There are two stories that people tell about Onesimus, the enslaved African who helped save hundreds of Bostonians from smallpox in 1721.
The first is a simple one. When Onesimus is asked by his owner, Cotton Mather, about a scar on his forearm, he proceeds to describe the basics of smallpox inoculation — a practice that was already common in Asia and Africa but still relatively unknown in the American colonies. Onesimus explains that when the pus from an infected individual’s pustules is inserted into the broken skin of an uninfected person, the person suffers a mild reaction, but becomes immune to future infection. In the words of Onesimus, as transcribed by Mather some years later, “People take Juice of the Small-Pox; and Cutty-skin, and Putt in a Drop.”
In this version of the story, when a British ship arrives from Barbados overrun with smallpox in 1721, triggering the worst epidemic Boston has ever seen, Mather shares the slave’s suggestion with another white man, physician Zabdiel Boylston, who bravely attempts the procedure on his son, and then on other patients. Inoculation saves hundreds of lives, and the two men go down in history as the lifesaving duo that brought inoculation to the American colonies.
As a Boston-based medical student with an affinity for black history, I’m troubled by this telling of Onesimus’ story. Like so many of the historical narratives we’ve become accustomed to in American culture, it is dominated by whiteness, and it erases the contributions of black people. It paints Mather and Boylston as heroes and relegates Onesimus to their shadows.
This erasure of black and African contributions to medicine is frustratingly common in American culture. A casual learner might never know the cure for scurvy originated from African orange traders or that Vivien Thomas, a black man, created the first surgical procedure to cure blue baby syndrome. When we are mentioned, black people are often portrayed as unknowing participants or victims of scientific experimentation.
Thankfully, there is a second, more authentic story that scholars and some journalists are beginning to tell about Onesimus. The biographical details are the same, but the context is richer.
This second version of the story does not gloss over the indefensible fact that Mather, a Puritan minister, treated Onesimus as his property. In 1706, Onesimus was kidnapped from his homeland in North Africa, sold into slavery, and then purchased and gifted to Mather by his congregation. In this telling of the story, Mather, an influential supporter of the Salem Witch Trials, is conflicted about trusting a slave. Although he admires Onesimus’ intelligence, he is wary of the “devilish rites” of Africans and writes in his diary about the need to watch Onesimus closely due to his “thievish” and “wicked” behavior. After Onesimus shares with his owner the knowledge that will save hundreds of lives, the slave must still wait years to save up the money to buy his own freedom.