Lady Mary and the First Inoculation
Dan Snow's History Hit
History Hit
4.7 • 12.9K Ratings
🗓️ 20 April 2021
⏱️ 25 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In the 18th century, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was an aristocrat, courtier, brilliant beauty, intellectual, wife to the ambassador to the Ottoman Empire and a sufferer from smallpox. It was during her time in Constantinople that she witnessed a procedure that would alter the course of her life; inoculation. Having inoculated her children she brought the practice back to Britain where she inoculated the offspring of the high and mighty including the daughters of the royal family. Jo Willet, TV producer and author of The Pioneering Life of Mary Wortley Montagu, joins Dan to explore the fascinating life of the 18th Century ‘It Girl’ turned public health pioneer.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello everybody, welcome, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. You join me on a foggy day. |
| 0:05.9 | I look out across the English Channel now from my study window, the book by |
| 0:10.2 | in study, to where it all happens folks. Here I'm looking out and there's fog in |
| 0:14.4 | the chat. Terribly sad. Terribly sad for the continent of Europe to be cut off |
| 0:19.1 | from Britain in these conditions. The fog horn you may be able to hear, the fog |
| 0:22.7 | horns are still honking, I guess, in the distance. A wonderfully irrelevant piece |
| 0:28.7 | technology now that every ship has got a GPS track on it. But anyway, love hearing it. |
| 0:33.5 | This episode is also about technology. Good segue there. This episode features Joe |
| 0:39.4 | Willett. She's a brilliant award-winning TV producer, storyteller, and she's |
| 0:44.2 | spotted one hell of a story here. Talking about Lady Wertley Montague, an aristocratic |
| 0:49.5 | brilliant, courteous beauty, sufferer from smallpox, intellectual, and ambassadors |
| 0:57.5 | wife. She was an ambassador's wife into the Ottoman Empire, Constantinople. She saw a |
| 1:01.9 | procedure there in an occupation that she then brought back to Britain. She was a |
| 1:07.5 | pioneer of public health. She inoculated the daughters of the royal family. |
| 1:12.5 | Absolutely extraordinary story about an 80's history, it girl, turned public health |
| 1:18.1 | pioneer. If you wish to probably what you do, go and get more history. If your passion |
| 1:23.0 | for history is such that it cannot be satisfied by this one podcast then fear not. |
| 1:26.8 | If you get a history hit.tv, simple, little type in a website. Simple as that. History |
| 1:31.5 | hit.tv. You go on there, you get the world's best history channel. The Netflix of history, |
| 1:38.1 | documentaries, audio, a safe space in history fans. Please head over there and do that for |
| 1:43.7 | some reason, century history on there, which I hope you'll enjoy. |
| 1:46.8 | And last thing, sorry for those of you who were listening and these podcasts weren't just |
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