41. Sex and Sickness

41. Sex and Sickness

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was an extraordinary woman, both in her personality and in her contribution to the world, specifically in medicine.

This episode looks at both aspects, trying to pick out the complex character behind her image, in particular her possibly ambivalent and certainly far from obvious sexuality.

Then, however, it looks at how she became a leading benefactor to humanity, by introducing to England, and through England to Europe, the life-saving procedure of immunising against smallpox by inoculation with the disease itself. That makes this episode not entirely suitable for anti-vaxxers, especially as it ends with a quick look at how her campaign led to the launching of actual vaccination, as opposed to the variolation she promoted. The anti-vaxxers won't like hearing that the procedure has saved hundreds of millions of lives.



Illustration: William Powell Frith, Alexander Pope is said to have declared his love to Lady Mary, who simply found it uproariously funny, offending him deeply and turning him into an open enemy.
The painting dates from 1852, so it’s a later retrospective and imaginary depiction, but more fun than the contemporary and more serious portraits, which is why I chose it. It’s in the library at Otago, New Zealand, and the image is in the public domain.

Music: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License

Jaksot(274)

249. Who governs Britain?

249. Who governs Britain?

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248. Withered Heath

248. Withered Heath

Ted Heath’s government had to deal with two problems drawn from Britain’s postimperial standing: • adapting to its loss of global status, by negotiating, at the third time of asking and for the first ...

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247. Hopes dashed

247. Hopes dashed

After talking last week about his government’s achievements in the social sphere, this episode looks at the difficulties Wilson faced in economics and foreign affairs.One way Wilson explored to addres...

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246. The sixties, swinging - high and low

246. The sixties, swinging - high and low

According to the English poet Philip Larkin, the sixties saw the invention of sexual intercourse. While that may not be quite the case, it was certainly a time when a lot of people decided that it was...

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245. Pressures preventing progress

245. Pressures preventing progress

The Wilson government got off to a pretty sticky start, with the new Prime Minister learning, more or less as he arrived at Downing Street in October 1964, that the trade deficit for the year was like...

1 Kesä 202514min

244. Harold gets Home

244. Harold gets Home

Here we’re focusing on the changes that took place in Britain after Supermac (Harold Macmillan) stood down as Prime Minister.A lot of how that went depended on the Opposition formed by the Labour Part...

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243. Sex, spies and a slippery slope

243. Sex, spies and a slippery slope

Last time we looked at the continuing disintegration of the British Empire. In this episode we look at two other key aspects of Macmillan’s foreign policy, Britain’s relations with the US and with pot...

18 Touko 202515min

242. A wind of change driving the retreat from empire

242. A wind of change driving the retreat from empire

‘The wind of change’ was the other famous phrase of Harold Macmillan’s, along with ‘You’ve never had it so good’. It came in a speech in which he talked about how a movement had grown up in many count...

4 Touko 202514min

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