IMMUNOLOGY

Detailed explanation-1: -The Chinese practiced the oldest documented use of variolation, dating back to the fifteenth century. They implemented a method of “nasal insufflation” administered by blowing powdered smallpox material, usually scabs, up the nostrils.

Detailed explanation-2: -Variolation (in the form of inoculation) was introduced in Europe by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu 300 years ago in 1721, after she had observed the practice in the Ottoman Empire, where her husband was stationed as ambassador to Turkey.

Detailed explanation-3: -Variolation, the intentional inoculation of an individual with smallpox material, traces back to 16th-century China. Variolation used a lancet or needle to introduce pulverized dried smallpox scabs or pustule fluid into the skin of an individual.

Detailed explanation-4: -Mather publicized the technique and the procedure was first tried during a smallpox epidemic in Boston in 1721. Variolation was never risk-free. Not only could the patient die from the procedure but the mild form of the disease which the patient contracted could spread, causing an epidemic.

Detailed explanation-5: -Zabdiel Boylston, the uncle of John Adams’s mother, Susanna Boylston Adams, is often credited for introducing variolation to the Americas in 1721.