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The severe epidemics of smallpox that swept through London and Boston in 1721 and 1722 caused scarring, blindness, and death. In Boston, almost 6000 people (out of a total population of 11,000) contracted smallpox, and more than 800 died. Doctors battled hopelessly against "the speckled monster" and applied the humoral therapies of bloodletting, blistering, and the so-called cool regimen, advocated by the distinguished English physician Thomas Sydenham. Into these geographically separate but similar scenes of chaotic misery stepped two unlikely heroes: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, a highly intelligent, beautiful but pockmarked, English aristocrat, and Zabdiel Boylston, a locally trained colonial
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