SMALLPOX
G'day folks,
Welcome to some facts about a dreaded disease that has killed many people over the ages.
On
May 8, 1980, the World Health Organization officially pronounced victory in the
fight against smallpox, confirming that no known cases of the dreaded killer
existed anywhere on the planet. Take a look back at the only human infectious
disease ever to be eradicated.
Smallpox is
believed to have first infected humans around the time of the earliest
agricultural settlements some 12,000 years ago. No surviving evidence of it,
however, predates the so-called New Kingdom of Egypt, which lasted from about
1570 B.C. to 1085 B.C. A few mummies from that era contain familiar-looking
skin lesions. Ramses V, for example, who ruled for roughly four years in the
12th century B.C., looks to have had the raised bumps on his face and body for
which smallpox is named (it’s derived from the Latin word for “spotted”).
Moreover, an ancient Egyptian papyrus scroll briefly describes what could be
smallpox, as do Hittite clay tablets. The Hittites, who lived in the Middle
East, even accused the Egyptians of infecting them during a war between the two
empires.
Many historians
speculate that smallpox likewise brought about the devastating Plague of Athens
in 430 B.C. and the Antonine Plague of A.D. 165 to 180, the later of which
killed an estimated 3.5 million to 7 million people, including Emperor Marcus
Aurelius, and hastened the decline of the Roman Empire. At any rate, it reached
Europe no later than the 6th century, when a bishop in France unmistakably
described its symptoms—a violent fever followed by the appearance of pustules,
which, if the patient survived, eventually scabbed over and broke off. By that
time, the contagious disease, caused by the variola virus, had spread all
across Africa and Asia as well, prompting some cultures to worship special
smallpox deities.
In the Old World, the most common form of smallpox killed
perhaps 30 percent of its victims while blinding and disfiguring many others.
But the effects were even worse in the Americas, which had no exposure to the
virus prior to the arrival of Spanish and Portuguese conquistadors. Tearing
through the Incas before Francisco Pizarro even got there, it made the empire
unstable and ripe for conquest. It also devastated the Aztecs, killing, among
others, the second-to-last of their rulers. In fact, historians believe that
smallpox and other European diseases reduced the indigenous population of North
and South America by up to 90 percent, a blow far greater than any defeat in
battle.
Recognizing its potency as a biological weapon, Lord Jeffrey Amherst,
the commander-in-chief of British forces in North America during the French and
Indian War, even advocated handing out smallpox-infected blankets to his Native
American foes in 1763.
Knowing that no one can contract smallpox twice, survivors
of the disease were often called upon to try and nurse victims back to health.
Throughout much of the last millennium, this involved herbal remedies,
bloodletting and exposing them to red objects. One prominent 17th-century
English doctor realized that those who could afford care actually seemed to be
dying at a higher rate than those who couldn’t. Yet that didn’t stop him from
telling a smallpox-infected pupil to leave the windows open, to draw the bed
sheets no higher than his waist and to drink profuse quantities of beer.
Far more effective was inoculation, also called
variolation, which involved taking pus or powdered scabs from patients with a
mild case of the disease and inserting them into the skin or nose of
susceptible, healthy people. Ideally, the healthy people would suffer only a
slight infection this way and, in so doing, would develop immunity to future
outbreaks. Some people did die, but at a much lower rate than those who
contracted smallpox naturally. Practiced first in Asia and Africa, variolation
spread to the Ottoman Empire around 1670 and then to the rest of Europe within
a few decades. Its first proponent in the present-day United States was Cotton
Mather, a Puritan minister best known for vigorously supporting the Salem witch
trials. Benjamin Franklin, who lost a son to smallpox, was another early
American supporter.
Variolation notwithstanding, smallpox continued wreaking
havoc on princes and paupers alike. In the 17th and 18th centuries, it killed
several reigning European monarchs, including Habsburg Emperor Joseph I, Queen
Mary II of England, Czar Peter II of Russia and King Louis XV of France, as
well as an Ethiopian king, a Chinese emperor and two Japanese emperors. Queen
Elizabeth I of England and U.S. President Abraham Lincoln also apparently
contracted smallpox during their time in office, though they fortuitously lived
to tell the tale. Meanwhile, in Europe alone, an estimated 400,000 commoners
were succumbing to smallpox annually.
Finally, in 1796, English doctor Edward Jenner performed an
experiment that would, in good time, cause the virus’ downfall. By inserting
pus from a milkmaid with cowpox, a disease closely related to smallpox, into
the arms of a healthy 8-year-old boy and then variolating him to no effect,
Jenner was able to conclude that a person could be protected from smallpox
without having to be directly exposed to it. This was the world’s first
successful vaccine, a term that Jenner himself coined. He tried to get his
results published by the prestigious Royal Society, only to be told not to “promulgate
such a wild idea if he valued his reputation.” Persisting anyway, his vaccine
gradually started catching on. The advantages over variolation were many.
Unlike a variolated person, a vaccinated person could not spread smallpox to
others. Moreover, the vaccine seldom left a rash and proved fatal in only the
rarest of circumstances. “Future generations will know by history only that the
loathsome smallpox existed and by you has been extirpated,” U.S. President
Thomas Jefferson wrote to Jenner in 1806. The following year, Bavaria declared
vaccination mandatory, and Denmark did the same in 1810.
Because the vaccine originally had to be transferred from
arm to arm, its use spread slowly. It was also much less effective in tropical
countries, where the heat caused it to quickly deteriorate. Nonetheless, one
country after another managed to rid itself of the disease. The last reported
U.S. case came in 1949. Spurred by two new technological advances—a
heat-stable, freeze-dried vaccine and the bifurcated needle—the World Health
Organization then launched a global immunization campaign in 1967 with the goal
of wiping out smallpox once and for all. That year, there were 10 million to 15
million cases of smallpox and 2 million deaths, according to WHO estimates. Yet
just a decade later, the number was down to zero. No one has naturally
contracted the virus since a Somali hospital worker in 1977 (though a
laboratory accident in England did kill someone in 1978).
After searching far and wide for any remaining trace of
smallpox, the WHO’s member states passed a resolution on May 8, 1980, declaring
it eradicated. “The world and all its peoples have won freedom from smallpox,”
the resolution stated, adding that this “unprecedented achievement in the
history of public health … demonstrated how nations working together in a
common cause may further human progress.” Today, guarded laboratories in
Atlanta and Moscow hold the only known stores of the virus. Some experts say
these should be destroyed, whereas others believe they should be kept around
for research purposes just in case smallpox somehow remerges.
Clancy's comment: Mm ... And now we have other types of diseases and social ills to deal with.
I'm ...
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