Both John and Abigail Adams were intimately familiar with disease and illness, having seen many family members and themselves infected. Thus, Abigail made certain to educate her children on the dangers of disease and how to best avoid it. These lessons included both practices of cleaning and the administration of home medicine. The Adams both understood the toll that smallpox could take and therefore feared the disease and its potentially devastating lasting effects. In July 1764, John Adams set an example by choosing to be inoculated before it was a commonly accepted practice. Though techniques were rudimentary at this time, Adams survived the experience, emerging with protective immunity. Adams described the inoculation procedure in a letter to his wife: