1720s

Onesimus, an enslaved African man owned by Puritan minister Cotton Mather in Boston, described the African practice of variolation (deliberate inoculation with smallpox matter) to Mather during the 1721 smallpox epidemic. Mather promoted the technique, and Dr. Zabdiel Boylston applied it — saving hundreds of lives in what became the first major deployment of inoculation in American history. Onesimus's knowledge, drawn from African medical traditions, is credited by historians as the direct source of this life-saving intervention and an early example of African knowledge shaping American medicine.

Anton Wilhelm Amo, born in Ghana around 1703 and brought to Germany as a child, defends his dissertation 'On the Rights of Moors in Europe' at Halle in 1729 and later publishes 'On the Impassivity of the Human Mind' (1734). He lectures at Halle and Jena, becoming the first African to attend and teach philosophy at a European university.