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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 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 lethal to many Native Americans, resulting in sweeping epidemics and repeatedly affecting the same tribes. After its introduction to Mexico in 1519, the disease spread across South America, devastating indigenous populations in what are now Colombia, Peru and Chile during the sixteenth century.
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.
It only took 181 years to eradicate smallpox once we had a way to inoculate against it and we’re still not really sure what was in it.
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]
Smallpox eradicated after years of work to stop spread. In 1967, the World Health Organization began an “intensified effort” to eradicate smallpox, a contagious disease caused by the variola ...
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.