Zabdiel Boylston

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Zabdiel Boylston (born 1676 or 1679 in Brookline, Massachusetts; died 1766) was a medical doctor. He apprenticed with his father, an English surgeon named Thomas Boylston. He also studied under the Boston physician Dr. Cutter, never attending a formal medical school (the first medical school in North America was not founded until 1765).

Boylston is known for holding several "firsts" for an American-born physician: He performed the first surgical operation by an American physician, the first removal of gall bladder stones in 1710, and was the first to remove a breast tumor in 1718.^[1]

He was a great uncle of President John Adams.^[2]

[edit] Inoculation

During a smallpox outbreak in 1721 in Boston, he inoculated 244 (reported) people by applying pus from a smallpox sore to a small wound on the subjects, a method said to have been previously used in Africa. Initially, he used the method on two slaves and his own son. This was the first introduction of inoculations to the United States. The idea was taught to Cotton Mather by an African slave named Onesimus, while Boylston carried it out.

His method was initially met by hostility and outright violence from Boston religious groups, and he was arrested for a short period of time for it (he was later released with the promise not to inoculate without government permission). In 1724, Boylston traveled to London, where he published his results as Historical Account of the Small-Pox Inoculated in New England, and became a fellow of the Royal Society two years later. Afterward, he returned to Boston.