Some sources point out that in the eleventh century the inoculation of smallpox or variolization was practiced in Central Asia to prevent it. There are testimonies from the 16th century that prove that at that time such a resource was known and used in China, and shortly after in India, Sudan and Turkey, among other countries. There were several variants in the procedure to achieve contagion, always from the pustules of a patient who had overcome the ailment in a mild way . The practice consisted in the administration to a healthy person of the aforementioned pustules, dried and ground or grated, through the nostrils, in incisions caused in the skin or by making a healthy child wear the clothes used by another who had had the disease.
Smallpox was a serious and highly contagious disease that began with fevers and continued with the appearance of vesicles with pus on the skin, which left an indelible mark in the form of scars or blindness, when the process did not end in death. It seems that since the beginning of the seventeenth century the virus became more aggressive – today we would say that due to a mutation – and in the Old Continent epidemics were more frequent, where it has been calculated that 400,000 people died from it each year.
It is also believed that before the eighteenth century in some parts of Europe some type of variolization was already carried out, a practice that was surely considered superstition, but that was based on the empirical reality that those who contracted the disease once were immunized . In any case, at the beginning of that century a person entered the scene who would be fundamental in all this history. This is Mary Montagu , a determined and intelligent woman who had seen a brother die of smallpox and who bore the scars it left on her face.
Mary was married to a diplomat who was sent to Constantinople in 1716 as a British ambassador to the Ottoman court. His two years of stay helped him to assimilate the Turkish culture and to know in detail the practice of subcutaneous inoculation . Convinced of its effectiveness, she decided to have Charles Maitland, a doctor at the embassy, apply it to her six-year-old son. Back in London, she became an advocate for the technique, which raised rejection among the medical community. True, it posed risks – in some cases, inoculated people could die – but other criticisms were religiously based. It was claimed, for example, that every epidemic was a divine punishment and inoculation was against God’s will.
In 1721, there was a serious epidemic in Great Britain and Mary asked Maitland to inoculate her three-year-old daughter, in the presence of other doctors. The success of the operation was known throughout London and even the Royal House was interested. As a precautionary measure, before applying it, it was decided to carry out a test with six prisoners who were going to be executed. On August 9, 1721, before some twenty-five doctors, surgeons and members of the Royal Society, the so-called Royal Experiment took place. The result was favorable and the inmates were released. Other trials on children would soon follow, and in April 1722 two daughters of the Princess of Wales would be inoculated.
The technique would spread gradually, so that it was already being applied in many other countries when, at the end of the century, the doctor Edward Jenner devised the first vaccine in history , in which immunization was obtained from the virus from smallpox. cows. Vaccination would prevail because it was safer and more effective, it left little footprint at the injection site, and those vaccinated did not transmit the disease .
