Variolation practice (17th century)

Timeline

1. 1671–1676Jiangnan region · ChinaChinese folk physicians in the Jiangnan region systematically practiced nasal insufflation (blowing smallpox scab powder into the nostrils) and the clothing method (having healthy children wear a smallpox patient's clothes), gradually forming operating procedures for judging the quality of the 'seed', and selecting the season and timing of inoculation. The Qing court was deeply wary of smallpox; the Kangxi Emperor had survived smallpox in childhood and was chosen as heir on that account, and his court physicians began systematically studying variolation, laying the foundation for later promotion at court.
2. 1672–1680Constantinople (Istanbul) · Ottoman EmpireFolk physicians in Ottoman cities (mostly elderly women) long practiced the scratch method: taking fresh smallpox pus, pricking the recipient's skin with a needle and rubbing the pus in. From 1672 through the 1680s this technique was widely popular in cities such as Constantinople and Thessaloniki, inoculation usually being performed in autumn to reduce the risk of febrile complications. European diplomats stationed in the Ottoman Empire began incorporating such practices into travel accounts and correspondence, laying early documentary groundwork for Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's transmission westward in the early 18th century.
3. 1677–1680Constantinople and Western European medical circles · EuropeIn the late 1670s European travelers and diplomats began including observations of Ottoman variolation in their correspondence and scholarly reports. The Royal Society's Philosophical Transactions published relevant descriptive fragments from the Levant. Though these early records did not yet trigger systematic promotion, they formed an important incubation period in the history of European inoculation in the 1700s, laying the cognitive groundwork for the institutional transfer of Eastern preventive medical knowledge to Western Europe.