by Bee Bloeser
Wails and delirium of the dying and the putrid stench of smallpox seep from the windows and billow from the doors. They flood the streets of Boston and rise to fill the spaces between the living. Leeching or bleeding the patient do nothing to block death's invasion. Fear has the city in its vise. Every…
Continue reading ➞ Smallpox Attacks 18th Century Boston; George Washington Risks Inoculating Troops
1717. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, feminist wife of Britain's ambassador to Ottoman Empire, is stunned by the Turks' means of conferring immunity against smallpox, inoculation/variolation with smallpox. Having been earlier ravaged by the disease herself, Lady Mary is passionate about this discovery and fights to get the practice adopted in England. 1767. Mozart gets smallpox. By…
Continue reading ➞ Inoculation Proves its Worth; Mozart Gets Smallpox as Dad Says No
The year is 1718. Smallpox inoculation is unknown in Western cultures, and vaccine is still decades in the future. Commoners and kings are powerless against the onslaught of the speckled monster. How did one intrepid British aristocrat discover a practice in a far-off land, become an immunization pioneer and a heroine in the annals of…
