Jonathan Plummer of Newburyport wrote and published this poem after learning that Katherine Wigglesworth, a young woman with whom he was infatuated, had not died of the smallpox and was in fact alive and well after traveling to Boston to be inoculated. Despite admitting that he was “an unfortunate swain and perhaps unknown to you”, his joy overflowed and he felt compelled to express, through poetry, his great relief at learning that Katherine was still among the living.

Inoculation or variolation, a precursor to vaccination, required exposure to live smallpox to stimulate a mild immune response. Inoculation had long been practiced in non-Western civilizations, but it was not until 1721 that it was first attempted in Boston amid much controversy. Vaccination, using the milder cowpox virus, replaced inoculation beginning in the early years of the 19th century.