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The smallpox vaccine is used to prevent smallpox infection caused by the variola virus. [10] It is the first vaccine to have been developed against a contagious disease. In 1796, British physician Edward Jenner demonstrated that an infection with the relatively mild cowpox virus conferred immunity against the deadly smallpox virus.
Two additional victims who received the smallpox vaccine and died were named in newspaper reports—Benjamin F. Cohen, age 41, of Newark, New Jersey, who died on May 5, a little more than two weeks after being vaccinated, [14] and Nancy Jean Vanderhoof, age 3, of New Providence, New Jersey, who died May 7, a week after receiving her vaccination ...
The claim: Smallpox was "never eradicated" and is being "held in check" by vaccines. A Nov. 15 Facebook post from the liberal group Occupy Democrats includes side-by-side images of a child ...
Smallpox was an infectious disease caused by variola virus (often called smallpox virus), which belongs to the genus Orthopoxvirus. [7] [11] The last naturally occurring case was diagnosed in October 1977, and the World Health Organization (WHO) certified the global eradication of the disease in 1980, [10] making smallpox the only human disease to have been eradicated to date.
Modern vaccines are carefully crafted to be as identical as possible. Back in Jenner’s day, and for many years after, the viruses used were passed from host to host and used to create vaccines ...
The Spanish Franciscan Motolinia left this description: "As the Indians did not know the remedy of the disease…they died in heaps, like bedbugs. In many places it happened that everyone in a house died and, as it was impossible to bury the great number of dead, they pulled down the houses over them so that their homes become their tombs."
Onesimus (late 1600s–1700s [1]) was an African (likely Akan) man who was instrumental in the mitigation of smallpox in Boston, Massachusetts.. He introduced his enslaver, Puritan clergyman Cotton Mather, to the principle and procedure of the variolation method of inoculation, which prevented smallpox and laid the foundation for the development of vaccines.
No treatment is available, and the only protection is vaccination. The virus is usually transmitted by prolonged face-to-face contact with a person showing symptoms. The incubation period averages 12–14 days. [18] One of the most feared diseases of human history, smallpox was still causing an estimated 2 million deaths every year as late as 1967.