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How inoculation against smallpox became all the rage in Russia

2 July 2022

9:00 AM

2 July 2022

9:00 AM

The Empress and the English Doctor: How Catherine the Great Defied a Deadly Virus Lucy Ward

Biteback, pp.352, 20

The concept of vaccination evolved from 18th-century inoculation practices and many people contributed to the accretion of knowledge. This book focuses on two individuals: the Quaker doctor Thomas Dimsdale, who, from his small Hertfordshire surgery, pioneered a simple smallpox immunisation; and Catherine the Great, who summoned him all the way to St Petersburg to inoculate her and the teenage Grand Duke Paul.

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