360 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



good ground and brought forth fruit a hundredfold ; while the 

 knowledge of the same facts always existent had, outside of 

 these illuminated intelligences, fallen on the stoniest kind of soil. 



The relation of the beautiful and brilliant and witty Lady 

 Montagu to one of the most beneficent applications of knowledge 

 to the abatement and mitigation of human suffering, is at the 

 present time very inadequately understood. Even in this day of 

 boasted intelligence nine out of ten among persons who consider 

 themselves well informed will say, " Yes, I know Lady Mary 

 Wortley Montagu was the woman who introduced vaccination 

 into England," whereas it was inoculation for smallpox that she 

 had introduced. This produced a mild form of the disease, per- 

 fectly protective, and left no marks. Others had observed this 

 Oriental practice, and had brought the knowledge back to Eng- 

 land before her time, and here and there a venturesome individ- 

 ual had tried the experiment, but it was generally done in secret, 

 being looked upon as akin to suicide. It was Lady Mary's intel- 

 ligent enthusiasm that brought it into repute ; she explained the 

 conditions necessary to success, and set the example of having all 

 belonging to her subjected to it. Her only brother had died of 

 smallpox, and she had had it severely ; it disfigured her to the 

 extent of destroying a fine pair of eyebrows, resulting in impart- 

 ing a fierce and disagreeable expression to her eyes, in spite of 

 which she had won the heart and hand of an accomplished gentle- 

 man. Remember, this was in the first quarter of the last century, 

 when communication between distant lands was infrequent, and 

 women's books were almost unknown. 



Her husband had been appointed in 1716 ambassador to the 

 Ottoman court, and she had accompanied him, being then twenty- 

 six years old. They made the journey overland through Ger- 

 many, Austria, Bohemia, and Bulgaria, being the first Christians 

 that had passed over the route since the time of the Greek emper- 

 ors. It occupied more than four months, and, although hospita- 

 bly entertained by the sovereigns in the large cities, as the repre- 

 sentatives of their government, there were long reaches of country 

 where they were obliged to use the beds and provisions that they 

 carried along with them. She wrote back lively and brilliant 

 descriptions of Eastern life in letters that to this day are " mighty 

 interesting reading," the arrival of each being an event in the 

 court coterie of her friends ; they were passed from hand to hand, 

 commented on, and enjoyed with a relish that the surfeited read- 

 ers of to-day can not know, and one of them was appointed to 

 exercise a potent influence on the destiny of millions of the human 

 race, for it was eventually to lead up to the discoveries of Jenner. 

 They were not printed till after her death, in 1762. The one 

 which at last led to the establishment and popularization of inoc- 



