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Hello in 17 Lady Mary at Montgo, the wife of the British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire,

wrote a letter to her friend describing how she'd witnessed the practice of smallpox inoculation

in Constantinople.

This involved the transfer of material from a smallpox

postule into multiple cuts made in a vein. Lady Montague had lost her brother to smallpox

and was amazed that the Middle Eastern practice of

inoculation rendered the fatal disease harmless. In Britain the practice was unknown.

Inoculation was an early attempt at creating immunity to disease but was later dismissed when

Edward Jenner pioneered immunization through vaccination in 1796. Vaccination was

hailed as a huge success. Napoleon described it as the greatest gift to mankind, but it made

unexpected opposition after it was made compulsory in Britain in the middle of the

19th century. How did a Gloucester country surgeon become known as the father of

vaccination? Why did the British

government introduce compulsory smallpox vaccination in 1853 and what were the

consequences of those who opposed it? And how was the disease finally eradicated?

With me to discuss the search for immunization

as Sanjoy Batacharya,

lecturer in the Welcome Trust Center for the History of Medicine at UCL.

Chris Dye, coordinator of the World Health Organization's work on tuberculosis epidemiology,

and Naidya Durbach, Associate Professor of History at the University of Utah.

...