Mary Wortley Montagu The scourge of smallpox

In April 1721, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was shut up in Twickenham with her two children for company. A smallpox pandemic was raging. She sent out servants daily to glean the names of those dead from the disease. Mary had narrowly escaped death herself when she had contracted smallpox five years before, and she had also lost her beloved only brother, William, to it.

Yet Lady Mary knew of a means of protection against a disease that, across the centuries, has killed hundreds of millions and disfigured many more. After she recovered from smallpox, her husband, Edward Wortley Montagu, was made ambassador to the Ottoman empire. And it was during her family’s 15-month residency in Constantinople that Lady Mary was introduced to a treatment that, with her help, would alter the course of medical history. It was called