Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was an English aristocrat and writer. Montagu
is today chiefly remembered for her letters, particularly her letters from
Turkey, published as Turkish Embassy Letters. They have been described
as “the very first example of a secular work by a woman about the Muslim
Orient”. Lady Mary avoided publication during her lifetime. However, her
letters from Turkey were clearly intended for circulation among members of her
own social circle, and she revised them extensively after her return. Montagu's
Turkish letters were to prove an inspiration to later generations of European
women travellers to the Orient.
She also introduced the practice of inoculation into England ( in the
1790s, Edward Jenner developed a safer method, vaccination). Her husband,
Edward Wortley Montagu, served as the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire
from 1716 to 1717. She witnessed inoculation being practiced by physicians in
Constantinople, and was greatly impressed: she had lost a brother to smallpox
and bore facial scars from the disease herself. In March 1718 she had the
embassy surgeon, Charles Maitland, inoculate her five-year-old son. In 1721,
after returning to England, she had her four-year-old daughter inoculated. She
invited friends to see her daughter, including Sir Hans Sloane, the King's
physician. Sufficient interest arose that Maitland gained permission to test
inoculation at Newgate prison in exchange for their freedom on six prisoners
due to be hanged, an experiment which was witnessed by a number of notable
doctors. All survived, and in 1722 the Prince of Wales' daughters received
inoculations.
However by 1724 doctors and clergy were warning that inoculating people
against smallpox contravened the will of God. The London College of Physicians
condemned the practice as taking the power of life and death out of God's
hands!
