The Colonial Epidemic that Explains Modern America

Let's take a trip to Boston in the year 1721. In 55 years, the town would be at the center of the Revolutionary War. At the time, Boston was the prosperous capital of the Province of Massachusetts Bay — a Puritan town with one of the colony's most important ports.

Then came "the speckled monster" — smallxpox. Of the town's 11,000 residents, over 6,000 cases of smallpox were reported in 1721, with 850 deaths. 

At the heart of that chaos and destruction was a cover-up. Governor Samuel Shute knew that sailors entering the town's port were infected, but, much like we've seen in Flint, Michigan, the governor failed to decisively act.

Stephen Coss is the author of "The Fever of 1721: The Epidemic that Revolutionized Medicine and American Politics." Coss argues that some good actually came out of that failure. In health, there was the development of a smallpox inoculation. And politically, the episode paved the way for the Revolutionary War and modern America.