So true. In the 1700s, British envoys to the Ottoman Empire wrote about how people would be inoculated with Smallpox by using the scabs of the inflicted. Of course, they called this dumb and weird. The Ottomans probably learned it from the Chinese who had been doing this for 1,000s of years. 🗃️
The thing is, RFKjr and his ilk are trying to pass off their quackery as “traditional medicine” or even “traditional eastern medicine” when in fact it’s all snake oil and ignores the actual traditions and history of those cultures.
Well anyone saying “traditional medicine” even way back when is a quack. I’m sure there were people in China suggesting that some tea was more effective than scab inoculation.
Not Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who had her own 3-year-old inoculated in 1721 on the basis of what she'd seen in Turkey. She's a true hero. www.theguardian.com/society/2021...
So unsurprising that a woman was the one telling everyone to pay attention to what the rest of the world was doing…
Similar thing happened in Boston, but the inoculation knowledge came from an enslaved African. www.nps.gov/articles/000...
This is fascinating! I had no idea!
Western civilization is full of people going "how dumb!" over and over throughout history, while they insist on retaining the dumbest practices imaginable because they tell themselves they're so enlightened.