1777

In February, reversing his firm policy against inoculation, Washington orders inoculation of Continental Army asap, seeking to complete the process before British resumed their campaign in the spring. His order “came only after soldiers, officers, and doctors demanded that the life-preserving procedure be implemented (Wehrman, 193). His wife Martha’s easy inoculation in Philadelphia “proved an education that her husband could not ignore” (198). He was also influenced by the doctors in his Hospital Department, esp. Wm. Shippen, his chief medical officer, and John Cochran, a successful inoculator who, like Washington, served with the British during the French and Indian War (204-205, 218 ). By the fall of 1778, “smallpox was gone from the military in New England, and the epidemic that had begun there in 1773 was finally ending” (235). Inoculations “effectively saved the American army from collapsing from disease, as the Northern army had during the Canadian campaign” (236).