The speed limit on the bridge is 45 mph, though congestion often slows traffic, especially during the morning and evening rush hours. The bridge's upper level carries pedestrian and bicycle traffic. The bridge, an integral conduit within the New York Metro area, has an upper level carrying four lanes in each direction and a lower level with three lanes in each direction, for a total of 14 lanes of travel. At its eastern terminus in New York City, the bridge connects with the Trans-Manhattan Expressway. The New Jersey Turnpike (part of I-95) and US 46, which lie entirely within New Jersey, end halfway across the bridge at the state border. I-95 and US 1/9 cross the river via the bridge. The smallpox vaccine didn’t exist when Washington was commander in chief of the Continental Army, but the point remains: he ordered the inoculation of troops against smallpox by the means that was then available, variolation.The George Washington Bridge is a double-decked suspension bridge spanning the Hudson River, connecting Manhattan in New York City to Fort Lee, Bergen County, New Jersey. The shorthanded history is basically right. The image claims, "George Washington mandated smallpox vaccines for the Continental Army." He guessed that exposure to cowpox could be used to protect people against smallpox and developed a vaccine. Variolation was eventually replaced by vaccination after an English doctor named Edward Jenner noticed in 1796 that milkmaids who had gotten cowpox were immune to smallpox, according to the CDC.
It involved exposing people to the virus by scratching material from smallpox sores into their arms or having them inhale it, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Washington, who had suffered from smallpox as a teenager, strongly believed in the effectiveness of inoculation and persuaded his wife to undergo the procedure in 1776 even as he forbade his troops from being inoculated, National Geographic reported.īack then, the inoculation process was called variolation, named after the virus that causes smallpox - the variola virus. "The enemy, knowing it, will certainly take advantage of our situation," he wrote at the time.īut inoculating recruits as soon as they enlisted meant they contracted the milder form of the disease at the same time they were being outfitted for war, and they would be healed by the time they left to join the army, according to the library. Washington had initially ordered that no one in the army be inoculated, which was done by infecting them with a less-deadly form of smallpox, because he didn’t want to risk debilitating his men and leaving them vulnerable to a British attack while they recovered. Necessity not only authorizes but seems to require the measure, for should the disorder infect the army in the natural way and rage with its virulence we should have more to dread from it than from the sword of the enemy."īy the end of 1777, about 40,000 soldiers had been inoculated against the disease. "This expedient may be attended with some inconveniences and some disadvantages, but yet I trust in its consequences will have the most happy effects. "Finding the smallpox to be spreading much and fearing that no precaution can prevent it from running through the whole of our army, I have determined that troops shall be inoculated," he wrote. In another letter, Washington ordered all recruits arriving in Philadelphia be inoculated.
5, 1777, in a letter to John Hancock, who was president of the Second Continental Congress. Washington issued the order to have all troops inoculated on Feb. "After heavy losses in Boston and Quebec, Washington implemented the first mass immunization policy in American history." Infrequent outbreaks and wariness of inoculation made his troops very susceptible to the disease," according to the library. Smith National Library for Study of George Washington, Washington and his Continental Army "faced a threat that proved deadlier than the British" in the first years of the Revolutionary War - smallpox. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)īut this is basically true. This post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. "Could you imagine if his soldiers behaved like the GOP?" wrote one person who tweeted the image.