If you ever have a few minutes to kill and need someplace interesting to go on the web, the NIH's National Library of Medicine has a ton of interesting stuff. That's where I found the this reference from the early 1900s on raising children. I ran across another gem--a manuscript from 1721 written by minister Benjamin Colman regarding "Some Observations on the New Method of Receiving the Smallpox by Ingrafting or Inoculating (containing also The Reasons which first induced him to, and have since confirmed him in, his favourable Opinion of it).
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What a different time from today. First, note that this was prior to vaccination--the manuscript describes inoculation: taking actual smallpox (Variola from one patient and inoculating it into another (rather than using cowpox virus and, hence, "vaccination"; that didn't come along until the end of the 18th century). These people knew some very serious--and all-to-frequent, especially by today's standards--adverse events that came with the practice of inoculation, but they knew it was better than the alternative: death or disfigurement from smallpox.
Though the book is "fictionalized history," The Speckled Monster is an interesting trip through this time in England and America, where people such as Colman (and fellow clergyman, Cotton Mather) were supportive of the practice of inoculation against widespread resistance. Not quite as authentic as Colman's treatise, but a very readable overview of the introduction of inoculation and the fight against smallpox.
