The Lady Who Brought Pox to the Party
Picture this: It’s 1717, and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu is living her best life in Constantinople, sipping Turkish coffee and learning about the latest beauty trends when she stumbles upon a local practice that would change medical history forever. Instead of bringing back exotic spices or fancy rugs, she decides to import something truly wild – smallpox scabs. That’s right, folks. While other ladies were busy gossiping and embroidering, Lady Mary was out there collecting crusty pox bits like they were the hottest fashion accessory.
Back in Britain, Lady Mary became the ultimate trendsetter. Forget new hairstyles or dance moves; she made it hip to have someone scratch you with a needle dipped in smallpox juice. It was like the 18th-century version of a spa day, if your idea of relaxation involved fever dreams and possible death.
The Turks called it “inoculation,” but Lady Mary, ever the trendsetter, decided to rebrand it as “engrafting.” Because nothing says cutting-edge medical procedure like a term that sounds like you’re trying to grow a tree on your arm. Later, doctors would coin the term “variolation” for this revolutionary technique, but let’s be honest – “engrafting” has a much better ring to it at tea parties.
And Lady Mary wasn’t content with just inoculating her own kids. Oh no, she had to go and make it a royal affair. She convinced Princess Caroline to turn variolation into the hottest party game at court. “Who wants to play pin the pox on the princess?” became the new “charades”. And let’s not forget the prisoners who got to choose between death row and being human pincushions for pox. Talk about a tough choice: “Hmm, execution or experimental disease injection? Decisions, decisions!”
So next time you’re complaining about getting a flu shot, just remember Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, the woman who made “sharing is caring” apply to deadly viruses. She took “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” to a whole new level – and looked fabulous doing it.
Her Wikipedia page says she is chiefly remembered for her letters, particularly her Turkish Embassy Letters describing her travels to the Ottoman Empire, as wife to the British ambassador to Turkey, which are said to be “the very first example of a secular work by a woman about the Muslim Orient”. What?
