Mackenzie Perkins
Smallpox
Small pox is the first disease that has been fully eradicated and was revolutionary in so many ways. We were able to eradicate it because it was a human only virus, has a low mutation rate, it can only be contracted once, there is a viable/effective vaccine available now that doesn’t involve a needle, is temperature tolerant, and you only need one vaccine. This greatly impacted the world. A lot of the time providing medicine and vaccinations in third world countries is difficult. If there is a needle involved you have to make sure there are people trained to administer the vaccine, it is also very hot in some climates, and many vaccines and medicine cant survive the trip.
What surprised me the most were the older treatments for smallpox and variolation, or the first kind of immunization for smallpox. Early treatments of smallpox used to involve prayer and “quack remedies”. Other cultures looked to smallpox gods and goddesses, prescribing red light therapy to those infected, or eating and drinking red foods since the rash one got with smallpox was red. The educated classes began the practice of inoculation, to cause people to develop a mild smallpox infection. The two most intriguing to me were the Chinese and the Near East and Africa techniques of variolation . The Chinese avoided contact with the smallpox infected person and instead would either inhale a powder from the dried scabs shed by recovering patients or place the powder from the scabs on a cotton ball and insert it in their nostrils. The Near East and Africa would take material from the pustule and rub it into a cut or scratch in the skin.
It is a double stranded DNA virus. Double stranded DNA evolved from RNA, and DNA is much more stable and it is the reason humans have become so complex. We can fix and replicate double stranded DNA, but RNA viruses are much more dangerous because they are constantly mutating, so thankfully smallpox isn’t an RNA virus. Smallpox is also only spread from person to person, it is not a zoonotic disease and can exist only as long as there are people susceptible.