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Book Review
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Volume 350:1266-1267 March 18, 2004 Number 12
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The Speckled Monster: A Historical Tale of Battling Smallpox

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By Jennifer Lee Carrell. 474 pp., illustrated. New York, Dutton, 2003. $25.95. ISBN 0-525-94736-1.

The severe epidemics of smallpox that swept through London and Boston in 1721 and 1722 caused scarring, blindness, and death. In Boston, almost 6000 people (out of a total population of 11,000) contracted smallpox, and more than 800 died. Doctors battled hopelessly against "the speckled monster" and applied the humoral therapies of bloodletting, blistering, and the so-called cool regimen, advocated by the distinguished English physician Thomas Sydenham. Into these geographically separate but similar scenes of chaotic misery stepped two unlikely heroes: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, a highly intelligent, beautiful but pockmarked, English aristocrat, and Zabdiel Boylston, a locally trained colonial . . . [Full Text of this Article]




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