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Juchno and his co-editors, Georgia State University Professor Emeritus of English Reiner Smolinski and Yale University Jonathan Edwards Center Director Kenneth Minkema, assembled the Curiosa Americana correspondence from several different sources, including the Royal Society, the Massachusetts Historical Society, and Harvard University. While historians have long written about and referenced Mather鈥檚 letters, the book represents the first complete, edited, and annotated collection.

To understand Mather, according to Juchno, it is useful to remember that the Enlightenment bridged philosophy, science, literature, history, economics, and other disciplines. Despite the Enlightenment鈥檚 largely secular character, even a devoutly religious man like the Harvard-educated Mather found a place within the movement. 听 听

Mather was greatly interested in microscopical anatomy, note Juchno and his co-editors, and having his own microscope enabled him to follow debates among European scholars on subjects such as how organisms like the 鈥渁nimalcules鈥� (germs) in the blood, semen, or seeds of plants originated. He also weighed in on curious phenomena like Potentia imaginativa, the formative power of the imagination and its psychosomatic impact on pregnant mothers: He sought to explain how the imagination鈥攅specially with violent emotions such as anger, fear, revulsion, or unfulfilled cravings鈥攅xerted harmful vibrations on a fetus developing in a mother鈥檚 womb.

鈥淭he Royal Society was dedicated to gathering knowledge about the physical world and invited people from the colonies to share their thoughts about subjects related to weather, vegetation, and animal behavior, among many other things,鈥� said Juchno. 鈥淢ather was very industrious in his correspondence, and offered detailed observations about natural phenomena, which the Royal Society appreciated.鈥�

Among the more famous Mather letters concerned his efforts to combat the 1721 smallpox epidemic in Boston. A man he had enslaved, Onesimus, had told him of a long-used West African procedure which involved rubbing or scraping dried pus from a smallpox patient into the skin of a healthy person: The recipient would usually develop a mild case of pox that conferred lifetime immunity. Mather convinced a doctor to try this technique, and all but six of the 247 people he inoculated survived.

A storm of controversy followed Mather鈥檚 call for smallpox inoculation, with numerous doctors and local officials denouncing the procedure. At one point, someone hurled a lighted grenade into Mather鈥檚 house, but the device did not detonate. History did largely validate Mather, however, and it would be more than 75 years before Edward Jenner developed the cowpox vaccine that became the standard anti-smallpox treatment.

鈥淢ather was brilliant in many ways, a polymath who could read in eight languages,鈥� said Juchno. 鈥淗e also was relentlessly driven by his religious views, and everything was refracted through his faith. That set him somewhat apart from the members of the Royal Society.

鈥淔or example, Mather studied thunder and lightning, and he gathered data on storms that was very useful. But then he added a second layer to it, which involved examples of divine providence and the evidence of sin. He wasn鈥檛 an outlier in his interests, but the force with which he communicated through his religious beliefs was quite profound.鈥�

Juchno doesn鈥檛 expect the public image of Mather to be rehabilitated by Curiosa Americana, but then that isn鈥檛 the purpose of the book.

鈥淭he best we can do is to identify the instances where Mather helps push ahead our understanding of science and nature, even as he bears responsibility for reinforcing some unenlightened views. But the judgment of his actions and beliefs also has to be rendered in the context of that time鈥攏ot as a way to excuse the behavior, but as a way of understanding human existence.鈥�

For more on Cotton Mather鈥檚 Curiosa Americana: Scientific Letters to the Royal Society, visit the .

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