Cotton Mather (1663-1728) was a Puritan minister in Massachusetts. He read about experiments with smallpox inoculation in a publication from Britain in 1716. That, and information from his slave who had been inoculated in West Africa, convinced him to advocate for inoculation.
At that time it was a dangerous procedure; you were exposed to live infectious smallpox matter. (I won’t describe the “matter.”) Some of the inoculated people did die, but far fewer than the people who were not inoculated.
I have been unable to find any evidence that the inoculated Bostonians became autistic.
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