Lady Montagu visits the Sultana Hafiten, 18th-century illustration. Travel writer, diplomat's wife and smallpox pioneer Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762), in Turkish clothing, visiting the Sultana Hafiten (a chief consort of the late Ottoman Sultan). Montagu was the daughter of the Duke of Kingston and used her father's library to educate herself. She is remembered for her writings about her travels to the Ottoman Empire, as wife to the British ambassador to Turkey (1716 to 1718). In Constantinople (Istanbul) she witnessed a form of inoculation against smallpox. This variolation involved inoculating patients with fluid from the pustules of people who had mild smallpox. Montagu inoculated her own family then introduced the practice to Britain, from where it spread to Europe and North America. The inoculations were fatal in about 3 percent of cases and were superceded by Edward Jenner's cowpox vaccine in 1798. This illustration is after a drawing by Samuel Wale.