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The most common type of smallpox, ordinary, historically has devastated populations with a 30% death rate. The smallpox virus is transmittable through bodily fluids and materials contaminated with infected materials. Generally, face-to-face contact is required for an individual to contract smallpox as a result of an interaction with another human.
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.
Smallpox is caused by either of the two viruses, Variola major and Variola minor. Smallpox vaccine was available in Europe, the United States, and the Spanish Colonies during the last part of the century. [4] [5] The Latin names of this disease are Variola Vera. The words come from various (spotted) or varus (pimple).
The clearest description of smallpox from pre-modern times was given in the 9th century by the Persian physician, Muhammad ibn Zakariya ar-Razi, known in the West as "Rhazes", who was the first to differentiate smallpox from measles and chickenpox in his Kitab fi al-jadari wa-al-hasbah (The Book of Smallpox and Measles). [27]
Mortality was high for infants and small children, especially for diphtheria, smallpox, yellow fever, and malaria. Most sick people turned to local healers, and used folk remedies. Others relied upon the minister-physicians, barber-surgeons, apothecaries, midwives, and ministers; a few used colonial physicians trained either in Britain, or an ...
The FDA approved a drug that could be used to treat smallpox, a disease that was officially eradicated in 1980 -- but that doesn't mean it's gone for good.
Smallpox infections spiked in the 1780s and persisted up to the 1837 epidemic. In what is now Canada, the fur trade strengthened communities such as the Mushego Cree , Anishinaabe , and Ottawa . In the United States, the Mandan tribe had previously experienced a major smallpox epidemic in 1780–1781, which severely reduced their numbers to ...
Mpox, which comes from the same virus family as smallpox, spreads from animals to people, and it received its former name, monkeypox, because that is the animal it was first discovered in.