Vigo County Historical Society

Smallpox once again a high-profile topic

In the basement of the Vigo County Historical Museum, a faded and yellowed smallpox quarantine placard serves as the backdrop for antiquated medical implements.

Until recently, it was a relic, a curiosity of one of the many hardships that confronted our forefathers. Lately, however, smallpox has become a high-profile topic of conversation among the medical community, politicians and laymen alike.

A smallpox vaccination scar is an indicium carried by most Americans born before 1972, the year the disease was eliminated in the United States. Because the probability of adverse effects of the vaccination outweighed the risk of contracting the disease, childhood inoculations were discontinued that year.

In 1979, after leading a global health campaign unprecedented in the history of mankind, the World Health Organization declared that smallpox had been completely eradicated throughout the world.

Historically, in 1157 B.C. Pharaoh Ramses V of Egypt died from what appeared to be smallpox. The illness appeared in China and the Far East at least 2,000 years ago.

By 710 A.D., the disease had found its way to Europe. During this time smallpox, like chicken pox or measles, was classified as a childhood disease. About one-third of smallpox victims died; the remainder acquired life-long immunity.

The Spanish explorers Cortez and Pizzaro brought smallpox to the Aztec and Inca Indians of the New World. Because these people had never been exposed, the disease attacked all age groups, and at least half of the native population perished.

During the French and Indian War (1754-1763), the British infected the Native Americans by distributing smallpox-infected blankets to them.

Almost from the time the disease was first recognized, man has tried to find methods to combat it. There are records of Chinese medicine men, more than a thousand years ago, practicing a technique knows as variolation, which involved grinding dried scabs from smallpox victims into a fine powder and blowing it up a patient’s nose. Variolation did not always ensure immunity, however.

Edward Jenner, a British physician recognized as the father of vaccination, was born in 1749. When he was 7 years old, he underwent variolation treatment and nearly died, an experience which greatly influenced his decision to pursue a career in medicine. During the latter part of the 18th century, Jenner and a London surgeon which whom he had earlier apprenticed noticed that milkmaids, many of whom developed cowpox lesions on their hands from direct contact with infected cows, appeared to have an immunity to smallpox.

Suspecting that the two diseases were similar, Jenner, in 1796, vaccinated an 8-year-old boy with material from cowpox lesions. The site of the vaccination developed a small lesion that healed in two weeks. Several weeks later, Jenner challenged the boy by inoculating him with material from a real case of smallpox.

Although the child did not develop the disease, the medical community was aghast that Jenner had used a human in his experiment. Rebuffing the criticism, Jenner spent the rest of his life promoting the benefits of vaccination.

By 1823, vaccination was accepted and widely practiced throughout the world. In spite of vaccination, it wasn’t until 1949 that the United States saw its last fatality from smallpox.

Although we have not been inoculating our population against smallpox for more that 20 years, it is comforting to know that as you read this, our government is working with several pharmaceutical companies to acquire more than enough vaccine, should smallpox become a threat.