[2] As the first medical school in North America was not founded until 1765, Boylston apprenticed with his father, a surgeon originally from Watertown, Massachusetts, and studied under the Boston physician Dr. John Cutler.
[5] An enslaved African named Onesimus gave the idea of inoculation to Cotton Mather, the influential New England Puritan minister.
His method was initially met by hostility and outright violence from other physicians, and many threats were made on his life, with some even threatening to hang him on the nearest tree.
His wife and children were sitting in their home and a lighted hand-grenade was thrown into the room, but the fuse fell off before an explosion could take place.
[7] In 1724, with a letter of introduction to Dr. James Jurin by Cotton Mather,[9] Boylston traveled to London, where he published his results as Historical Account of the Small-Pox Inoculated in New England, and he became a fellow of the Royal Society two years later.