vaccination

Variolization: what did it consist of?

Variolization consisted of inoculating or making a healthy person inhale material from pustules of smallpox patients. This method was the only weapon to fight the disease for years and significantly reduced the number of deaths.

Already in use in China in the tenth century, the practice arrived in Europe thanks to the work of the aristocratic Lady Mary Wotley Montagu, wife of the English ambassador in Istanbul. Observing the Ottoman practice of inoculating the liquid taken from the bladders of smallpox patients, the woman decided to subject her children to the same treatment.

In 1722, the technique met with much resistance in England. The method, in effect, was far from safe and not always successful: people who became ill during inoculation became potential sources of infection. After the discoveries of Jenner in the nineties of the 1700s, the variolization was progressively abandoned.