Diana Barnes

Abstract This paper provides an overview of women's engagement with Stoic ethics in early modern England (c. 1600–1700). It builds on recent literature in the field by demonstrating that there is a positive gender-inclusive narrative to be told about Stoic philosophy in this time—one that incorporates women's specific concerns and responds to women's lived experiences.

As scientists develop a COVID-19 vaccine, it’s worth looking back at the popularization of vaccination’s predecessor, variolation. Also known as engrafting, variolation consisted of taking pus from a person afflicted with smallpox and putting it beneath an uninfected person’s skin. This resulted in a local infection, which would produce antibodies. As historian Diana Barnes notes, scholars have long credited its popularity to the eighteenth-century English noblewoman Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.