Regarding variolation, I would recommend the account given in the old but
classic textbook: "Immunology for students of medicine", Humphrey and White,
3rd Edn., 1970. On pages one and two they give a pellucid description of the
practice as described by Voltaire in his second volume of letters, 1733. V.
describes how Lady Wortley Montague, who in the reign of King George the 1st, was
the wife of the ambassador in Constantinople, variolated her infant against the
advice of her chaplain, who thought it an unchristian operation. Lady
Montague then communicated the success of the operation to the Princess of
Wales. Voltaire states that the practice originated from the inhabitants of
Circassia: "They are poor, and their daughters are beautiful, and indeed 'tis
in them they chiefly trade. They furnish with beauties the seraglios of the
Turkish Sultan, of the Persian Sophy, and of all those who are wealthy enough
to purchase and maintain such precious merchandise. These maidens are very
honourably and virtuously instructed to fondle and caress men, are taught
dances of a very mobile and effiminate kind; and how to heighten by the most
voluptous artifices, the pleasures of their disdainful masters for whom they
are designed". However he adds "frequently, when the smallpox was epidemical,
trade was suspended for several years, which thinned very considerably the
seraglios of Persia and Turkey". "In order to preserve the life and beauty of
their children, the thing remaining was, to give them the smallpox in their
infant years. This they did by inoculating in the body of a child, a pustule
taken from the most regular, and at the same time the most favourable sort of
smallpox that could be procured".
H & W in a footnote state that variolation was practised widely, especially in
the country and smaller towns, and its efficacy in preventing the deaths from
smallpox in small children and of women at childbirth was probably the major
cause of the the great increase in population which began during the first
half of the eighteenth century.
Hope this is of interest.
Gordon MacPherson