Let's write about local journalism

A reporter colleague announced her retirement reported by The Maine Press Association. Although I never met Tammy Wells in person, I worked collaboratively with her on several reports about Maine nursing and the state's Franco-Americans. Local journalists work very hard and their dedication to writing is appreciated! Although I am sad to read about Tammy's retirement from the Biddeford Maine Journal Tribune, her future should be full of new adventures. (Some of my best years as a writer was when I was a beat reporter for The Sanford News, a weekly newspaper.)

Reporter Tammy Wells retires

Dina Mendros, Executive Editor, of Mainely Media, sends this update:

Having worked for over 20 years in journalism in southern Maine, and years more elsewhere - 35 years total - reporter Tammy Wells retires March 31.

Tammy worked many years at the Journal Tribune, a daily covering most of York Country, and when that closed in 2019, she transferred to the Mainely Media organization, working on weeklies covering York County towns and cities, where she is retiring from.

There are a lot of hard-working journalists in our industry, but in my nearly 17-year career, working alongside Tammy at both the Journal Tribune and Mainely Media, I found her to be the hardest working reporter I've worked with. Tammy always went above and beyond, and hated being scooped, which is a problem when you work for a weekly. She always cared about getting the story, and more than that, getting the story right.

Let's write about Ludwig van Beethoven. Guess what? His biography must be revised.

 DNA From Beethoven’s Hair Unlocks Medical and Family Secrets.

Ludwig van Beethoven (born December 1770 in Bonn Germany- died March 26, 1827 in Vienna, Austria)- portrait by Joseph Karl Stieler.

By analyzing seven samples of hair said to have come from Ludwig van Beethoven, researchers debunked myths about the revered composer while raising new questions about his life and death.

It was March 1827, and Ludwig van Beethoven was dying. As he lay in bed, wracked with abdominal pain and jaundiced, grieving friends and acquaintances came to visit. And some asked a favor: Could they clip a lock of his hair for remembrance?

The parade of mourners continued after Beethoven’s death at age 56, even after doctors performed a gruesome craniotomy, looking at the folds in Beethoven’s brain and removing his ear bones in a vain attempt to understand why the revered composer lost his hearing.

Within three days of Beethoven’s death, not a single strand of hair was left on his head.

Ever since, a cottage industry has aimed to understand Beethoven’s illnesses and the cause of his death.

Illustrations made for 250th anniversary of Beethoven

Now, an analysis of strands of his hair has upended long held beliefs about his health. The report provides an explanation for his debilitating ailments and even his death, while also raising new questions about his genealogical origins and hinting at a dark family secret.

An international group of researchers published a paper in the journal Current Biology.

It offers additional surprises: A famous lock of hair — the subject of a book and a documentary — was not Beethoven’s. It was from an Ashkenazi Jewish woman.

The study also found that Beethoven did not have lead poisoning, as had been widely believed. Nor was he a Black man, as some had proposed.

And a Flemish family in Belgium — who share the last name van Beethoven and had proudly claimed to be related — had no genetic ties to him.

Researchers not associated with the study found it convincing.

It was “a very serious and well-executed study,” said Andaine Seguin-Orlando, an expert in ancient DNA at the University Paul Sabatier, Toulouse, in France.

The detective work to solve the mysteries of Beethoven’s illness began on Dec. 1, 1994, when a lock of hair said to be Beethoven’s was auctioned by Sotheby’s. Four members of the American Beethoven Society, a private group that collects and preserves material related to the composer, purchased it for $7,300. They proudly displayed it at the Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies at San Jose State University in California.

But was it really Beethoven’s hair?

The story was that it was clipped by Ferdinand Hiller, a 15-year-old composer and ardent acolyte who visited Beethoven four times before he died.

On the day after Beethoven died, Hiller clipped a lock of his hair. He gave it to his son decades later as a birthday gift. It was kept in a locket.

The locket with its strands of hair was the subject of a best-selling book, “Beethoven’s Hair,” by Russell Martin, published in 2000, and made into a documentary film in 2005.

An analysis of the hair at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois found lead levels as high as 100 times normal.

In 2007, authors of a paper in The Beethoven Journal, a scholarly journal published by San Jose State, speculated that the composer might have been inadvertently poisoned by medicine, wine, or eating and drinking utensils.

That was where matters stood until 2014, when Tristan Begg, then a masters student studying archaeology at the University of Tübingen in Germany, realized that science had advanced enough for DNA analysis using locks of Beethoven’s hair.

“It seemed worth a shot,” said Mr. Begg, now a Ph.D. student at Cambridge University.

William Meredith, a Beethoven scholar, began searching for other locks of Beethoven’s hair, buying them with financial support from the American Beethoven Society, at private sales and auctions. 

So, He borrowed two more from a university and a museum. He ended up with eight locks, including the hairs from Ferdinand Hiller.

First, the researchers tested the Hiller lock. Because it turned out to be from a woman, it was not — could not be — Beethoven’s. The analysis also showed that the woman had genes found in Ashkenazi Jewish populations.

Dr. Meredith speculates that the authentic hair from Beethoven was destroyed and replaced with strands from Sophie Lion, the wife of Ferdinand Hiller’s son Paul. She was Jewish.

As for the other seven locks, one was inauthentic, five had identical DNA and one could not be tested. The five locks with identical DNA were of different provenances and two had impeccable chains of custody, which gave the researchers confidence that they were hair from Beethoven.

Ed Green, an expert in ancient DNA at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who was not involved with the study, agreed.

“The fact that they have so many independent locks of hair, with different histories, that all match one another is compelling evidence that this is bona fide DNA from Beethoven,” he said.


When the group had the DNA sequence from Beethoven’s hair, they tried to answer longstanding questions about his health. For instance, why might he have died from cirrhosis of the liver?

He drank, but not to excess, said Theodore Albrecht, a professor emeritus of musicology at Kent State University in Ohio. Based on his study of texts left by the composer, he described what is known of Beethoven’s imbibing habits in an email.

“In none of these activities did Beethoven exceed the line of consumption that would make him an ‘alcoholic,’ as we would commonly define it today,” he wrote.

Beethoven’s hair provided a clue: He had DNA variants that made him genetically predisposed to liver disease. In addition, his hair contained traces of hepatitis B DNA, indicating an infection with this virus, which can destroy a person’s liver.

But how did Beethoven get infected? Hepatitis B is spread through sex and shared needles, and during childbirth.

Beethoven did not use intravenous drugs, Dr. Meredith said. He never married, although he was romantically interested in several women. He also wrote a letter — although he never sent it — to his “immortal Beloved,” whose identity has been the subject of much scholarly intrigue. Details of his sex life remain unknown.

Arthur Kocher, a geneticist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany and one of the new study’s co-authors, offered another possible explanation for his infection: The composer could have been infected with hepatitis B during childbirth. The virus is commonly spread this way, he said, and infected babies can end up with a chronic infection that lasts a lifetime. In about a quarter of people, chronic infection will eventually lead to cirrhosis of the liver or liver cancer.

The study also revealed that Beethoven was not genetically related to others in his family line. His Y chromosome DNA differed from that of a group of five people with the same last name — van Beethoven — living in Belgium today and who, according to archival records, share a 16th-century ancestor with the composer. That indicates there must have been an out-of-wedlock affair in Beethoven’s direct paternal line. But where?

Maarten Larmuseau, a co-author of the new study who is a professor of genetic genealogy at the University of Leuven in Belgium, suspects that Ludwig van Beethoven’s father was born to the composer’s grandmother with a man other than his grandfather. There are no baptismal records for Beethoven’s father, and his grandmother was known to have been an alcoholic. Beethoven’s grandfather and father had a difficult relationship. These factors, Dr. Larmuseau said, are possible signs of an extramarital child.

Beethoven had his own difficulties with his father, Dr. Meredith said. And while his grandfather, a noted court musician in his day, died when Beethoven was very young, he honored him and kept his portrait with him until the day he died.

Dr. Meredith added that when rumors circulated that Beethoven was actually the illegitimate son of Friedrich Wilhelm II or even Frederick the Great, Beethoven never refuted them.

The researchers had hoped their study of Beethoven’s hair might explain some of the composer’s agonizing health problems. But it did not provide definitive answers.

The composer suffered from terrible digestive problems, with abdominal pain and prolonged bouts of diarrhea. The DNA analysis did not point to a cause, although it pretty much ruled out two proposed reasons: celiac disease and ulcerative colitis. And it made a third hypothesis — irritable bowel syndrome — unlikely.

Hepatitis B could have been the culprit, Dr. Kocher said, although it is impossible to know for sure.

The DNA analysis also offered no explanation for Beethoven’s hearing loss, which started in his mid-20s and resulted in deafness in the last decade of his life.

The researchers took pains to discuss their results in advance with those directly affected by their research.

On the evening of March 15, Dr. Larmuseau met with the five people in Belgium whose last name is van Beethoven and who provided DNA for the study.

He started right out with the bad news: They are not genetically related to Ludwig van Beethoven.

They were shocked.

“They didn’t know how to react,” Dr. Larmuseau said. “Every day they are remembered by their special surname. Every day they say their name and people say, ‘Are you related to Ludwig van Beethoven?’”

That relationship, Dr. Larmuseau said, “is part of their identity.”

And now it is gone.

The study’s findings that the Hiller lock was from a Jewish woman stunned Mr. Martin, author of “Beethoven’s Hair.”

“Wow, who would have imagined it,” he said. Now, he added, he wants to find descendants of Sophie Lion, the wife of Paul Hiller, to see if the hair was hers. And he’d like to find out if she had lead poisoning.

For Dr. Meredith, the project has been an amazing adventure.

“The whole complex story is astonishing to me.” he said. “And I’ve been part of it since 1994. One finding just leads to another unexpected finding.”

From Bonn to Vienna, in Search of Beethoven, the Man
It’s the composer’s 250th birthday, and a pilgrimage shines new light on his art and life.
Feb. 24, 2020

A correction was made on March 22, 2023:  An earlier version of this article misstated how many locks of hair in a study were inauthentic. One was inauthentic, not two. The article also misstated how many had identical DNA. Five had identical DNA, not four.

When we learn of a mistake, we acknowledge it with a correction. If you spot an error, please let us know at nytnews@nytimes.com.

Gina Kolata writes about science and medicine. She has twice been a Pulitzer Prize finalist and is the author of six books, including “Mercies in Disguise: A Story of Hope, a Family's Genetic Destiny, and The Science That Saved Them.” @ginakolata • Facebook

A version of this article appears in print on March 23, 2023, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Baring Beethoven’s Secrets With Snips of DNA

Let's write about the history of e-books! Project Gutenberg

 A Brief History about Project Gutenberg*

Echo essay published in Book Riot

by Katie Moench March 15, 2023

Sometime between 1440, and 1450, Johannes Gutenberg began using his printing press to make published works available to the masses, forever changing the landscape of literacy and reading. 

Over 500 years later, Michael S. Hart, a student at the University of Illinois, uploaded the text of the Declaration of Independence to the nascent internet, signaling the beginning of the e-book age.

In 1971, Hart, a student in machine-human interfaces at Illinois, had been given the gift of virtually unlimited time on a mainframe in the school’s Materials Research Lab by a friend, time that was immensely valuable in the days when computers were far from the personal and easily accessible models used today. 

Hart wanted to find a way to use this time to give back to the larger public in order to show his gratitude for computer access, and on July 4, 1971, he was inspired by a free copy he had been given of the Declaration of Independence. Hart typed the document into the computer but was told he could not email it to so many people as he wanted to due to the risks of overwhelming the system. So instead, he published the digital document onto the ARPANET, to which his computer was one of 15 connecting nodes. ARPANET would go on to form the skeleton for the internet that we use today, and by publishing this document, Hart had created and shared the first e-version of a printed document that was shared on the network, paving the way for the e-books of the future.

When Hart started his project, he manually entered all text himself, with a vision of promoting the accessibility to texts in the public domain. As scanning books became more feasible in the mid-1990s, the project was able to gain speed in its digitization projects and was assisted by a network of volunteers across the world who did everything from entering documents into the project database to proofreading the e-texts and creating a website for Project Gutenberg. 

After Hart had graduated from the University of Illinois, Project Gutenberg was first hosted by Illinois Benedictine College and then eventually moved to ibiblio, an “internet librarianship project” run through the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where it continues to be hosted.

Though today's readers might be just as likely to pick up an ebook as a print one, when Hart began his work, that was not the case. 

At that time, computers and the limited networks that connected them were mainly used by academics, governments, militaries, and a sprinkling of dedicated hobbyists, who were shaping the ever-online world as we know it today. 

Johannes Guttenberg was a German inventor died February 3 1468, introduced the printing press to Europe. 

When Hart decided to upload the Declaration of Independence to ARPANET, he was working in a world where accessing such documents was not as simple as googling for the text. There was no Google. While it might seem almost unfathomable to those of us today who enjoy internet access at the click of a mouse or the touchscreen of a phone, Hart was working in a world in which texts were primarily still on paper and their information could only be read by either owning them or viewing them at a library. It’s incredibly fitting that Hart christened the project after Johannes Gutenberg, as it represented a leap in knowledge sharing similar to the first mass-printed works.

When Hart was asked in 2004, about the purpose of Project Gutenberg, he replied that, “The mission of Project Gutenberg is simple: ‘To encourage the creation and distribution of ebooks,” and, “to provide as many ebooks in as many formats as possible for the entire world to read in as many languages as possible.” Furthermore, Hart and the volunteers of Project Gutenberg saw it as a means of combating illiteracy and democratizing knowledge in much the same way as the libraries of the early 19th century. For members of Project Gutenberg, their undertaking is not just about digitizing public domain works from multiple nations, but also about honoring a tradition of progress in giving readers access to texts.

Today, Hart and Project Gutenberg are seen as the inventors of the e-book as a format. Though e-book sales figures are hard to track, due to programs like Kindle unlimited and the number of self-publishing authors, it’s believed that e-books make up over 20% of books sold, even by conservative estimates. The ebook industry has become a huge segment of how people read and has led to a fundamental shift in how text content is obtained and consumed. 

Many of these e-books are bought directly by consumers, making the industry a multi-billion dollar business and drawing companies like Amazon and Apple into conflicts over issues of copyright and corporate trust issues. 

Although Project Gutenberg’s e-texts were — and continue to be — in the public domain and free for all to view, the foundations of the project also made it possible for authors, publishers, and booksellers to use ebooks as a commercially viable means of bookselling.

Hart’s foresight in putting texts online is not just about showing what computers could do, but also about the power of computing technology and networks to foster intellectual exchange. Unlike other sites, including Google Books, texts on Project Gutenberg are not simply scanned and uploaded onto the site. Instead, a global network of volunteers proofreads texts before they are made available. Distributed Proofreaders, a group of such volunteers, works closely with Project Gutenberg to have multiple volunteers work on an e-text at a time, thereby increasing the speed with which texts can be uploaded.

Texts on Project Gutenberg are either in the public domain or used with special permission of the copyright holder, though the site has run into issues with documents that are public domain in the U.S. but not yet in other countries. Additionally, those working on the project face the challenge of uploading texts that might have been altered throughout history or translated from their original language into multiple versions. What makes Project Gutenberg unique is that its network of volunteers means that there is actual, human thought behind the archive, which includes making decisions about which version of a text to use. While the site has faced criticism for how it documents these decisions, the beauty of Project Gutenberg is that its texts are not merely scanned images, but are e-texts that are meant to be read.

Perhaps the most amazing thing about Project Gutenberg is not the sheer number of e-texts it has made available online, but the ways in which it continues to uphold the early promises of the internet in what has become a commercialized landscape focused more on images and opinions than on sharing information. When Michael Hart chose to use his computer time to begin the work that would go on to become Project Gutenberg, he was fulfilling the pure aims of early computer networks: that such access would make existing information available to a greater number of people. While many users might simply pop into the site when they need a copy of something in the public domain, it’s worth spending time there, marveling at what the vision of Project Gutenberg has achieved.

*Project Gutenberg is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, as well as to "encourage the creation and distribution of e-Books." It was founded in 1971 by American writer Michael S. Hart and is the oldest digital library.

Let's write about vaccines

This essay echo was published in the website blog BioLogos, written by Heather John.

BioLogos:  Our vision is faith and science working hand in hand.

Edward Jenner (1749- 1823): Like other doctors of the time, Edward Jenner carried out variolation to protect his patients from smallpox. However, from the early days of his career Edward Jenner was intrigued by country-lore which said that people who caught cowpox from their cows could not catch smallpox. This and his own experience of variolation as a boy and the risks that accompanied it led him to undertake the most important research of his life.

A World Without Vaccines: A History of Smallpox

Heather John is a science historian who writes about the severity of smallpox and the road to its eradication in America. The essay describes what life was like before vaccination existed to help protect populations from disease.

In the summer of 2020, as the public health measures to combat the COVID-19 pandemic continued, many had hoped that tools in use since at least the Middle Ages, such as quarantine and isolation, would give way to more modern ones, such as vaccination. 

Although today there are a large number of vaccinations available to us, we may have forgetton what was it like to live in a world without vaccines.

Vaccination is a relatively new means of controlling disease; the first vaccine was developed a little over two hundred years ago, to prevent Smallpox, and the vast majority of vaccines were developed only in the last hundred years. Change over time hasn’t affected only approaches to disease management—understandings of the nature and causes of disease have also changed.

Louis Pasteur and the germ theory of disease Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) was a critical scientist in many fields of science, including biology, microbiology, and chemistry. He was renowned for his discoveries of the principles of vaccination.

We take for granted the “germ theory” of disease, which is the idea that infectious diseases are caused by microorganisms, such as bacteria and viruses. This idea was not widely accepted until a little over a hundred years ago, in the late 1800s. Other explanations for disease causation, which continue to influence people’s thinking today, included explanations focused on individual bodies, such as humoral theory (focused on fluid imbalances within the body) and constitutional factors unique to each person; explanations focused on the environment, such as miasmatic theory (focused on foul air, such as from dead bodies and other decaying organic matter) and filth theory (focused on dirt and hygiene); and explanations which posited mismatches between an individual’s constitution and atmospheric conditions (1)

The potential for diseases to be contagious (i.e., passed between people) had been discussed for centuries, but this did not imply an understanding of germs as a source of “contagion.” As with other prophylactics and therapeutics in use today, the development of vaccination predated an understanding of why or how it worked.

Smallpox is a disease without a cure:  Smallpox vaccination was so successful, with Smallpox declared as eradicated in 1979, that we have to remind ourselves of how devastating it was. (2) Smallpox survivors, after enduring three to four weeks of illness with flu-like symptoms and pustules covering the body, faced potential blindness or scarring—lifelong reminders which affected at least 20 percent of the population of early modern Europe. (3) In parts of Western Europe into the early 1800s, Smallpox was so ubiquitous and deadly that children’s lives were not counted until they had survived it. (4) Estimates about the number of deaths among those who contracted smallpox ranged from 7% to 30% in general populations with prior smallpox exposure, to percentages approaching 50% or greater among pregnant women, fetuses, and populations with no prior exposure.(5)

Measures to counter smallpox were developed and adopted in times and places where it was perceived as a tangible problem. Prior to the development of vaccination, there was a difference in responses to smallpox in places where the disease was endemic, versus those in which it was epidemic. (6) 

In populations where Smallpox was endemic—where it was ever-present—the disease took its toll on the youngest members of the population (in a time when the mortality of infants and young children was already high), and it was understood that those who survived the disease did not acquire it again. In populations where smallpox was epidemic—where it appeared and disappeared periodically—the disease affected those who were older and had already survived the more vulnerable period of early childhood. The drive to combat the disease in populations where the disease was epidemic was thus stronger than that in populations where the disease was endemic.

In the pre-vaccination era, there were two options for countering smallpox. (7) The first, was to separate the sick from the well. That is, isolation of the sick, quarantining those suspected of having been exposed to the sick, or flight of the presumed well from areas of sickness.

The Rise of Inoculation:  In the case of Smallpox, a more specific method was also available—inoculation. Inoculation with smallpox (variola) involved deliberately exposing oneself to smallpox pus or scabs, via a skin incision or nasal inhalation, with the hope that the resulting disease (expected to last days to weeks) would be milder than naturally-acquired smallpox, and confer protection from future illness from smallpox. Inoculation carried significant risks—death from smallpox and/or spreading smallpox to others—but it was known to be less risky than naturally-acquired Smallpox, and had been practiced for centuries in Asia and Africa before it was introduced to Europeans in the early 1700s.(8)

Why did the long-standing practice of inoculation gain currency among Europeans (particularly the British) at that period in history? Two Smallpox deaths within the royal houses of Europe in the early 1700s impacted succession plans, and led Britain to the formal study of inoculation as an effective method for combating Smallpox. (9) This study was followed by the use of inoculation in England, including by the children of the royal family. (10)

Around the same time, in the American colonies, Smallpox was an epidemic, not endemic disease, which meant that when the disease appeared, the impact was dramatic. (11) Death rates among Native Americans who were first exposed to the disease after European colonization of the Americas were extremely high, potentially over 50%.12 There were outbreaks in North America in the late 1750s, and early 1760s, during the Seven Years’ War and Pontiac’s War, which included discussion by the British of deliberately spreading smallpox to Native Americans. (13) In the face of epidemics and increased chance of natural infection, inoculation became more compelling as a method of disease control, despite its risks.

This was the case for the great theologian and minister Jonathan Edwards. Living in the midst of epidemic Smallpox in 1752, Edwards encouraged his son-in-law, Aaron Burr, Sr. (father of the future vice president) to get a smallpox inoculation on a trip to Great Britain. (14) When Edwards had an opportunity to be inoculated himself in 1758, he opted to do so, and unfortunately died from the acquired Smallpox.


Smallpox Inoculation in America-  Notwithstanding its inherent dangerousness, in the pre-vaccination era inoculation was a calculated risk that some saw as worth taking, and others saw as problematic. This can be seen in the choices of prominent Revolutionary-era Americans. Abigail Adams (whose husband, John Adams, had been inoculated several years prior) was inoculated in July 1776. (15) While in the midst of an inoculation period which was known to be contagious, rather than secluding herself, she joined the crowd listening to a public reading of the newly-completed Declaration of Independence. It was not unusual for the inoculated to potentially expose others to Smallpox, and many objected to inoculation out of justified fear that it would spread the disease.

Inoculation was not widely practiced in colonial America because of legal restrictions (due to concerns for its potential dangerousness), as well as the time and expense required (3-4 weeks of potential illness, at a cost of hundreds of dollars in today’s money for the inoculation itself). (16) Combined with the fact that smallpox was a disease with epidemic outbreaks in colonial America, this meant that George Washington’s colonial troops were particularly susceptible to Smallpox.

George Washington had personal familiarity with Smallpox; when he was 19, he had contracted it after reluctantly accepting a dinner invitation from a family where Smallpox was present, and survived the disease with lifelong Smallpox scars on his nose. (17) 

As the head of the American revolutionary forces, he feared that the British would use smallpox to their advantage. The British troops were more likely to have already had smallpox than the Americans, leaving the Americans more vulnerable to the disease: he feared that his troops would acquire smallpox from the outbreaks that were occurring in the colonies, or even that the British would use smallpox as a weapon of biological warfare, intentionally spreading it to the Americans. (18) Despite his concerns that inoculation would temporarily incapacitate his forces or spread smallpox, he calculated that the potential gains were greater than the risks, and ordered the inoculation of the American troops—thus, the first mass immunization effort in American history was spearheaded by one of the nation’s founding fathers. (19)

The Emergence of Vaccination: The safety of immunization significantly improved with the development of vaccination. Edward Jenner, a physician in England, published in 1798, the results of experiments he had done with cowpox, showing that inoculation with cowpox (vaccinia), conferred protection from smallpox, at significantly lower risk than inoculation with smallpox (variola). (20) Vaccination for smallpox did not become widely available, or systematically used, until the 20th century. (21) It was the first, and remains the only, human disease to have been eliminated by vaccination.

Decision-making around approaches to combatting disease have always been complex. In the case of smallpox, we may be tempted to assume that the choices were easier or more straightforward.

We see smallpox as a vanquished foe; this is a perspective that was unimaginable in the past, but beginning to see it as a possibility was a precondition for the eventual conquering of the disease, via concerted effort.

But, efforts currently underway can eliminate or control other diseases, such as polio, and vaccination is a key part of those efforts. Polio, which is highly contagious and can cause life-long paralysis (as it did to Franklin D. Roosevelt), has been eliminated from some parts of the world, but has not been entirely eradicated, so ongoing vaccination is vital for maintaining disease control.

We see smallpox as uniquely deadly; this viewpoint had long been widely accepted, but did not lead to immediate or widespread adoption of effective preventive measures. Simple methods such as isolation didn’t keep Abigail Adams from a historic public gathering. The safe and effective method of vaccination, for smallpox and a myriad of other diseases, was not broadly adopted until the 20th century, during a period in which public faith in institutions, including science and medicine, were at a high. We are in a different historical moment now, but that faith in those institutions helped make the misery and death caused by many infectious diseases an almost-forgotten memory in some parts of the world. And perhaps we can agree on questioning George Washington’s decision to go to a dinner party where smallpox was on the menu.

P.S. From The Jenner Institute website:  The last remaining specimens of the smallpox virus are now held in just two laboratories, in Siberia and the USA. The samples, used for research, are afforded higher security than a nuclear bomb. One day they too will be destroyed. Smallpox will have become the first major infectious disease to be wiped from the face of the Earth.