Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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.
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.
The smallpox virus retention debate has been going on among scientists and health officials since the smallpox virus was declared eradicated by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1980.
The history of smallpox extends into pre-history. [1] Genetic evidence suggests that the smallpox virus emerged 3,000 to 4,000 years ago. [2] Prior to that, similar ancestral viruses circulated, but possibly only in other mammals, and possibly with different symptoms.
George Washington by Charles Willson Peale, 1776.. The New World of the Western Hemisphere was devastated by the 1775–1782 North American smallpox epidemic.Estimates based on remnant settlements say at least 130,000 people were estimated to have died in the epidemic that started in 1775.
Smallpox, is known under scientific nomenclature as Variola virus.There are two strains of Variola virus, Variola major and Variola minor. The Variola major strain is the most common and is the strain that most likely wiped out indigenous and colonist populations during the 1633 epidemic.
Aztec smallpox victims. The history of smallpox in Mexico spans approximately 430 years from the arrival of the Spanish to the official eradication in 1951. It was brought to what is now Mexico by the Spanish, then spread to the center of Mexico, where it became a significant factor in the fall of Tenochtitlan.
The 1837 Great Plains smallpox epidemic spanned 1836 through 1840, reaching its height after the spring of 1837, when an American Fur Company steamboat, the SS St. Peter, carried infected people and supplies up the Missouri River in the Midwestern United States. [1]