Lady Mary Montagu's face was disfigured by smallpox. The British aristocrat, born in 1689, survived the disease that killed her brother. Naturally occurring and caused by the variola virus, the contagious illness affected people for thousands of years before it was wiped out worldwide after an unprecedented global immunization campaign.
But before the first vaccine was developed and implemented by Edward Jenner at the end of the 18th century, the most popular method to prevent smallpox was a practice called inoculation.
It consisted of collecting fluid from a smallpox pustule in a sick person and transferring it to a healthy individual. It wasn't as safe as a vaccine, of course, and people did sometimes get sick and even die, but when it worked, the inoculated were protected for life.
This pre-vaccine technique was not new in the East and was practiced in China since the year 1000. By 1661, it became an official public policy in China. Jenner himself was inoculated as a boy. And while observing that milkmaids infected by cowpox were protected from human smallpox, he had the idea of using that to create the first vaccine.
Jenner might not have known this, but he owes his discovery to a woman with a disfigured face who helped make the practice of inoculation popular in England during his time.
