers and grandmothers, not only food recipes but also cares and they probably knew as much of the old medicine coming down from the greeks and romans as the doctors in town who had read about them. and of course you know who i'm talking about, the women of boston. the great silent majority who didn't necessarily have records but as i call it in the book,

they were the great unsung heroes of this epidemic. why? because they put the needs of the sick before their own needs, and helped take care of them. in october, as i said 411 died and the debate continued, it raged. i am going to do my primary reading from a book about how one christian reacted to cotton mather and his support of inoculation. one person in boston had had enough of the high and mighty cotton mather. he loaded his position over everybody, thinking that it was better than everyone of them. he was filled with rage that this minister was with boylston giving people smallpox. what they were doing just did not make sense. the resentment boiled into weeks and months and now was about to explode. the person must have nervously

sat in his home and material spread out on the table. i should have a table for a prop here. the individual black powder into a spherical shape, some liquid bowls a powder into a metal bowl. he probably fear that someone would knock on the door and discover what was going on. the figure went over to a desk and grabbed a coil, some ancop and a few small pieces of parchment. he might've thrown a couple of scraps away to find his feelings were properly conveyed. that individual chose his words carefully. he reached for a small quarter of material. now, we use the conventional heat because my editor rewrote it, but i actually don't know of that was a man or a woman so just keep that in the back of your mind. the mather home was still in the morning hours before dawn.

three guests were in the lodging room. mather's nephew to travel from rocks buried with two gentlemen. walter had-- to undergo the smallpox inoculation and returned to the service, which had the confusion begun among them. walter was one of the cases that have prompted the town authorities to stop people from coming into boston for that purpose. rat roughly three clock in the morning on november 14, the figure probably stood in the shadows staring at the windows of the home and planning his escape route. the metal was called to the touch, but at first of the fire was brought into contact with diffuse. he hurled the weapon toward the house. shattered glass and the iron ball smashed under walter's bedroom and instantly evoke him and the others in the brown. mather came running into the

room with his wife, his daughter nancy and his servants. the ministers saw the bomb buying into pieces on the floor. he bent down to inspected, saying if he wrote and i love this language, the granato was charged. the upper part would drive part -- powder, the lower part with oil and turpentine and powder and what else i know not. looking around the room mather wrote, passing through the window the iron in the middle giving such a turn to at that and falling on the floor the fire, the wildfire in the fuse was badly shaken out of bore without firing the granada. everyone present especially walter and his traveling companions knew that they were lucky to be alive. after all as mather road, the weight of the iron ball a long had it fallen on walters had would would have been enough to done part of the business-- but if it had detonated it surely would

have killed him. mather thought that as he wrote, upon its going off it must have split and probably would have killed the person to the brim and certainly fired the chamber and speedily laid my house and ashes. interestingly, mather picked up the broken pieces of the grenade to inspected and found a piece of paper tied to the fuse with a string and he wrote it might outlive the breaking of the show. now, i don't personally know why do you would put a note on a bomb. [laughter] however, maybe he just wants to get his feelings out. i don't know. it was a dubious proposition that the parchment would survive the incendiary explosion. but the assailant rode out the message and attach it anyway. dread, cotton mather you dog, you. i will inoculate you with this, with a pox on you.

mather did indeed survive this assassination attempt. and the smallpox epidemic did eventually wither away. out of 11,000 people, 1000 people fled, 6000 people got smallpox in 1721, 6000. i would imagine of the other 4000 who were remaining probably already had smallpox so it is probably likely that very few people who were in boston in 1721 is gaped who were susceptible, escaped from getting smallpox. now out of those 6000, almost 1000 died. they were talking about a death rate which we would expect about teen 16, very common. but, more importantly, and very benevolently, we have the discovery of inoculation. they tested it out, boylston inoculated almost 250 people an