Smallpox has been one of the most devastating diseases in the history of the world, this is largely to do with how quickly the pathogen can spread. Smallpox has a R(12) and and incubations period of 3-7 days. This means that the patient is contagious spreading diseases while they don’t even have symptoms. According to the powerpoint, in the 20th century smallpox killed an estimated 300,000,000 people. That’s more deaths by disease than both World Wars combined. If you miraculously survive the course of the disease which can have a fatality rate of up to 30%, the after effects last a lifetime.
There have been several epidemics throughout history. Although times change and medical practices advance one thing remains, no one is safe unless you have been inoculated or vaccinated. It would have been terrifying to live during this time; everyone around becomes violently ill and you know eventually you will have the same fate. The disease begins as a high fever with a onset of pustules. The pustules are painful and highly contagious. They cover the entirety of the body and also develop and attack the internal organs.
If you would have become infected in Europe during the 12th century, a red treatment was one of the emerging ways to attempt to cure the ill. Gilbertus Anglicus of England began this type of treatment. Ito the 18th – 20th centuries, inoculation was developed as a first stepping stone towards vaccination. Inoculation was developed to infect a patient with a mild form of the pox virus to help the patient devlop immunity. The first experiment was done by Edward Jenner in 1789 when he exposed his son to swinepox. There was a folk tale that milkmaids never became ill with small poxs. Jenner looked further into this tail. His son did not respond to smallpox after being exposed to swinepox proving the old tail true. The milkmaids were exposed to cowpox from the animals which developed a immunity. This method was so effective as opposed to previous practices, Voltar of France tried to convince every Frenchman to become inoculated. In 1803, the term vaccination was coined from cowpox and is the term we still use today.
In England during the 18th through the early 20th century there was some opposition to inoculation for several reasons: social, religious, and scientific. Social reasons include that inoculators lose fees and the concept that the disease controlled the poor population. Religious reasons is that the vaccine interferes with God’s plan; and scientific include questions about nature and safety of the vaccine, source of vaccine is an animal disease, and duration of immunity not being known. Popularity for the vaccine began to grow as influential people began endorsing it.
Smallpox was eradicated in 1976 through the use of tracking the cases. The World Health Organization was able to go to every country in the world that still had cases of smallpox and vaccinate everyone. Since smallpox was eradicated it shows how effective the vaccine was at stopping the disease. Vaccines today are effective because they create crowd immunity but due to many individuals not vaccinating themselves or their children, outbreaks of smallpox and other diseases still occur.