The Milkmaid's Hands and the End of Variolation

For centuries, smallpox terrorized the world. In eighteenth-century England, doctors practiced variolation — deliberately infecting patients with a mild strain of the disease, hoping to build immunity. The procedure had to be repeated. It carried genuine risk. Sometimes it killed the very people it was meant to save. Year after year, physicians performed this dangerous ritual, knowing it was imperfect, knowing it could not truly eradicate the threat.…