(c. 1691-1752)
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1730 | "Practical Essay Concerning the Small Pox." An essay by the Scottish-born Boston doctor, a key voice in the debate over smallpox inoculation in Massachusetts in 1721 and 1722. He had objected not to inoculation but to the dangerous experimental method of Zabdiel Boylston, particularly his refusal to isolate inoculated patients from the uninoculated. |
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1736 | "The Practical History of a New Epidemical Eruptive Miliary Fever...." A clinical description of scarlet fever, published twelve years before the more famous English essay on the disease ("Account of the Sore Throat Attended with Ulcers") by John Fothergill. |
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1739 | A Discourse Concerning the Currencies of the British Plantations in America. This pamphlet identifies the currency struggles in the colonies and opposes the irresponsible ways that legislatures create and use paper money. Adam Smith would later refer to this pamphlet in The Wealth of Nations. |
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1749 | A Summary, Historical and Political, of the First Planting, Progressive Improvements, and Present State of the British Settlements in North America. The first of a two-volume history of the colonies (to be completed in 1751) that is critical of other colonial historians, such as Cotton Mather. Overall, Douglass strongly supports the Crown's authority in the management and governance of the empire. Douglass's two beloved topics, medicine and currency, play vital roles in this ambitious history. |
