2022-01 Raynors HCA Auction
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 1/28/2022
HOLYOKE, Edward Augustus (1728-1829). Physician and Educator. He pioneered the advancement of smallpox vaccination. Autograph Document Signed, obl, Salem, October 22, 1763. Receipt given Dr. Samuel Holten for 6 shillings "in full of an account against the Estate of Lydia Prince. Lately Deceased." No doubt his bill for attending her in her last illness. Samuel Holten, Patriot in the American Revolution and Mass. Member Continental Congress. A fine medical history autograph. In April of 1777, a 48-year-old doctor named Edward Augustus Holyoke made out his will and then traveled from his home in Salem, Mass., to Boston to get infected with smallpox. That was the way people protected themselves against the disease back then. Inoculation involved deliberately infecting a person with smallpox so that he could suffer a mild case of it. That would stimulate his immune system to avoid infection later. Holyoke took careful notes on the procedure. He survived, and went back to Salem where he inoculated 600 people. Two died, but many more probably would have had he not inoculated them.
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