A destroying angel

It seems fitting in 1973, when the World Health Organization has announced that worldwide smallpox will be eradicated completely from the world before the year's end, to tell the story of the long struggle against this killer and defacer of man, of the devastating epidemics in early Boston, and the consequent discovery of inoculation. In eighteenth-century history inoculation for smallpox marked a new beginning. Science entered the picture, stimulating keener observation, a sharper respect for objective fact, and never-ending experimentation. It reshaped American culture from a new center, leading life and thought out in new directions. In our own deeply troubled, revolutionary, and almost incredibly hopeful twentieth century, this once familiar but now only dimly remembered story takes on a timeless relevance. - Foreword.