As Covid vaccination begins in our local community, I look back at the 18th Century Shetland crofter who pioneered inoculation against smallpox: Johnnie Notions

This is the day the fightback began in Northmavine, the northernmost medical practice on Shetland’s Mainland

Our local doctors and nurses have pleaded with folk to wear masks, to wash their hands, to stay well apart, not to visit each other’s houses. Most folk have embraced the idea, as our community knows caring for itself means caring for others. But it all felt like, and was, defensive. We huddled in our so-called bubbles and hoped other people did what we were doing. We waited. Now it feels as if  the battle is moving onto the offensive. Even as the terrible toll of Covid 19 is felt here, with the effects of the pre-Christmas outbreak growing more and more evident.

Today the first Astra-Zeneca vaccines were injected into the arms of our over-80s. Doctors, nurses and surgery staff came in on a Saturday specially, and the invited elderly arrived at the Hillswick surgery proudly and determinedly, on a day of absolutely foul weather. Twenty-three people were vaccinated and the process will continue until all our elderly and vulnerable, those who want the vaccine – and hardly anyone doesn’t – are immunised. As vaccination spreads through all sectors of the community, the pressure on hospitals will – not immediately, but inevitably – ease.

And as folk arrived at the health centre from North Roe, from Ollaberry, from Hillswick and Eshaness, I thought of the Eshaness man whose pioneering work on inoculation in the 18th Century saved thousands of lives, and I think helped lay the psychological groundwork for Shetland’s understanding of how damaging a virulent disease can be, and how important it is to prevent infection: John Williamson, better known as Johnnie Notions.

Before Edward Jenner and his cowpox treatment; devoid of any formal education but possessed of a genius for invention (from highly complex watermills to wig-stretchers) Johnnie Notions saved thousands of Shetlanders from the curse of Smallpox. In the 18th Century, this awful disease came in waves roughly 20 years apart, coming close wiping out whole island populations, notably in Unst and Fetlar. 

Nobody knows how Johnnie came up with the idea of drying the pus from a smallpox-infected patient over a peat fire, burying it between sheets of glass for several years with camphor, and then cutting into a patient’s skin without drawing blood, inserting some of the dried matter and covering the small wound with a cabbage leaf. What is certain, and attested to by local ministers, teachers and others, is that it worked. That first local folk and then people from throughout Shetland put their absolute confidence in him. It’s said that he never lost a single patient. 

Arthur Edmonston was a highly trained, experienced and eminent doctor and son of a doctor, and he wrote that Notions’ work in the 1790s:

“…met with such unexampled success in his practice, that were I not able to bear testimony to its truth, I should myself be disposed to be sceptical on the subject. Had every practitioner been as uniformly successful in the disease as he was, the small-pox might have been banished from the face of the earth, without injuring the system, or leaving any doubt as to the fact.”

These days, the Hamnavoe house where Johnnie Notions was – reputedly – born stands restored as a memorial to him, and is a “camping bod” you can stay in for short holidays. But surely the greatest tribute to the work he did, and the trust Shetland folk had in him, is in the vaccination programme now underway and the way people are determined to embrace it.

John Williamson is buried in the Cross Kirk cemetery which also contains the grave of legendary fiddle maestro Tom Anderson, and will contain the bones of myself and my wife, as we’ve recently reserved a double depth-lair there for, it is to be hoped, some years hence. We’ll be in good company.

Read more about Johnnie Notions here: