Quote:
Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin
Why "pre-Enlightenment"? The alleged "Enlightenment"* had nothing to do with it; microbial pathogens weren't discovered until the Victorian age.
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On the contrary, Lady Montagu Wortley observed inoculations for smallpox being conducted in the Ottoman Empire (the East always being way ahead of the West at the time), and pushed for the same program when returning home to England in 1718. Cotton Mather conducted smallpox inoculations in Boston in 1721. In 1796, Dr. Edward Jenner discovered immunity to smallpox could be produced by inoculation of patients with the cowpox virus.