History of smallpox

Although some historians believe that many historical epidemics and pandemics were early outbreaks of smallpox, contemporary records are not detailed enough to make a definite diagnosis.

[citation needed] Most of the details about the epidemics are lost, probably due to the scarcity of surviving written records from the Early Middle Ages.

[29] In northern Japan, Ainu population decreased drastically in the 19th century, due in large part to infectious diseases like smallpox brought by Japanese settlers pouring into Hokkaido.

For more than 200 years, this disease affected all new world populations, mostly without intentional European transmission, from contact in the early 16th century until possibly as late as the French and Indian Wars (1754–1767).

Chile had previously been isolated by the Atacama Desert and Andes Mountains from Peru, but at the end of 1561 and in early 1562, it ravaged the Chilean native population.

[60] Mapuche fighting Spain in Araucanía regarded the epidemic as a magical attempt by Francisco de Villagra to exterminate them because he could not defeat them in the Arauco War.

[67] A relatively small outbreak of smallpox had begun spreading earlier that spring, with a hundred dying from it among Native American tribes in the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes area through 1763 and 1764.

[67] The effectiveness of the biological warfare itself remains unknown, and the method used is inefficient compared to respiratory transmission and these attempts to spread the disease are difficult to differentiate from epidemics occurring from previous contacts with colonists,[68] as smallpox outbreaks happened every dozen or so years.

[70][71][72] Peter Kalm in his Travels in North America, described how in that period, the dying Indian villages became overrun with wolves feasting on the corpses and weakened survivors.

[74] Paul Hackett adds to the mortality numbers suggesting that perhaps up to one-half to three-quarters of the Ojibway situated west of the Grand Portage died from the disease.

William Walker described the epidemic stating that "the Indians [are] all Dying by this Distemper … lying Dead about the Barren Ground like a rotten sheep, their Tents left standing & the Wild beast Devouring them.

[89] Likewise David Day, in Claiming a Continent: A New History of Australia (2001), suggested that members of Sydney's garrison of Royal Marines may have attempted to use smallpox as a biological weapon in 1789.

[92] Campbell consulted, during the writing of her book, Frank Fenner, who had overseen the final stages of a successful campaign by the World Health Organization (WHO) to eradicate smallpox.

Campbell argued that scientific evidence concerning the viability of variolous matter (used for inoculation) did not support the possibility of the disease being brought to Australia on the long voyage from Europe.

[98] Citing the scientific opinion of Fenner (who wrote the foreword to her book) and historical documents, Campbell argued that the 1789 outbreak was introduced to Australia by Makassans, from where it spread overland.

[99] In 2011, Macknight re-entered the debate, declaring: "The overwhelming probability must be that it [smallpox] was introduced, like the later epidemics, by [Makassan] trepangers on the north coast and spread across the continent to arrive in Sydney quite independently of the new settlement there".

Ford, with support from the academics Curson, Wright and Hunter, holds that the deadly disease was not smallpox but the far more infectious chickenpox, to which the Eora Aboriginal peoples had no resistance.

[102] John Carmody, then at the University of Sydney School of Medical Sciences, suggested in 2010 that the epidemic was far more likely to have been chickenpox, as none of the European colonists were threatened by it, as he would have expected to happen.

[104] Nevertheless, Alfred Crosby, in his major work, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900 (1986) showed that in 1840 a ship with smallpox on it was successfully quarantined, preventing an epidemic amongst Māori of New Zealand.

In India, where the European colonizers came across variolation in the 17th century, a large, sharp needle was dipped into the pus collected from mature smallpox sores.

[34] In 1792 a slave-ship arrived on the French Indian Ocean island of Île de France (Mauritius) from South India, bringing with it smallpox.

[109] In 1713, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's brother died of smallpox; she too contracted the virus two years later at the age of twenty-six, leaving her badly scarred.

[107][111] When the operation, performed by the King's surgeon, Claudius Amyand, and overseen by Maitland,[108] was a success, variolation got the royal seal of approval and the practice became widespread.

Minister Edmund Massey, in 1772, called variolation dangerous and sinful, saying that people should handle the disease as the biblical figure Job did with his own tribulations, without interfering with God's test for mankind.

[110] The prescription of fresh air caused controversy about Sutton's method and how effective it was in reality when those inoculated could walk about and spread the disease to those that had never before experienced smallpox.

[112][117] After two years of apprenticeship, Jenner moved back to his hometown of Berkeley in Gloucestershire,[116] where he quickly gained the respect of both his patients and other medical professionals for his work as a physician.

[112] During his study, he found that cowpox was actually several diseases that were similar in nature but were distinguishable through slight differences, and that not all versions had the capacity to make one immune from smallpox upon contraction.

[112] Jenner then rode to London and had his book An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolæ Vaccinæ published by Sampson Low's firm[115] in June 1798.

[108] An American physician, John Kirkpatrick, upon his visit to London in 1743, told of an instance where variolation stopped an epidemic in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1738,[119] where 800 people were inoculated and only eight deaths occurred.

The tribal medicine men launched a strong opposition, warning of white trickery and offering an alternative explanation and system of cure.