Self-taught 18th century doctor led the way in fighting disease

The second largest of Scotland’s islands by population, and the third largest by area, is Shetland; a place rich in culture and heritage, and boasting two of the country’s most remote isles – Foula and Unst – in its archipelago of around 100 islands.

Shetland boasts deep roots with Norse culture, exemplified by the fire festival Up Helly Aa, celebrated annually across Shetland to mark the end of Yule, the Christmas season.

The Up Helly Aa festival takes place on the last Tuesday of January each year – this year taking place on January 31.

There are good reasons why such northerly communities might celebrate the end of winter and the approaching spring, emerging as they are from the deep dark of December and January, times when the sun is above the horizon for less than six hours a day.

It was on this remote but vibrant island of Shetland that the hero of our story was born.

John Williamson was a self-taught doctor who lived on Shetland in the 18th century, and he gained the wonderful nickname of Johnnie Notions due to his, well, various notions, many of which were ahead of their time.

Johnnie Notions lived at a time when the deadly infectious disease known as smallpox would regularly infect the island communities of Shetland, with major outbreaks every 20 years throughout the 18th century.

An outbreak in 1700 is said to have wiped out one-third of the population of Shetland.

Towards the end of the 18th century, Johnnie Notions happened upon the notion that perhaps by introducing people to weaker doses of smallpox, they might build up immunity to the disease, a process we now know as inoculation.

No-one is quite sure how Johnnie Notions came up with this idea, but he was working on inoculating the people of Shetland at least a decade before Edward Jenner, above left – commonly regarded as the inventor of the vaccine – began experimenting with smallpox inoculations in England in 1796.

Johnnie Notions’ inoculation process consisted of taking the pus from smallpox sores, treating it to lessen its virulence by sandwiching it between glass plates and burying it for several years.

He would then insert it beneath his patients’ skin using a knife.

This process seems almost barbaric to our modern ears, as we are so used to vaccines being developed in high-tech labs and administered by trained healthcare professionals using sterile needles.

Vaccines are now part of modern life, from the courses of childhood vaccines which protect us from a whole range of once-deadly diseases including measles, mumps, rubella, whooping cough, and polio; to our seasonal flu vaccines, and more recently of course the various innovative Covid-19 vaccines that have helped get us back to something approaching normal, even as the virus still circulates in our communities.

Understanding the science of how our bodies work has never been more important.

It’s vital that we all understand better the science that inform the choices we make in our healthcare.

Communicating science is at the heart of what Glasgow Science Centre does, and we have an entire floor devoted to the science of our bodies, in an exhibition called Bodyworks.

We also take that message to all corners of Scotland through our Bodyworks on Tour travelling exhibition, funded by GSK, visiting schools, family events, and festivals.

To help us reach the very most remote communities in Scotland, The Edina Trust has funded visits of Glasgow Science Centre’s Bodyworks on Tour to every primary school on every island in Scotland before the end of April 2023.

Our final island tours taking place in January and April this year – after three years of visiting schools from Arran to Yell – will, fittingly, be to Shetland.

Understanding human health science helps us all live longer lives, far freer from illness and disease than our ancestors of even a century ago.

Currently 160,000 people work in NHS Scotland, including 6000 healthcare scientists, and they are carrying on the tradition of care and scientific investigation exemplified by Johnnie Notions more than 250 years ago.

We rely on them all, never more so than during the past few years of Covid-19.