‘… Let us speak of Catherine the Great, Autocrat and Empress of all Russia…
‘Catherine had seen first hand the ravages of smallpox. Catherine herself was spared but she saw the horrors of smallpox and probably decided to make efforts to spare her people from the kind of suffering she saw when ascending the throne. An “enlightened” monarch with a great interest in science and the enlightenment literature of the age, she would lead Russia into its golden age converting it from a backward nation into a …’
First Night History 