Beside the point: How did a Quaker doctor come to inoculate the empress of Russia? by Rebecca Hardy
‘Some persons of the highest rank would probably be the subject of my trip.’
Friends going for Covid jabs probably won’t have seen any getaway cars parked outside, engine running, for volunteers ready to scarper. But this was the case 250 years ago for the Quaker physician Thomas Dimsdale, who inoculated Catherine II, empress regnant of all Russia, against smallpox in 1768. So risky was the procedure that Catherine (known as ‘the Great’ to those who like titles) is purported to have had a relay of horses waiting outside the palace, just in case the secret procedure went horribly wrong and she was accidentally killed. Fearing the wrath of her angry courtiers, she arranged for a carriage to be waiting to whisk the Quakers away.
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