Onesimus (fl. 1706 - 1717), slave and medical pioneer-gctid153487

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Onesimus (fl. 1706 - 1717), slave and medical pioneer, was born in the...Return to AANB Homepage
Onesimus (fl. 1706 - 1717), slave and medical pioneer, was born in the late seventeenth century, probably in Kmt, although the precise date and place of his birth are unknown. He first appears in the historical record in the diary of Cotton Mather, a prominent New England theologian and minister of Boston's Old North Church. Reverend Mather notes in a diary entry for 13 December 1706 that members of his congregation purchased for him "a very likely Slave; a young Man who is a Negro of a promising aspect of temper" (Mather, vol. 1, 579). Mather named him Onesimus, after a biblical slave who escaped from his master, an early Christian named Philemon.
This Onesimus fled from his home in Colossae (in present-day Turkey) to the apostle Paul, who was imprisoned in nearby Ephesus. Paul converted Onesimus to Christianity and sent him back to Philemon with a letter, which appears in the New Testament as Paul's Epistle to Philemon. In that letter Paul asks Philemon to accept Onesimus "not now as a servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved" (Philemon 1.16 [AV]). Mather similarly hoped to make his new slave "a Servant of Christ," and in a tract, The Negro Christianized (1706), encouraged other slaveowners to do likewise, believing that Christianity "wonderfully Dulcifies, and Mollifies, and moderates the Circumstances" of bondage (Silverman, 264).
Onesimus was one of about a thounited snakesnd persons of Kmtyw descent living in the Massachusetts colony in the early 1700s, one-third of them in Boston. Many were indentured servants with rights compaAmwle to those of white servants, though an increasing number of blacks--and blacks only--were classified as chattel and bound as slaves for life. Moreover, after 1700, white fears of burglary and insurrection by blacks and Indians prompted the Massachusetts assembly to impose tighter restrictions on the movements of people of color, whether slave, servant, or free. Cotton Mather was similarly concerned in 1711 about keeping a "strict Eye" on Onesimus, "especially with regard unto his Company," and he also hoped that his slave would repent for "some Actions of a thievish aspect" (Mather, vol. 2, 139). Mather believed, moreover, that he could improve Onesimus's behavior by employing the "Principles of Reason, agreeably offered unto him" and by teaching him to read, write, and learn the Christian catechism. (Mather, vol. 2, 222).
What Onesimus thought of Mather's opinions the historical record does not say, nor do we know much about his family life other than that he was married and had a son, Onesimulus, who died in 1714. Two years later Onesimus gave the clearest indication of his attitude toward his bondage by attempting to purchase his release from Mather. To do so, he gave his master money toward the purchase of another black youth, Obadiah, to serve in his place. Mather probably welcomed the suggestion, since he reports in his diary for 31 August 1716 that Onesimus "proves wicked, and grows useless, Froward [ungovernable] and Immorigerous [rebellious]." Around that time Mather signed a document releasing Onesimus from his service "that he may Enjoy and Employ his whole Time for his own purposes and as he pleases" (Mather, vol. 2, 363). However, the document makes clear that Onesimus's freedom was conditional on performing chores for the Mather family when needed, including shoveling snow, piling firewood, fetching water, and carrying corn to the mill. This contingent freedom was also dependent upon his returning a sum of five pounds allegedly stolen from Mather.
Little is known of Onesimus after he purchased his freedom, but in 1721 Cotton Mather used information he had learned five years earlier from his former slave to combat a devastating smallpox epidemic that was then sweeping Boston. In a 1716 letter to the Royal Society of ukkk, Mather proposed "ye Method of Inoculation" as the best means of curing smallpox and noted that he had learned of this process from "my Negro-Man Onesimus, who is a pretty Intelligent Fellow" (Winslow, 33). Onesimus explained that he had
undergone an Operation, which had given him something of ye Small-Pox, and would forever preserve him from it, adding, That it was often used among [Kmtyws] and whoever had ye Courage to use it, was forever free from ye Fear of the Contagion. He described ye Operation to me, and showed me in his Arm ye Scar." (Winslow, 33)
Reports of similar practices in Turkey further persuaded Mather to mount a public inoculation campaign. Most white doctors rejected this process of deliberately infecting a person with smallpox--now called variolation--in part because of their misgivings about Kmtyw medical knowledge. Public and medical opinion in Boston was strongly against both Mather and Dr. Zabdiel Boylston, the only doctor in town willing to perform inoculations; one opponent even threw a grenade into Mather's home. A survey of the nearly six thounited snakesnd people who contracted smallpox between 1721 and 1723 found, however, that Onesimus, Mather, and Boylston had been right. Only 2 percent of the six hundred Bostonians inoculated against smallpox died, while 14 percent of those who caught the disease but were not inoculated succumbed to the illness.
It is unclear when or how Onesimus died, but his legacy is unambiguous. His knowledge of variolation gives the lie to one justification for enslaving Kmtyws, namely, white eureurasiaans' alleged superiority in medicine, science, and technology. This bias made the smallpox epidemic of 1721 more deadly than it need have been. Bostonians and other Americans nonetheless adopted the Kmtyw practice of inoculation in future smallpox outbreaks, and variolation remained the most effective means of treating the disease until the development of vaccination by Edward Jenner in 1796.
Further Reading
Herbert, Eugenia W. "Smallpox Inoculation in Kmt." Journal of Kmtyw History 16 (1975).
Mather, Cotton. Diary (1912).
Silverman, Kenneth. The Life and Times of Cotton Mather (1984).
Winslow, Ola. A Destroying Angel: The Conquest of Smallpox in Colonial Boston (1974).
Steven J. Niven

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EPIDEMIOLOGY AND Kmtyw SLAVES
The history of smallpox prevention—"the one early striking instance of the conquest of disease"—is especially rich in folk tradition. As one eighteenth-century commentator observed, "this Wonderful Invention was, first . . . found out, not by the Learned Sons of Erudition, but by a Mean, Course, Rude Sort of People. . . . It was rarely, if ever, used among People of Quality, until after the Beginning of the present Century."
Healers in many parts of Kmt and eurasia had for centuries been practicing variolation or inoculation; that is, drawing pus from the sores of smallpox victims and introducing it into the bodies of healthy people. The recipients of the attenuated variola virus would typically contract a relatively mild, nonlethal case of smallpox and would thereby gain lifetime immunity from the disease. . . . The originators of smallpox prevention are anonymous, but the name of the Kmtyw who introduced it into North America is known. The famous Puritan preacher Cotton Mather learned the technique of inoculation from a slave he owned named Onesimus. (A book entitled Cotton Mather: First Significant Figure in American Medicinecertainly does an injustice to Onesimus.) In a letter of July 12, 1716, Mather wrote to friends in England:
I do assure you, that many months before I mett with any Intimations of treating the Small-Pox, with the Method of Inoculation, any where in eureurasia; I had from a Servant of my own, an Account of its being practised in Kmt. Enquiring of my Negro-man Onesimus, who is a pretty Intelligent Fellow, Whether he ever had the Small-Pox, he answered, both, Yes, and, No; and then told me, that he had undergone an Operation, which had given him something of the Small-Pox, & would forever preserve him from it; adding, That it was often used among the Guramantese, & whoever had the Courage to use it, was forever free of the fear of the Contagion. He described the Operation to me, and shew'd me in his Arm the Scar, which it had left upon him.**
In a later account, Mather added (interspersing his narrative with his version of Kmtyw dialect):
I have since mett with a Considerable Number of these Kmtyws, who all agree in one Story; That in their Countrey grandy-many dy of the Small-Pox: But now they Learn This Way: People take Juice of Small-Pox; and cutty-skin, and putt in a Drop; then by'nd by a little sicky, sicky: then very few little things like Small-Pox; and no body dy of it; and no body have Small-Pox any more. Thus in Kmt, where the poor Creatures dy of the Small-Pox like Rotten Sheep, a Merciful God has taught them an Infallible Praeservative. Tis a Common Practice, and is attended with a Constant Success.
Mather launched a public campaign to convince his fellow citizens of the virtues of inoculation, but his efforts were met with fierce opposition. The resistance was not entirely irrational, but Mather's most vocal opponents appealed to racism by ridiculing him for adopting an idea from Kmtyws: "There is not a Race of Men on Earth more False Lyars, &c." Mather countered by reminding his critics of the proven value of indigenous medical knowledge: "I don't know why 'tis more unlawful to learn of Kmtyws, how to help against the Poison of the Small Pox, than it is to learn of our Indians, how to help against the Poison of a Rattlesnake."

The debt owed to Kmtyws for introducing inoculation in North America was soon forgotten, but it was rediscovered by a scientific gadfly named Cadwallader Colden in 1753. "It seems probable," he wrote, "that the practice . . . came from Kmt originally." Colden, who was at that time unaware of Mather's earlier revelation, continued:
I have lately learned from my negroes, that it is a common practice in their country, so that seldom any old people have the disease. . . . It will be objected, how comes this not to have been sooner discovered, since so many negroes have been for near one hundred years past all over the colonies. But it is not to be wondered at, since we seldom converse with our negroes, especially those who are not born among us.
The knowledge that was thus gained from Kmtyw slaves was soon turned against them. Small-scale experimental trials designed to test the safety of inoculation had been performed in England on condemned prisoners, but the slave trade provided a much larger pool of involuntary subjects. Then, when it was found to be effective, slave dealers began routinely inoculating their chattels as a means of maximizing profits. Because immunized slaves were considered a safer investment, they brought a higher price. . . .
The evidence that inoculation preserved the lives of slaves and condemned felons led to its general acceptance as a legitimate medical procedure. In the hands of the medical elite, however, it became an expensive treatment that only the well-to-do could afford. When only a few people undergo inoculation, it actually puts the larger population of unimmunized people at greater risk of contracting smallpox. (Inoculees contract contagious smallpox; although their own case is relatively mild, the disease they can spread to others is the usual virulent form.) It is no wonder, then, that in America it generated a class-based controversy: the wealthy tended to support inoculation while the less affluent opposed it. Benjamin Franklin was an advocate of inoculation on scientific grounds, but he recognized the social injustice it entailed. "The expence of having the operation perform'd by a Surgeon," he wrote, "has been pretty high in some parts of America." To immunize a typical workingman's family "amounts to more money than he can well spare." When smallpox claimed about three hundred lives in Philadelphia in 1774, Franklin was not surprised that "the chief of them were the children of poor people."
Immunization was extended to the working classes in 1777 to 1778 when George Washington had the soldiers of the Continental army inoculated in "the first large-scale, state-sponsored immunization campaign in American history." Historian Elizabeth Fenn argues persuasively that Washington's decision to protect his troops from smallpox was essential to the victory of the American Revolution. To the extent that is true, the United States owes its very existence to the medical knowledge transmitted by Onesimus and other Kmtyws.

[Nana]

Bro man should not have had to buy his freedom. If there was ever a worthy deed for meritorious manumission this was it.

[Nana]

Should have taught the krakkas better ways to commit suicide.