Living with Smallpox in Early Modern Britain (c.15801780 CE)

To validate present-day choices, appeals are often made to history. In the context of Covid-19, those reluctant to vaccinate have assumed that smallpoxs effects were superficial or fleeting prior to its eradication and that resistance to inoculation in the past offers a precedent for vaccine hesitancy today. This project will test these assumptions. Furthermore, it will contribute to our understanding of how people experience and respond to health crises, and the ways in which social status, gender, age, ethnicity, and political allegiance condition those experiences and responses. The research will support contemporary efforts to inform people about health and influence the behaviours that impact on medical outcomes. It will promote awareness that susceptibility to infectious disease, including its often debilitating consequences for survivors, is never simply a matter of biology but of beliefs and behaviours with deep roots in the past. The findings will improv