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The Columbian exchange, also known as the Columbian interchange, was the widespread transfer of plants, animals, and diseases between the New World (the Americas) in the Western Hemisphere, and the Old World (Afro-Eurasia) in the Eastern Hemisphere, from the late 15th century on.
Smallpox is among the most notable of diseases in the Columbian Exchange due to the high number of deaths and impact on life for Indigenous societies. [1] [5] Smallpox first broke out in the Americas on the island of Hispaniola in 1518. [7] The disease was carried over from Europe, where it had been endemic for over seven hundred years. [5]
The 1520s smallpox epidemic spread from Mesoamerica into adjacent maize-growing regions in North America.A population decline in the Columbia Basin, evidenced archaeologically by a sharp regional decline in artifacts and structures in the early 1500s, has been tentatively linked to a spread of this outbreak, but greatly predates any written record in the region.
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]
The American era of limited infectious disease ended with the arrival of Europeans in the Americas and the Columbian exchange of microorganisms, including those that cause human diseases. European infections and epidemics had major effects on Native American life in the colonial period and nineteenth century, especially.
Mexico's native population was one of the first to experience a smallpox epidemic, where many succumbed to the disease. In 1520, the first wave of smallpox killed 5–8 million people. From 1545 to 1576, up to 17 million people died from smallpox. This large amount of deaths in the second wave are thought to be the result of hemorrhagic fevers. [5]
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 Columbian Exchange, referring to Christopher Columbus's first contact with the native peoples of the Caribbean, began the trade of animals, and plants, and unwittingly began an exchange of diseases. [3] It was not until the 1800s that humans began to recognize the existence and role of germs and microbes in relation to disease.