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First published in 2011 by The Penguin Press,
a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
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Copyright © Michael Willrich, 2011
All rights reserved
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA
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Willrich, Michael.
Pox : an American history / Michael Willrich.
p. ; cm.â(Penguin history of American life)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
eISBN : 978-1-101-47622-2
1. SmallpoxâEpidemiologyâUnited States. 2. SmallpoxâHistoryâUnited States. 3. EpidemicsâUnited Statesâ19th CenturyâHistory. 4. EpidemicsâUnited Statesâ20th CenturyâHistory. I. Title. II. Series: Penguin history of American life.
[DNLM: 1. SmallpoxâepidemiologyâUnited States. 2. SmallpoxâhistoryâUnited States. 3. Disease OutbreaksâUnited States. 4. History, 19th CenturyâUnited States. 5. History, 20th CenturyâUnited States. WC 590] RA644.S6W.5â210973âdc22 2010034544
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For Wendy
Acknowledgments
Generous fellowships and grants underwrote this project. The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard gave me a full year to do the initial research and furnished a marvelous setting in which to do it. I am immensely grateful to Radcliffe, to the brilliantly diverting Fellows Class of 2004â5, and especially to Drew Faust and Judy Vichniac for the gift of that year. I am also deeply grateful to the American Council of Learned Societies for the Charles E. Ryskamp Fellowship (named for a warm and generous scholar no longer with us), which bought me a full year of writing time and other support. Brandeis University provided a semester of leave time on each end of this project, as well as smaller grants to cover costs, for all of which I give thanks.
I owe a special debt to four exemplary historians who wrote in support of my fellowship applications: my mentor Kathy Conzen, Tom Haskell, Jackie Jones, and Laura Kalman. I hope this book repays your confidence in some small way.
Along the way, I presented pieces from the project to workshops and audiences at the American Society for Legal History, Boston College, Boston University, Brandeis University, Canisius