smallpox summary

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Below is the article summary. For the full article, see smallpox.

smallpox, or variola, One of the world’s most dreaded plagues before 1980, when it was declared eradicated. It was known in ancient China, India, and Egypt. It came to the Western Hemisphere with Europeans in the 16th century and devastated the native population, which lacked resistance. An infectious viral disease only of humans, it causes fever and then a rash of variable severity that blisters and dries up, leaving scars. It is not spread easily, but the virus can survive for long periods outside the body (e.g., in bedding). Edward Jenner developed a vaccine from cowpox. The World Health Organization’s eradication project reduced smallpox deaths from two million in 1967 to zero in 1977–80. The virus now exists only in laboratories; in some countries it may be under development for purposes of biological warfare.

Edward Jenner Summary

Edward Jenner was an English surgeon and discoverer of a vaccine for smallpox. Jenner was born at a time when the patterns of British medical practice and education were undergoing gradual change. Slowly the division between the Oxford- or Cambridge-trained physicians and the apothecaries or