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Lady Mary Wortley Montagu learned of a way to stop smallpox from women in the Ottoman Empire in the early 18th century. Trying to persuade her country to do the same proved tricky.
Three hundred years ago, in 1721, England was in the grips of a smallpox epidemic. There were people dying all over the place, says Isobel Grundy, a professor emeritus of English at the University of Alberta in Canada. Social life came to a standstill and all the things we ve suddenly become familiar with again.
But as Londoners cowered inside their homes, there was a woman who knew how to end the outbreak. Her name was Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and she had learned a technique from women in the distant Ottoman Empire that could stop the pox in its tracks.