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Mary Wortley Montagu and the fight to cure smallpox

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Photograph of a laptop on a desk. On the laptop screen is a live event, the speaker Jo Willett is on the screen with a red telephone icon in the top left-hand corner of the screen. She has short dark brown hair and is wearing a pink top. She is sitting on a sofa with a bookshelf behind her. Around the laptop, there is a vase with sprigs of pink blossom and a cup with a glass bottle of water.
Library Insights: Jo Willett, Photo: Kathleen Arundell. Source: Wellcome Collection. Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0).

Watch a recording of writer and BAFTA Award-winning TV producer Jo Willett in this online event that explores and celebrates the life of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who played a key role during an outbreak of smallpox in 1721.

During her travels in Turkey, Montagu witnessed the power of inoculation and defied the medical establishment back in England when she brought back the practice, ensuring that her three-year-old daughter became the first person inoculated in Western Europe. This April marks 300 years since this smallpox epidemic, and this event features material from Wellcome Collection to illustrate this deadly disease.

Jo Willet reflects on how Montagu’s life and legacy have been remembered, though often ignored, as typical of the treatment of women in science.

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About your speaker

Black and white photographic portrait of Jo Willett

Jo Willett

Jo Willett is a BAFTA Award-winning TV producer. Her first book, ‘The Pioneering Life of Mary Wortley Montagu’, is published in March 2021.