In recent years, the issue of vaccines has become a recurring societal topic, particularly due to the COVID-19 pandemic. One of the most famous advancements has been the development of the mRNA vaccine, a technology discovered by scientist Katalin Karikó, who received the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2023 for her contribution to science.

However, the history of vaccines and the role of women in science are not recent phenomena. In science history books, we often find the name of the English physician Edward Jenner (1749-1823) as responsible for discovering the principle of vaccination. According to accounts, Jenner observed that women who worked milking cows and came into contact with lesions caused by cowpox only presented mild forms of the disease and seemed protected against human smallpox.

Based on this observation, he extracted pus from cow wounds and inoculated a child, noting that he developed mild symptoms and was immunized against the severe form of the disease. This is how Jenner named the immunization method “vaccination”, derived from the Latin word vacca (cow).

However, recent discoveries indicate that the principle of immunization had already been observed decades earlier. About 75 years before Jenner, a woman had already described a similar technique. This was Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762), an English aristocrat who married the diplomat Edward Wortley Montagu and went to live in the Constantinople region, in present-day Turkey. A talented writer and keen observer, Lady Mary recorded in her writings the customs of Turkish women. At the time, smallpox was a devastating threat, with a high mortality rate and permanent scars on the skin of survivors.

Having contracted the disease and suffered from its marks, Lady Mary realized that people who survived smallpox never fell ill again. Her brother, on the other hand, was not so lucky and succumbed to the infection. During her stay in Constantinople, she observed that the inhabitants practiced a rudimentary immunization method: they applied pus from the lesions of infected people to small cuts in the skin of healthy individuals. This procedure, known as variolation, allowed for a mild form of the disease and ensured protection against future infections.

Convinced of the technique’s effectiveness, Lady Mary decided to test it on her own daughter Alice, thus becoming one of the first people to introduce this practice in England. Later, upon her return to the country, she also promoted variolation among the British aristocracy, even persuading the royal court physicians to apply it to members of the royal family. Her role was crucial in spreading this knowledge, which eventually influenced the development of modern vaccination.

Although Lady Mary was the true discoverer of the principle of immunization, it was Edward Jenner who, years later, perfected the technique by using the milder form of smallpox present in cow wounds. But more seriously, Lady Mary was never cited as the pioneer of this revolutionary process. Jenner, widely recognized as the “father of vaccination”, never mentioned the work of the woman who, decades earlier, had already introduced variolation in England. Her name has been practically erased from the history of science, clearly showing that women’s contributions have often been ignored or forgotten over the centuries.

Fortunately, there is now an increasingly important movement to save figures like Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and recognize their importance in medicine. Her story not only demonstrates the impact of women in science but also reinforces the need to reassess how the history of science is told, ensuring that all the brilliant minds who have contributed to shaping it are duly recognized.

Written by Daniel Manzoni de Almeida and edited by Intan