A Pox on You!

Yesterday I spoke about the surgeons at sea, their training and their pharmacuticals. I was on-line later and saw an interesting article about a English woman in the 18th Century who can be credited with helping with the eradication of small pox through vaccination!

Her name is lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who lived from 1689-1762. She was a beauty for her time, daughter of the Duke of Kingston, she was a writer, a "feminist", and a socialite. She was to be married to another, but eloped and married Lord Edward Wortley Montagu in 1712,  and had a son in 1713.
She and the child accompanied her husband to Constantinople,Turkey where he was appointed ambassador.
In December of 1715, she contracted small pox, and it ruined her good looks, leaving her without eyelashes, and a deeply pitted skin.

In Turkey, she learned Turkish, and made friends, and learned the customs. She witnessed the practice of inoculation, which she called "engrafting", the use of live smallpox virus taken from a smallpox blister from a mild case of the disease, scratched onto a well person. She had her own son inoculated with the process. Back home, in London, though she was enthusiastic about the procedure, she encountered resistance from the medical establishment because she was a woman, and because of where the procedure was being performed.

Mary was able to get some prisoners to undergo the procedure, and they lived.In 1722, King George I allowed a doctor she knew to inoculated two of his grandchildren! They lived as well. Later on, cow pox was used, but she was indeed a pioneer, and we can thank her for her effort! Shown below, in her Turkish style, which was very avant garde.