when did smallpox start
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History of smallpox
The history of smallpox extends into pre-history, with the disease probably emerging in human populations about 10,000 BC. The earliest credible evidence of smallpox is found in the Egyptian mummies of people who died some 3,000 years ago. Smallpox has had a major impact on world history, not least because indigenous populations of regions where smallpox was non-native, such as the Americas and Australia, were rapidly and greatly reduced by smallpox (along with other introduced diseases) during periods of initial foreign contact, which helped pave the way for conquest and colonization.
During the 18th century the disease killed an estimated 400,000 Europeans each year, including five reigning monarchs, and was responsible for a third of all blindness. Between 20 and 60% of all those infected—and over 80% of infected children—died from the disease.
20th century
During the 20th century, it is estimated that smallpox was responsible for 300–500 million deaths. In the early 1950s an estimated 50 million cases of smallpox occurred in the world each year. As recently as 1967, the World Health Organization estimated that 15 million people contracted the disease and that two million died in that year. After successful vaccination campaigns throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the WHO certified the global eradication of smallpox in December 1979. Smallpox is one of two infectious diseases to have been eradicated, the other being rinderpest, which was declared eradicated in 2011.
Eurasian epidemics
It has been suggested that smallpox was a major component of the Plague of Athens that occurred in 430 BCE, during the Peloponnesian Wars, and was described by Thucydides.
Galen’s description of the Antonine Plague, which swept through the Roman Empire in 165–180 CE, indicates that it was probably caused by smallpox. Returning soldiers picked up the disease in Seleucia (in modern Iraq), and brought it home with them to Syria and Italy. It raged for fifteen years and greatly weakened the Roman empire, killing up to one-third of the population in some areas. Total deaths have been estimated at 5 million.
A second major outbreak of disease in the Roman Empire, known as the Plague of Cyprian (251–266 CE), was also either smallpox or measles. The Roman empire stopped growing as a consequence on these two plagues, according to historians like Theodore Mommsen. 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.
400 CE
Around 400 CE, an Indian medical book recorded a disease marked by pustules and boils, saying “the pustules are red, yellow, and white and they are accompanied by burning pain. The skin seems studded with grains of rice.” The Indian epidemic thought to be punishment from a god, and the survivors created a goddess, Sitala, as the anthropomorphic personification of the disease. Smallpox thus regarded as possession by Sitala. In Hinduism the goddess Sitala both causes and cures high fever, rashes, hot flashes and pustules. All of these are symptoms of smallpox.
Most of the details about the epidemics lost, probably due to the scarcity of surviving written records from the Early Middle Ages. The first incontrovertible description of smallpox in Western Europe occurred in 581 CE, when Bishop Gregory of Tours provided an eyewitness account describing the characteristic symptoms of smallpox. Waves of epidemics wiped out large rural populations. The establishment of the disease in Europe was of special importance, for this served as the endemic reservoir from which smallpox spread to other parts of the world, as an accompaniment of successive waves of European exploration and colonization.
710 CE
In 710 CE, smallpox re-introduced into Europe via Iberia by the Umayyad conquest of Hispania.
The Japanese smallpox epidemic of 735–737 believed to have killed as much as one-third of Japan’s population.
The clearest description of smallpox from pre-modern times 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).
Origin of Smallpox
The origin of smallpox is unknown. The finding of smallpox-like rashes on Egyptian mummies suggests that smallpox has existed for at least 3,000 years. The earliest written description of a disease like smallpox appeared in China in the 4th century CE (Common Era). Early written descriptions also appeared in India in the 7th century and in Asia Minor in the 10th century.
Spread of Smallpox
Historians trace the global spread of smallpox to the growth of civilizations and exploration. Expanding trade routes over the centuries also led to the spread of the disease.
Highlights from History:
- 6th Century—Increased trade with China and Korea brings smallpox to Japan.
- 7th Century—Arab expansion spreads smallpox into northern Africa, Spain, and Portugal.
- 11th Century—Crusades further spread smallpox in Europe.
- 15th Century—Portugal occupies part of western Africa, bringing smallpox.
- 16th Century—European settlers and the African slave trade import smallpox into:
- The Caribbean
- Central and South America
- 17th Century—European settlers bring smallpox to North America.
- 18th Century—Explorers from Great Britain bring smallpox to Australia
when did smallpox start
Early Control Efforts
Smallpox was a terrible disease. On average, 3 out of every 10 people who got it died. People who survived usually had scars, which were sometimes severe.
One of the first methods for controlling smallpox was variolation, a process named after the virus that causes smallpox (variola virus). During variolation, people who had never had smallpox exposed to material from smallpox sores (pustules) by scratching the material into their arm or inhaling it through the nose. After variolation, people usually developed the symptoms associated with smallpox, such as fever and a rash. However, fewer people died from variolation than if they had acquired smallpox naturally.
1796
The basis for vaccination began in 1796 when the English doctor Edward Jenner noticed that milkmaids who had gotten cowpox protected from smallpox. Jenner also knew about variolation and guessed that exposure to cowpox could used to protect against smallpox. To test his theory, Dr. Jenner took material from a cowpox sore on milkmaid Sarah Nelmes’ hand and inoculated it into the arm of James Phipps, the 9-year-old son of Jenner’s gardener.
Months later, Jenner exposed Phipps several times to variola virus, but Phipps never developed smallpox. More experiments followed, and, in 1801, Jenner published his treatise “On the Origin of the Vaccine Inoculation.” In this work, he summarized his discoveries and expressed hope that “the annihilation of the smallpox, the most dreadful scourge of the human species, must be the final result of this practice.”
12,000 years ago
Smallpox believed to have first infected humans around the time of the earliest agricultural settlements some 12,000 years ago. No surviving evidence of it, however, predates the so-called New Kingdom of Egypt, which lasted from about 1570 B.C. to 1085 B.C.
A few mummies from that era contain familiar-looking skin lesions. Ramses V, for example, who ruled for roughly four years in the 12th century B.C., looks to have had the raised bumps on his face and body for which smallpox named (it derived from the Latin word for “spotted”).
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Moreover, an ancient Egyptian papyrus scroll briefly describes what could be smallpox, as do Hittite clay tablets. The Hittites, who lived in the Middle East, even accused the Egyptians of infecting them during a war between the two empires.
3.5 million to 7 million people
Many historians speculate that smallpox likewise brought about the devastating Plague of Athens in 430 B.C. and the Antonine Plague of A.D. 165 to 180, the later of which killed an estimated 3.5 million to 7 million people, including Emperor Marcus Aurelius, and hastened the decline of the Roman Empire.
At any rate, it reached Europe no later than the 6th century, when a bishop in France unmistakably described its symptoms—a violent fever followed by the appearance of pustules, which, if the patient survived, eventually scabbed over and broke off. By that time, the contagious disease, caused by the variola virus, had spread all across Africa and Asia as well, prompting some cultures to worship special smallpox deities.
In the Old World, the most common form of smallpox killed perhaps 30 percent of its victims while blinding and disfiguring many others. But the effects were even worse in the Americas, which had no exposure to the virus prior to the arrival of Spanish and Portuguese conquistadors.
Up to 90 percent
Tearing through the Incas before Francisco Pizarro even got there, it made the empire unstable and ripe for conquest. It also devastated the Aztecs, killing, among others, the second-to-last of their rulers. In fact, historians believe that smallpox and other European diseases reduced the indigenous population of North and South America by up to 90 percent, a blow far greater than any defeat in battle.
Recognizing its potency as a biological weapon, Lord Jeffrey Amherst, the commander-in-chief of British forces in North America during the French and Indian War, even advocated handing out smallpox-infected blankets to his Native American foes in 1763.
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