Poems and Thoughts    by Frank Maurer

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Benjamin Franklin's Family Bout with Smallpox. I am relating this from a long-line of memory. A British wife-nurse of a diplomat in Turkey, Gained access to a harem and conversed with the women. She learned how women combated smallpox By inoculating in a gash in the arm, smallpox pus from a diseased person. This was a primitive manner of vaccination (variolation). Eighty percent of those participating survived. Back in England she introduced this brutal, but effective preventative. British doctors began to accept this idea--even though she was a woman. But accepting this idea, initially, resulted in most doctors rejecting the method. Benjamin Franklin in America was confronted with this 'cure' for his two boys. He waited to inoculate his four-year-old, Francis Folger, being 'under the weather'. Francis died on 21 November 1736 and this was greatly lamented by his father. In Franklin's time 20 percent died--the remaining lived and survived ! The odds today are greatly better (90 percent), yet we have doubters. How long will it take for us, once again, To truly learn the basics of medicine, without politics? Frank Maurer 9 September 2025 1520 Hours.