Sheilagh Ogilvie: evaluation

Transcript context

…Who or what invented variolation? We don’t know. It was a spontaneous invention as far as we know in all sorts of societies across the world, lost in the mists of time. The first documents we have suggest that it was widely practiced in China in the 1560s. They got integrated into Chinese religion, but also, they had commercial variolators. There was a dynasty of commercial variolators operating in China in the 16th century. We, in Europe, learned about it — not we, but my ancestors, I guess, mostly came from Europe as far as I know — learned about it not until the 18th century. It had been being practiced in China, in northern Africa, in the Middle East, possibly in India since the 16th or 17th century. It was introduced into England in the first couple of decades of the 18th century simultaneously by an English East India company surgeon writing a letter back to the Royal Society in London and by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who was the ambassador’s wife in Istanbul — Constantinople as it then was — who learned that there was this amazing practice, which the women of Constantinople practiced in order to prevent both themselves and their children from getting smallpox. She actually got an English doctor in Istanbul to do it to her two-year-old son. Then when she went back to England, she got it done. It was probably the first variolation in England. She got it done by the same doctor. She dragged him out of retirement and said, “Do my daughter.” He did it. Because she was a member of the aristocracy, she made it the cool thing to do. She was an early 18th-century influencer, and it became the fashionable thing for aristocratic ladies and then upwardly mobile people to do. It happened that it was a really good way of spreading it because we even know nowadays that mothers, women are often the decision-makers as far as vaccination and health decisions in the family are concerned. The fact that she was such a great influencer, and she modeled this behavior as being very cool and what rich upper-class ladies did, meant that it spread very quickly in England, but sadly, very much not on the continent of Europe. How well did it work back then? Was it a no-brainer that you should do it? Or it was highly risky? What do we know?…

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