The Ounce Of Prevention

Originally Aired: February 17, 1937 Cavalcade of America #70, "The Ounce Of Prevention," tells the story of Cotton Mather, a Boston preacher who becomes an unlikely medical pioneer in the fight against smallpox. In 1707, when his congregation gifts him a slave named Bonnie Simonson from West Africa, Mather learns of a remarkable practice: inoculation, a method where pustules from smallpox victims are deliberately introduced into healthy people through small cuts to prevent the disease. Despite the fear and uncertainty, Mather courageously has himself inoculated, surviving without contracting the full disease. When smallpox returns to Boston with devastating force in 1721, threatening to decimate the colony, Mather knows what must be done. He seeks out his friend Dr. Zabdil Boylston in nearby Muddy River, hoping to convince the physician to help implement inoculation on a wider scale. However, the people of Boston are more terrified of this unfamiliar medical practice than of the familiar scourge of smallpox itself. Mather and Boylston face the challenge of overcoming public fear and superstition to save countless lives through this revolutionary preventive measure.