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Office of Education
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 Josh Grimes: IntroductionJoshua Grimes put down his pen and leaned back in the wooden armchair to take in the view. He was surrounded by old books, books climbing the walls of the two-story Medical Historical Library. Here he'd found a compilation of historic documents about smallpox in colonial America that was just what he needed for his own book, on Salt Meadow's Pox House. The collection contained a facsimile of the first medical publication in North America: a broadside printed during the 1677 smallpox epidemic in Boston. The volume also contained a letter written by the famous preacher-physician Cotton Mather, who described early inoculations against smallpox. Mather's letter was from 1722, following a second epidemic in Boston that killed more than 800 people. Josh felt elated. This was the kind of material that would make his book interesting. He still needed more information on how smallpox had spread from colonists to the Menunkatuck tribe in and around Salt Meadow. Maybe he would find it here. What luck that Dr. Grey had told him about this library. Well, it was time to go. He had to inspect the old Barstow House for someone at Shoreline Realtors, and his shift with the ambulance ran from four to midnight. Josh switched off the brass reading lamp and stood up. As he bent to slide his reading glasses into their case, he felt dizzy, really dizzy. The room seemed a little gray. Josh didn't want to make a fool of himself, passing out among the scholars, so he sat down quickly, pretending to fiddle with his glasses case. These dizzy spells were clearly becoming more frequent. Two today already. Two yesterday, a couple over the weekend. What was going on?  |
