Back in the early 1760s, in the Gloucestershire village of Sodbury, some dairymaids were in conversation about the most dreaded disease then known to humankind, when one remarked ‘I shall never have smallpox for I have had cowpox. I shall never have an ugly pockmarked face.’
This was overheard by a boy working as an apprentice to a county surgeon, and fo…
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