The Massachusetts smallpox epidemic or Colonial epidemic is a smallpox outbreak that hits Massachusetts in 1633. Smallpox outbreaks were not confined to 1633 however, and occurred nearly every ten years.
"Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe... Yet, clumsily or smoothly, the world, it seems, progresses and will progress."
― H.G. Wells, The Outline of History, Vol 2 (1920)