Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762) was born in London, oldest child of the Duke and Duchess of Kingston-upon-Hull. Given access to her family’s huge home library, this clever child taught herself Latin, corresponded with bishops, charmed her social circle, and quickly decided to become a writer. And she was independent enough to reject her father’s choice of husband, eloping instead with a new Whig politician, Edward Wortley Montagu (1678-1761). She threw herself into London society and began writing.
In 1715, this aristocratic young woman was struggling to breathe as her skin sprayed with deep, festering pustules. She was in an inflamed and even violent delirium. Her husband prepare for her death because smallpox, the most deadly disease in the early C18th, had wiped out more people than the Black Plague.
painted by Jean-Baptiste van Mour in c1717
National Portrait Gallery
Jo Willett's book, published 2021
Portrait by Godfrey Kneller, 1715
Smallpox was very infectious and killed one in four of the people who were infected. Survivors were most often marked for life with deep, pitted scars. Mary threw off her infection but her once-flawless skin was scarred, her eyelashes were gone and the skin around her eyes remained forever red and irritated. Across the centuries, smallpox has killed millions and disfigured many more.
After she recovered from smallpox, husband Edward Montagu was made ambassador to the Ottoman empire. Mary insisted on travelling with her husband and bringing their toddler abroad! She turned the long trip into a series of letters home, collected into a volume of fine travel writing. She noted that the Turks had almost no scarring from the pox!
It was during her family’s 15 months in Constantinople that Lady Mary was introduced to a radical medical treatment, and in a 1717 letter home, she explained the process. It had long been recognised that people could only get small-pox once. If they survived, they were immune for life. Rather than take their chances with a natural infection and high fatality rate, older Turkish women induced a slight case in children by ingrafting. Smallpox caused blisters on the skin of patients so the women took the pus from one patient’s blister and scratched it into a cut made on a healthy person’s arm. This would lead to mild symptoms, followed by lifelong protection. These were inoculations.
When her husband heard that they were being recalled home, Mary made a secret decision. Her son, the first Englishman to undergo smallpox inoculation, never got the disease! She was determined to bring the technique home, In 1721, there was a smallpox epidemic at home, and Wortley Montagu asked the embassy doctor, who had come to London with her, to engraft her young daughter daughter Mary (1718-94), who had not been inoculated. Alas Lady Mary's enthusiasm for smallpox inoculation was ridiculed by the medical community as being dangerous and exotic.
The reasons were:
1. religious (Muslims cannot teach Christians);
2. medical (an untrained aristocrat lecturing physicians?);
3. sexist (a female changing the thinking of men?) or
Portrait by Godfrey Kneller, 1715
Smallpox was very infectious and killed one in four of the people who were infected. Survivors were most often marked for life with deep, pitted scars. Mary threw off her infection but her once-flawless skin was scarred, her eyelashes were gone and the skin around her eyes remained forever red and irritated. Across the centuries, smallpox has killed millions and disfigured many more.
After she recovered from smallpox, husband Edward Montagu was made ambassador to the Ottoman empire. Mary insisted on travelling with her husband and bringing their toddler abroad! She turned the long trip into a series of letters home, collected into a volume of fine travel writing. She noted that the Turks had almost no scarring from the pox!
It was during her family’s 15 months in Constantinople that Lady Mary was introduced to a radical medical treatment, and in a 1717 letter home, she explained the process. It had long been recognised that people could only get small-pox once. If they survived, they were immune for life. Rather than take their chances with a natural infection and high fatality rate, older Turkish women induced a slight case in children by ingrafting. Smallpox caused blisters on the skin of patients so the women took the pus from one patient’s blister and scratched it into a cut made on a healthy person’s arm. This would lead to mild symptoms, followed by lifelong protection. These were inoculations.
When her husband heard that they were being recalled home, Mary made a secret decision. Her son, the first Englishman to undergo smallpox inoculation, never got the disease! She was determined to bring the technique home, In 1721, there was a smallpox epidemic at home, and Wortley Montagu asked the embassy doctor, who had come to London with her, to engraft her young daughter daughter Mary (1718-94), who had not been inoculated. Alas Lady Mary's enthusiasm for smallpox inoculation was ridiculed by the medical community as being dangerous and exotic.
The reasons were:
1. religious (Muslims cannot teach Christians);
2. medical (an untrained aristocrat lecturing physicians?);
3. sexist (a female changing the thinking of men?) or
4. economic (physicians profiting from useless treatments).
Mary believed the medical establishment opposed her for economic reasons!
Lady Mary sent out servants daily to gather the names of those who died from the disease. Then a proper experiment was carried out on 6 prisoners at Newgate gaol, in the presence of the King’s own physician. Prisoners were inoculated and promised their freedom, if they survived. Yet when the process proved safe, newspapers opposed inoculation. And clerics preached against what they saw as Meddling with the Will of God. Of course the entire process soon became politicised, with the Whigs in favour, and the Tories against.
Mary’s daughter recovered easily, thrived and later married the Earl of Bute, a British Prime Minister. Faced with this public proof of medical success, friends wanted to have their own children treated.
Edward Jenner administering a smallpox vaccine.
Mary believed the medical establishment opposed her for economic reasons!
Lady Mary sent out servants daily to gather the names of those who died from the disease. Then a proper experiment was carried out on 6 prisoners at Newgate gaol, in the presence of the King’s own physician. Prisoners were inoculated and promised their freedom, if they survived. Yet when the process proved safe, newspapers opposed inoculation. And clerics preached against what they saw as Meddling with the Will of God. Of course the entire process soon became politicised, with the Whigs in favour, and the Tories against.
Mary’s daughter recovered easily, thrived and later married the Earl of Bute, a British Prime Minister. Faced with this public proof of medical success, friends wanted to have their own children treated.
He'd been inoculated as a child by doctors following Lady Mary’s ideas.
Guardian
Guardian
Even Caroline Princess of Wales lobbied her father-in-law George I re inoculating the Royal heirs. He said no grandchildren of his would be endangered until more was known about this strange Eastern cure. The king wanted proper tests! When the 6 Newgate prisoners all did well, a second test was run on London orphans, Europe’s best clinical trials to test safety and effectiveness. The royal granddaughters were inoculated and the practice spread. Mary won; her work invited others to make advances.
Mary lived a good life, writing, travelling and mixing with intellectual colleagues. Only when her marriage to Edward failed in 1736 did Mary fall in love with a brilliant a 24-year-old Venetian Count, Francesco Algarotti. Algarotti was the lover of her friend Lord John Hervey, so the relationship soon ended. Mary never saw her husband again.
Jenner’s 1801 book that summarised his cowpox inoculation cases
Des Moines Uni Library
Des Moines Uni Library
Being a woman meant Mary was barred from the Royal Society, England’s famous academy of sciences, further dashing her efforts to gain official support for inoculation. Instead she spread the word among her friends and spent years travelling between aristocratic households over the country, inoculating whoever consented.
Decades later, Edward Jenner (1749–1823) showed that cowpox could be substituted for the more dangerous smallpox. (Vacca, Latin for cow, gave the word vaccination). Jenner achieved all the fame; Lady Mary’s efforts laying the groundwork for smallpox eradication in the 1970s, faded.
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24 comments:
In April 1721 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu introduced inoculation against smallpox into England from Turkey. This often forgotten medical pioneer is remembered at Wentworth Castle Gardens, near Barnsley, in the form of an inscription on an obelisk topped by a golden globe, the Sun Monument. Erected in 1762 it is the first monument to celebrate the intellectual achievement of a woman in Britain.
And yet, still today, it is Edward Jenner's name that is famous as a 'pioneer' of smallpox vaccination. The disease had ravaged the world for several thousand years and was probably a contributing factor in the fall of the Roman Empire. Lady Mary's story is the epitome of the place of women in western culture.
This was particularly interesting to read especially as Jenner is considered to be a hero in this corner of the world - he was born just down in the valley about 10miles from where I live. He has been mentioned many times during the recent Pandemic especially when discussing Anti-vaxxers.
Apparenty as a child, Jenner had himself been inoculated against smallpox by doctors following in Wortley Montagu’s footsteps. He went through the whole purging and bleeding process and had such a grim experience that it is considered that he thought: ‘there has to be an easier way of doing this’.”
When he realised that dairymaids never got smallpox, he “made the leap” and thought of introducing cowpox pus into a scratch instead of smallpox pus. If he hadn’t been inoculated, then it is considered that he may not have gone on to think about vaccination.
However, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu should have or be given due recognition for her pioneering work - it is never too late to acknowledge her huge contribution.
What a fascinating account of this woman's pioneering research. Sadly never recognised for her contribution xx
Yes, I read about her when researching for my children’s book on women in science. A fascinating story!
Looks like anti-vaxxers have been around for a long time! Why am I not surprised that early tests were done on people not considered worth bothering with, such as prisoners and orphans?
Barnsley Museums
Many thanks.I was delighted to see the Sun Monument near Barnsley, so I wondered if Mary Montagu ever lived there. It seems Edward Wortley Montagu, and his father, were developing great mining holdings in the Barnsley coalfields. And the Colour Forms depict a molecular structure!
bazza
smallpox was horrific across the world and throughout many generations. So even though Mary Montagu was not a scientist or a doctor, she found the first important first steps to protecting people from the disease: Turks had almost no scarring from the pox; Turkish women protected children from fatal smallpox by ingrafting pus from infected patients etc.
All great discoveries come step by step, one great thinker working on the findings of earlier great thinkers.
Rosemary
As you say, Jenner made another critical step towards ending smallpox i.e he realised that dairymaids never got smallpox. eventually thought of introducing cowpox pus into a scratch instead of smallpox pus. Just as well Jenner had been inoculated, which was fortunate for his own health and vital for medical history.
You are quite right that it is never too late for Lady Mary Montagu to be acknowledged for her huge contribution. Nor is not the first time that medical history has been rewritten, for whatever reason i.e it wasn't honest or complete in the first place.
Fun60
I had the same feeling when Ada Lovelace collaborated with Charles Babbage to create the first Analytical Machine. She worked as an interpreter and wrote detailed notes for Babbage, which carefully explained computer programming. Yet who knew that Lovelace published the first algorithm?
Sue
the timing is perfect... since anti-vaxxers have all risked their own lives and their closest relatives' lives in this current pandemic. But I thought the Covid anti-vaxxers' conspiracy theories were new-ish. Not at all! The people who most bitterly opposed Mary Montagu were doctors who should have been open to scientific analyses - cautious yes, but not full of religious and racist ridicule.
Great story!'It shows that one doesn't have to be a doctor or scientist to make a big discovery.
'You can't fight a new war with old tactics' they say. Covid-19 pandemic is a new war, vaccines, though based on RNA not DNA are still old tactics. Like in the past, doctors and politicians are considered unreliable, and so many people are looking for alternatives, as the pandemics is still here.
I did History of Medicine in second year, and knew all about Jenner and smallpox. But I assumed Jenner discovered his important results de novo.
DUTA
you certainly don't need to be a doctor or scientist to make a big discovery! But if the discovery is to overcome prejudice and superstition in the Establishment, the findings have to be analysed, expanded and explained by professional scientists. Publish or Perish, in high quality academic journals, seems to apply more to vaccine science now than ever before.
Joe
interesting timing. By the time you studied History of Medicine in the mid 1960s, smallpox was already eliminated in North America (1952) and Europe (1953). But the Intensified Eradication Programme only eliminated the disease from South America in 1971, followed by Asia (1975) and finally Africa (1977). Students should still have been very concerned about the history and spread of smallpox vaccinations.
https://www.cdc.gov/smallpox/history/history.html
Absolutely amazing. I knew about how the inoculation was found but not by whom. Take that punch on the nose you anti vaxxers.
Andrew
I was upset that a woman was largely ignored because of her gender, at a time when her knowledge could have eventually saved squillions of lives. But I was most upset that the medical profession so ridiculed scientific progress that the rest of the community was compromised. Of course there might have been medical mistakes made over the decades, but the anti vaxxers today seem to be repeating exactly the same b.s as C18th conspiracies:
Religious objectors believed that the vaccine was unChristian because it came from an animal.
Suspicious sceptics alleged that smallpox resulted from decaying matter in the atmosphere.
Parents said they'd rather their children died than be forced by Government to inject them etc etc
All b.s, but still persuading some 10% of the population :(
Hi Hels - so true of that time, and even now ... how on earth human beings could ignore half of the population and their ideas? A position many of us today couldn't deal with ...
I'd love to read the book - so I will note for a future library withdrawl ... fascinating person - thanks for highlighting her. Cheers Hilary
Hello Hels, It is hard to read about letters, salons, or virtually anything about any 18th Century celebrities without encountering Lady Montagu--her charm, wit, vivacity, remarks, enterprise, intelligence, etc. This makes it somewhat surprising that they were not willing to take her seriously about such a deadly earnest matter as smallpox. However, this was par for the course for all intellectual women of that period--no one took them seriously, and even when they proved themselves they were constantly belittled--look at Mrs. Thrale, Fanny Burney, and so many others.
--Jim
Boa tarde. Obrigado pela excelente aula de história. Através do seu trabalho aprendo cada vez mais.
Hilary
Very pleased you are happy to read the suggested book. I add suggested reading because:
a] I prefer my posts to be no longer than 950 words, so it is inevitable that some information will have to be omitted. And
b] with controversial topics (like anti-vaxxers), I hope the reader has access to independent balance.
Luiz
it is an important topic, isn't it. Even, or especially after 300 years.
Parnassus
yes! intellectuals, especially women, were unlikely to be taken notice of, at least in important disciplines. But if scientists didn't take Lady Mary Montagu's theories at face value at the time, the proper response would have been for the scientists to test, retest and analyse her theories themselves. Then they could have honestly reported either that Lady Mary was talking nonsense, or that her vaccine theories were tapping into something important.
I had only ever heard of Jenner until last year when I walking magazine that I subscribe mentioned her discovery.
I have been to the Jenner museum, it is fascinating. Mary should be added into the museum as being a key person in the devlopment of what later became vaccines.
CherryPie
you are one of the first people who said they have seen the house-museum in Berkeley... well done! I loved the architecture and gardens.
When Edward Jenner bought the house in the 1780s, little did he know how important the place would become. But he was doing what were considered the first EVER vaccinations there, showing the entire medical world the potential for smallpox eradication for the FIRST time. You are quite right... it wouldn't take away from Dr Jenner's fame if Lady Mary Montagu's contribution was also displayed.
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