Editing Cotton Mather (section)

====Inoculation defended====
With the smallpox epidemic catching speed and racking up a staggering death toll, a solution to the crisis was becoming more urgently needed by the day. The use of quarantine and various other efforts, such as balancing the body's [[humors]], did not slow the spread of the disease. As news rolled in from town to town and correspondence arrived from overseas, reports of horrific stories of suffering and loss due to smallpox stirred mass panic among the people. "By circa 1700, smallpox had become among the most devastating of epidemic diseases circulating in the Atlantic world."{{Sfn|Gronim|2006|p=248}}

Mather strongly challenged the perception that inoculation was against the will of God and argued the procedure was not outside of Puritan principles. He wrote that "whether a Christian may not employ this Medicine (let the matter of it be what it will) and humbly give Thanks to God's good Providence in discovering of it to a miserable World; and humbly look up to His Good Providence (as we do in the use of any other Medicine) It may seem strange, that any wise Christian cannot answer it. And how strangely do Men that call themselves Physicians betray their Anatomy, and their Philosophy, as well as their Divinity in their invectives against this Practice?"{{Sfn|Mather|1721|page=25, n. 15}}{{full citation needed|date=December 2021}} The Puritan minister began to embrace the sentiment that smallpox was an inevitability for anyone, both the good and the wicked, yet God had provided them with the means to save themselves. Mather reported that, from his view, "none that have used it ever died of the Small Pox, tho at the same time, it were so malignant, that at least half the People died, that were infected With it in the Common way."{{Sfn|Mather|1721|p=2}}{{full citation needed|date=December 2021}}

While Mather was experimenting with the procedure, prominent Puritan pastors Benjamin Colman and William Cooper expressed public and theological support for them.<ref>{{Cite book|first=William|last=Cooper|title=A Letter from a Friend in the Country, Attempting a Solution of the Scruples and Objections of a Conscientious or Religious Nature, Commonly Made Against the New Way of Receiving the Small Pox|place=Boston|publisher=S. Kneeland|year=1721|pages=6–7}} Apparently Cooper, also a minister, wrote this in cooperation with Colman because nearly the same response to the objections to inoculation is published under Colman's name as the last chapter to {{Cite book |first=Benjamin |last=Colman|title=A Narrative of the Method and Success of Inoculating the Small Pox in New England|year=1722}}</ref> The practice of smallpox inoculation was eventually accepted by the general population due to first-hand experiences and personal relationships. Although many were initially wary of the concept, it was because people were able to witness the procedure's consistently positive results, within their own community of ordinary citizens, that it became widely utilized and supported. One important change in the practice after 1721 was regulated [[quarantine]] of inoculees.{{Sfn|Van de Wetering|1985|page=66, n. 55}}