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Summary Of Inoculation By Susan Donelly

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“Inoculation,” written by Susan Donelly is a short poem including two historical figures, Onesimus and Cotton Mather. Cotton Mather was a prominent Puritan Minister who widely practiced and defended the process of inoculation, which is introducing smallpox virus deliberately into the skin of an unaffected person to cause them to build immunity to the disease, after his slave Onesimus told him of the practice that was common in that time in Africa. The main theme of this poem is the irony of life. The ending statement, “She scratched my skin and I got sick, but lived to come here, free of smallpox, as your slave” is what neatly encompasses the ironic theme of this poem. Onesimus had smallpox as a child, but lived through the disease, yet ended
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