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Lady Mary Montagu was born in 1690 and, despite a poor education, showed early signs of high intelligence. After her marriage to Edward Wortley Montagu she became well known at the court of George I. In 1716 her husband was appointed Ambassador to Turkey and they arrived in Constantinople in 1717. Whil'st there, Lady Mary became very interested in the Turkish method of inoculation against smallpox. On her return to England in 1718 she had her daughter inoculated under the supervision of four eminent physicians. There was considerable controversy about the treatment but eventually it was accepted and saved many from death or disfigurement.
"The smallpox, so fatal and so general among us, is here entirely harmless by the invention of engrafting, which is the term they gave it. There is a set of old women who make it their business to perform the operation every autumn, in the month of September, when the heat is abated. People send to one another to know if any of their family has a mind to have the smallpox. They make parties for this purpose; and when they are met (commonly fifteen or sixteen together), the old woman comes with a nutshell full of the matter of the best sort of smallpox, and asks which vein you please to have opened. She immediately rips open that you offer to her with a large needle (which gives you no more pain than a common scratch), and puts into the vein as much matter as can lie upon the head of the needle, and after that binds up the little wound with a hollow bit of shall, and in this manner opens four or five veins. The children or young patients play together all the rest of the day, and are in perfect health until the eighth. Then the fever begins to seize them, and they keep their beds two days - very seldom three. They have rarely above twenty or thirty on their faces, which never mark, and in eight day's time they are as well as before their illness. When they are wounded, there remain running sores during the distemper, which I don't doubt is a great relief to it. Every year thousands undergo this operation, and the French Ambassador says pleasantly, that they take the smallpox here by way of diversion, as they take the waters in other countries. There is no example of any one that has died of it, and you may believe that I am well satisfied of the safety of the experiment, since I intend to try it on my dear little son. |