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The symptoms of smallpox are rash on the skin and blisters filled with raised liquid. [ citation needed ] The disease killed an estimated 400,000 Europeans annually during the 19th century and one-third of all the blindness of that time was caused by smallpox. 20 to 60% of all the people that were infected died and 80% of all the children with ...
After the epidemic, the Hudson Bay Company implemented a territory wide vaccination program which further reduced smallpox deaths. Unfortunately, as people entered communities to vaccinate against smallpox, they brought with them other diseases that kept mortality rates high. [2] The epidemic altered power structures of impacted nations.
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.
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.
Most estimates coalesce around a fatality rate of about 10% (7.5 million people) of the total population of the empire with death rates of up to 15% in the cities and the army. If the pandemic was indeed smallpox, the number who died would have probably been about 25% of those infected as the survival rate from smallpox is often around 75%. [30 ...
Smallpox is caused by the variola virus and is extremely contagious, for it is spread by physical contact and affects children and adults alike. Smallpox was contagious, disfiguring, and often deadly. [16] The epidemics of the disease were recurrent, devastating, and frequent. [17]
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.
[14] [5] The procedure Timoni called inoculation involved drying pus from a smallpox patient and rubbing or scraping it into a healthy person's skin, giving them a mild case of pox that conferred lifetime immunity. [15] Mather wanted to prove variolation was a relatively safe and effective procedure to protect people against smallpox.