18th century

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  4/27/2020
  

  During Epidemics, Media (and now Social Media) have Always Helped People to Connect

  by David Paul Nord

  For several hundred years, people have used media — reading, writing and print — to maintain human contact and community in times of epidemic disease.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  3/8/2020
  

  A Puritan Minister Incited Fury by Pushing Inoculation Against a Smallpox Epidemic

  In 1721, Boston’s colonists greeted Cotton Mather’s proposal with a terror that bordered on hysteria.