Editing Benjamin Franklin (section)

===View on inoculation===
The concept of preventing [[smallpox]] by [[variolation]] was introduced to colonial America by an African slave named [[Onesimus (Bostonian)|Onesimus]] via his owner [[Cotton Mather]] in the early eighteenth century, but the procedure was not immediately accepted. [[James Franklin (printer)|James Franklin's]] newspaper carried articles in 1721<ref>{{cite web|url=https://theconversation.com/benjamin-franklins-fight-against-a-deadly-virus-colonial-america-was-divided-over-smallpox-inoculation-but-he-championed-science-to-skeptics-161569|title=Benjamin Franklin's Fight Against A Deadly Virus|date=July 2021 |via=The Conversation|access-date=September 27, 2021}}</ref> that vigorously denounced the concept.<ref>One article posited that "epidemeal distempers (such as smallpox) come as Judgments from an angry and displeased God."</ref>

However, by 1736 Benjamin Franklin was known as a supporter of the procedure. Therefore, when four-year-old "Franky" died of smallpox, opponents of the procedure circulated rumors that the child had been inoculated, and that this was the cause of his subsequent death. When Franklin became aware of this gossip, he placed a notice in the ''Pennsylvania Gazette'', stating: "I do hereby sincerely declare, that he was not inoculated, but receiv'd the Distemper in the common Way of Infection ... I intended to have my Child inoculated." The child had a bad case of flux [[diarrhea]], and his parents had waited for him to get well before having him inoculated. Franklin wrote in his ''Autobiography'': "In 1736 I lost one of my sons, a fine boy of four years old, by the small-pox, taken in the common way. I long regretted bitterly, and still regret that I had not given it to him by inoculation. This I mention for the sake of parents who omit that operation, on the supposition that they should never forgive themselves if a child died under it; my example showing that the regret may be the same either way, and that, therefore, the safer should be chosen."<ref>{{cite web|url=https://view.email.bostonglobe.com/?qs=cdc7f8085ee22f77eb071f6b9d9e4071a0c765f900ec6e121cc219f15fe3c7b0f14dac08a385bc3075ebdbdb0e92897b4a55d30a33d253fbd5bcff3a28c6d7166f8706d88252c267ccf997fa7e5174efba5c09e5fabbbcde|title=A Founding Father's Vaccine Regret|first=Jeff |last=Jacoby|date=September 27, 2021|access-date=September 27, 2021|via=[[Boston Globe]]}}</ref>