The right wing often touts how they are "originalists" claiming that they adhere to a type of judicial interpretation of the US Constitution, which aims to follow how it would have been understood or was intended to be understood at the time it was written. Yet, I am sure that following the Revolutionary War during which George Washington ordered his troops to be immunized against small pox by being given cow pox that none of the founders would think that the Supreme Court could dictate how President Washington could deploy his troops.
How Crude Smallpox Inoculations Helped George Washington Win the War
When George Washington took command of the Continental Army in 1775, America was fighting a war on two fronts: one for independence from the British, and a second for survival against smallpox. Because Washington knew the ravages of the disease firsthand, he understood that the smallpox virus, then an invisible enemy, could cripple his army and end the war before it began.
That’s why Washington eventually made the bold decision to inoculate all American troops who had never been sickened with smallpox at a time when inoculation was a crude and often deadly process. His gamble paid off. The measure staved off smallpox long enough to win a years-long fight with the British. In the process, Washington pulled off the first massive, state-funded immunization campaign in American history.
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Fast forward to 1775, when Washington took the reins of a newly formed Continental Army laying siege to British-held Boston. That summer, smallpox was running rampant through Boston and one of Washington’s first orders of business was to safeguard his troops from a potentially debilitating outbreak.
“Washington knew what smallpox was like and he knew how it could incapacitate his Army,” says Elizabeth Fenn, a professor of early American history of the University of Colorado Boulder and author of Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82.
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