Smallpox is such a devastating disease due to what it does to the skin as well as how infectious it is. Throughout history there have been repeated epidemics that have swept across continents decimating populations. Smallpox has killed hundreds of millions of people over the centuries. In just the 20th century alone, it killed over 300,000,000 people.

Whether you were in the upper echelons of society or living in the slums smallpox did not care. It was an indiscriminate killer that left nobody standing in its wake. The problem with smallpox is that it is a DNA virus which makes it extremely hard to attack especially in medieval times when there was no understanding of DNA or even germs for that matter. Living with the disease was absolutely terrible. It was completely debilitating due to the sores, lesions, and blisters, etc. that completely covered the body. The disease blinded millions of people, nearly 2/3 of all blind people in the 17th and 18th centuries were blind due to smallpox. It would have been extremely hard to see a loved one get the disease because you would be no help to them. touching them would have only infected you as well, so they just had to be left quarantined off by themselves or with other infected people.

Some of the treatments for smallpox in Europe included turkish bath houses, which were basically saunas that cleansed the body. They started to be used as a treatment in the 1700’s after Lady Mary Montagu sent letters back to England claiming that smallpox was not an issue for women in Turkey. Also, came about the use of inoculation or engrafting as a way of helping ward off the disease. Inoculation was not completely safe though. The problem with it was that inoculees could still spread smallpox so had to be isolated. The risk of death went from 20% to 1% with the new method. Edward Jenner later discovered a vaccine for smallpox due to his discovery of how some milkmaids who had gotten cowpox were resistant to smallpox. The way that the vaccine was administered was you were first inoculated with cowpox, once recovered from it they tested to see if you had a reaction to the smallpox inoculation. If you didn’t then you were deemed immune from smallpox. The term vaccine, which now describes all vaccines was coined in 1803 because the word vaccinia = cowpox.

There were three main reasons why someone would object to getting the smallpox vaccine. The first was the social reason. People believed that smallpox reduced the poor population and therefore it was good for society. This I would have to not agree with because we talked about earlier how smallpox was an indiscriminate killer. It did not care what social class you were in, it affected everybody just as badly. Next is the religious reason. There is no real argument against this one, because there would have to be an argument about God, but what those who refused the disease for this reason stated was that it interfered with God’s plan. In their mind, if they got the smallpox disease and died from it then God meant for it to happen and it was okay. The third reason was the scientific reason. There were questions about the nature and safety of the vaccine because at the time it first came out there was still no real understanding of bacteria, and it was very easy to catch other illnesses when being vaccinated. Another complaint was that the source of the vaccine was an animal disease. I would argue this by saying if it works, it works. Who cares what disease it is if it makes you immune to something far worse. The third scientific complaint that was made was that the duration of immunity was unknown. You could be immune for months years. I would have to side pro-vaccine. I think it is far better to receive the vaccine that was originally from cow’s because it will help you in the long run. Cowpox was not nearly as harmful, and much easier to get over than smallpox. I do not agree with what is said about God’s plan. Personally I do not think that God has a plan for anybody to suffer an agonizing death through smallpox so get the vaccine!