A 300-Year-Old Tale Of One Women's Quest To Stop A Deadly Virus
Three hundred years ago, in 1721, England was in the grips of a smallpox epidemic.
"There were people dying all over the place," says Isobel Grundy, a professor emeritus of English at the University of Alberta in Canada. "Social life came to a standstill and all the things we've suddenly become familiar with again."
But as Londoners cowered inside their homes, there was a woman who knew how to end the outbreak. Her name was Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and she had learned a technique from women in the distant Ottoman Empire that could stop the pox in its tracks.
What happened next is a tale of politics and public health that bears some "depressingly similar" parallels to the current pandemic, Grundy says. But it also shows how science and determination turned the tide against one of the worst diseases humanity has ever endured.
