1738 — Smallpox, Charleston, SC — 311
— 311 Charleston SC. South Carolina Department of Health and Environment Control.
— 311 “ Boston Weekly News-Letter, No. 1809, Nov 16-23, 1738.[1]
–295 Un-inoculated people. — 16 Inoculated people.
Narrative Information
Hopkins: “When the disease [smallpox] was introduced into Charleston again with a cargo of slaves from West Africa in 1738, it infected over two thousand of the town’s less than five thousand inhabitants before spreading to the nearby Cherokee Indian nation (population included an estimated 6,000 warriors) where it annihilated half of the population in a year’s time.”[2] (Hopkins, Donald R. The Greatest Killer: Smallpox in History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1st Edition, 1983, with new Introduction, 2002, p. 244.)
SC DHEC: “Smallpox epidemic in Charleston: Dr. James Kilpatrick introduces variolation (smallpox inoculation), with success: only 4% of the people inoculated died. Of 1,675 infected naturally, 295 died. Of 437 inoculated, 16 died. The population of Charleston was approximately 5,000 in 1738: almost half were infected. From Duffy, Epidemics in Colonial America, 1953, pp. 82-83.” (South Carolina Department of Health and Environment Control. Public Health History (website). “A Chronology of the History of Public Health in South Carolina.” 2012. Accessed 10-9-2008 at: http://www.scdhec.gov/administration/history/timeline.htm )
Sources
Anderson, William and Ruth Y. Wetmore (with additional research provided by John L. Bell). “Cherokee.” Encyclopedia of North Carolina (ncpedia), edited by William S. Powell, 2006. Accessed 3-22-2018 at: https://www.ncpedia.org/cherokee/disease
Duffy, John. Epidemics in Colonial America. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1953.
Hopkins, Donald R. The Greatest Killer: Smallpox in History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1st Edition, 1983, with new Introduction, 2003. Google preview accessed 1-9-2018 at: http://books.google.com/books?id=z2zMKsc1Sn0C&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control. Public Health History (website). “A Chronology of the History of Public Health in South Carolina.” Accessed 10-9-2008 at: http://www.scdhec.net/administration/history/timeline.htm
[1] The Weekly News-Letter is cited by Duffy in footnote 17, p. 35. In citing the News-Letter, Duffy notes that there were 1,675 cases “infected by natural means with 295 deaths. A total of 436 persons were inoculated and of these only 16 died.”
[2] We have a separate document of the 1738-1739 Native American smallpox epidemic.