Modern History Sourcebook:
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762):
Smallpox Vaccination in Turkey
In 1717 Lady Montague arrived with her husband, the British
ambassador, at the court of the Ottoman Empire. She wrote
voluminously of her travels. In this selection she noted that
the local practice of deliberately stimulating a mild form
of the disease through innoculation conferred immunity. She
had the procedure performed on both her children. By the end
of the eighteenth century, the English physician Edwardjenner
was able to cultivate a serum in cattle, which, when used
in human vaccination, eventually led to the worldwide eradication
of the illness.
A propos of distempers, I am going to tell you a thing, that
will make you wish yourself here. The small-pox, so fatal,
and so general amongst us, is here entirely harmless, by the
invention of engrafting, which is the term they give 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 great heat is abated. People send to one another to know
if any of their family has a mind to have the small-pox; they
make parties for this purpose, and when they are met (commonly
fifteen or sixteen together) the old woman comes with a nut-shell
full of the matter of the best sort of small-pox, and asks
what 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 her needle
, and after that, binds up the little wound with a hollow
bit of shell, and in this manner opens four or five veins.
The Grecians have commonly the superstition of opening one
in the middle of the forehead, one in each arm, and one on
the breast, to mark the sign of the Cross; but this has a
very ill effect, all these wounds leaving little scars, and
is not done by those that are not superstitious, who chuse
to have them in the legs, or that part of the arm that is
concealed. The children or young patients play together all
the rest of the day, and are in perfect health to the eighth.
Then the fever begins to seize them, and they keep their beds
two days, very seldom three. They have very rarely above twenty
or thirty in their faces, which never mark, and in eight days
time they are as well as before their illness. Where they
are wounded, there remains 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 small-pox here by way of diversion, as
they take the waters in other countries. There is no example
of any one that has died in it, and you may believe I am well
satisfied of the safety of this experiment, since I intend
to try it on my dear little son. I am patriot enough to take
the pains to bring this useful invention into fashion in England,
and I should not fail to write to some of our doctors very
particularly about it, if I knew any one of them that I thought
had virtue enough to destroy such a considerable branch of
their revenue, for the good of mankind. But that distemper
is too beneficial to them, not to expose to all their resentment,
the hardy wight that should undertake to put an end to it.
Perhaps if I live to return, I may, however, have courage
to war with them. Upon this occasion, admire the heroism in
the heart of
Your friend, etc. etc.
Source:
From Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Letters
of the Right Honourable Lady M--y W--y M--e: Written During
her Travels in Europe, Asia and Africa. . . , vol. 1 (Aix:
Anthony Henricy, 1796), pp. 167-69; letter 36, to Mrs. S.
C. from Adrianople, n.d.
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© Paul Halsall, July 1998
halsall@murray.fordham.edu
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