Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, the Woman Who Discovered the Vaccine

In recent years, the subject of vaccines has become a recurring topic in society, especially due to the COVID-19 pandemic. One of the most celebrated advances was 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 new. In science history books, we often find the name of the English doctor Edward Jenner (1749-1823) as the person responsible for discovering the principle of vaccination. According to reports, Jenner observed that women who worked milking cows and came into contact with the lesions caused by cowpox showed only mild forms of the disease and seemed protected against human smallpox. Based on this observation, he extracted pus from the cows' wounds and inoculated a child, finding that he developed mild symptoms and was immune to the severe form of the disease. This is how Jenner named the immunization method “vaccination”, derived from the Latin word vacca (cow).

Dessins montrant l'inoculation de la variole et de la vaccine. Wellcome Library/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

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

Having contracted the disease and suffered its marks, Lady Mary realized that those who survived smallpox never got sick again. Her brother, however, was not so lucky and died of the infection. During her stay in Constantinople, she observed that the locals practiced a rudimentary method of immunization: they applied pus from the lesions of infected people to small cuts in the skin of healthy individuals. This procedure, known as variolation, provided a mild form of the disease and guaranteed protection against future infections.

Convinced of the technique's effectiveness, Lady Mary decided to test it on her own daughter Alice, becoming one of the first people to introduce the practice in England. Later, on her return to the country, she also promoted variolation among the British aristocracy, even persuading doctors at the royal court to apply it to members of the royal family. Her role was crucial in spreading this knowledge, which would eventually influence 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 the wounds of cows. The most serious thing, however, is that Lady Mary has never been cited as the pioneer of this revolutionary procedure. 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 was practically erased from the history of science, a reflection of how women's contributions have often been ignored or forgotten over the centuries.

Fortunately, there is an increasingly significant movement today to rescue 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 reevaluate how the history of science is told, ensuring that all the brilliant minds who have helped shape it are duly recognized.

Written by Daniel Manzoni de Almeida and edited by Intan