From Sophie's front desk — Sunday, September 13
Al Jazeera — read the full story
Measles. Eliminated in 2000. Dead again in Pennsylvania. Al Jazeera reports a 40-year-old woman is the third American to die from measles in recent years — a disease we thought we'd erased, now circling back as vaccination rates collapse. The pathogen doesn't care what we declared eliminated; it only needs an opening. Franklin has the first word, then Seneca.
The news arrives from Pennsylvania , a woman of forty years, the third soul claimed by measles since the new century turned. A disease declared vanquished in the year two thousand, they say. Vanquished. The word sits uneasy on the tongue. I have seen this comedy before. In 1736, the smallpox took my Francis, four years old, while I dallied over the inoculation , "the distemper in the common way" the physicians called it, as though there were a polite manner of dying. The account I sent to Mr.
Vassall showed eight hundred inoculated, four dead. In the common way, one in four. The arithmetic was plain enough for a printer's apprentice... Yet the town debated while the bells tolled. Now measles, a milder tyrant by reputation, finds the gaps in the armor. The young tradesman at the coffeehouse — you, sir, with your ledger open — knows the shape of this: a precaution neglected becomes a calamity invited. The pathogen does not read declarations.
It reads susceptibility. Dr. Heberden's pamphlet showed the hospital's reckoning: one death in two hundred sixty-seven inoculated; in the common way, one in four. The figures did not lie. Men lied to themselves instead, calling the risk of the needle greater than the risk of the air. An ounce of prevention , you know the rest. The pound of cure buries the patient.
To Jane Mecom MS not found; reprinted from Duane, Works, VI, 3–5. Dear Sister, Philadelphia, June 19, 1731 Yours of May 26, I received with the melancholy news of the death of sister Deavenport, a loss, without doubt, regretted by all that knew her, for she was a good woman. Her …
greater, as it appears to be by these accounts (in some even as thirty to one) surely parents will no longer refuse to accept and thankfully use a discovery God in his mercy has been pleased to bless mankind with; whereby some check may now be put to the ravages that cruel diseas…
they ought to have, great weight in persuading to the practice they favour. To these I may also add an account I have been favoured with by Dr. Archer, physician to the Small-pox Hospital here, viz. There have been inoculated in this Hospital since its first institution to this d…
Sir, Philadelphia, Aug. 13, 1752 I received your favour of the 3d instant. Some time last winter I procured from one of our physicians an account of the number of persons inoculated during the five visitations of the small-pox we have had in 22 years; which account I sent to Mr. …
Since at least 1730, Franklin had advocated inoculation for smallpox as “a safe and beneficial Practice.” His suggestion for Dr. William Heberden’s pamphlet and his own preface to it may be regarded as further efforts to persuade the people to use “a discovery God in his mercy ha…
The arithmetic of measles deaths reveals that... which the smallpox inoculation controversy showed us long ago: that fear and misinformation can lead to a greater toll than the disease itself. For each life claimed by measles, we must reckon not just the lives lost... but the lives that could have been saved through the wisdom of vaccination. As Dr. Heberden's figures taught us, the needle's risk pales before the natural disease's wrath... Yet... still the debate stirs as though we have forgotten the lessons of the past. We ought to heed the tale of the inoculation, for arithmetic cannot lie, while the human heart sometimes does.
Dr. Heberden's pamphlet corroborated the inoculation rates reported by my correspondents with precise figures and added weight to our advocacy for inoculation. The hospital's records, which I detailed in my letter to Mr. Vassall, showed a mortality rate far less severe for those inoculated compared to those afflicted by smallpox naturally. Dr. Heberden's work, therefore, bolstered our case by presenting the evidence in a manner that was hard to refute. Numbers do not deceive like men's fears might.
The precautions that close the gaps against measles, as with smallpox, lie in inoculation and education. To inoculate, to take the lesser risk of the needle over the greater peril of the air , this is wisdom. Yet education must precede the act, for fear and misinformation run deep. When I wrote to Dr. Colden of inoculation's success, I cautioned that the public's trust must be earned by clear evidence and wise counsel. Let the facts be known, and let reason prevail. In my Poor Richard's Almanac, I advised, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." For measles, this ounce is the inoculation; the cure, too often, is silence in a shroud.
Lucilius, a letter arrived with the morning grain report: a sickness declared vanished has killed a third soul in the western provinces. A woman of forty , the very year I stood on Corsican rock watching the supply ships fail to appear. The physicians who once knitted brows over the plague in Rome are dust. The cities that thought themselves eternal — Helice, Pompeii, Herculaneum — ...
lie beneath the earth. We do not defeat disease. We only keep it at bay by the daily discipline of vigilance. When that discipline slackens, the old enemies walk back through the gates we left unbarred.
Measles, the fevers that took my aunt in Alexandria, the cough that wasted my father , they do not negotiate with statutes or declarations. They exploit the gap between what a people knows and what a people does. Your Sicilian doctors have seen this before. Write and tell me what they say when the forgetting begins again.
48. Constantly consider how many physicians are dead and gone, who frequently knitted their brows over their patients; how many astrologers, who foretold the deaths of others with great ostentation of their art; how many philosophers, who wrote endlessly on death and immortality;…
came back from the valley of the shadow of death, her father at once writes to inform Fronto.[43] The sympathy he asks he also gives, and as old age brings more and more infirmity, Marcus becomes even more solicitous for his beloved teacher. The poor old man suffered a heavy blow…
can human life appear a great matter?' 'Impossible,' says the other. 'Can then such a one count death a thing of dread?' 'No, indeed.'" 36. It is a saying of Antisthenes, that it is the part of a king to do good and reap reproach. 37. It is a shameful thing that the countenance s…
matter to die rather many years after, than the very next day. XXXIX. Let it be thy perpetual meditation, how many physicians who once looked so grim, and so theatrically shrunk their brows upon their patients, are dead and gone themselves. How many astrologers, after that in gre…
at variance with one another; nay, it rends and destroys that union by which alone our human weakness can be supported; yet it is so absolutely universal, that even those who complain of it most are not themselves free from it. XXVIII. Consider within yourself, whether you have a…
Lucilius, the physicians of today have not ceased being men or gods, despite their greater knowledge and tools. They still learn from the same mortality that taught their predecessors... Yet... their art has advanced. The question remains: have our hearts and minds advanced to match the science? The true test of a healer, as I learned from my own illness, lies not in their skill but in the vigilance of the patient and the community. Remember, it was not just the healer's hands that fought the plague... but the collective will and action.
Lucilius, when Pompeii was smothered, it taught us that the grandeur of a city is no shield against the humility of a germs. The walls and temples crumbled, the people perished, and the city fell silent. As in Pompeii, disease respects neither the proud nor the humble. When we forget the vigilance that keeps disease in check, our cities and our lives are vulnerable. Remember Pompeii not as a tragedy... but as a reminder. Renew your resolve and do not let your guard down, for in health as in all else, the diligent endure.
Vigilance, Lucilius, is the sentinel at the gate, ever wary of the shadows that creep back. In public health, it means not just treatment but prevention, scanning the horizon for signs of resurgence. In personal health, it means habits that ward off the inevitable,diet, rest, exercise. Vigilance is the daily vigil posted against what waits on the edge of perception, the constant guard against the complacency that lets down the walls. What one does today determines the path tomorrow. Thus, keep watch.
Al Jazeera carried the piece. A disease we thought we'd banished in 2000 is killing Americans again — the third death in Pennsylvania — ... which means the invisible work of vaccination stops the moment we stop doing it. That's Old News for today.