Smallpox

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Although the Columbian Exchange allowed for the beneficial exchange of cultures, ideas, foods, and animals around the world during the 1450-1750 time period, it also had a dark side. One detrimental result of the Columbian Exchange would be the spreading of smallpox from Europe to the New World.
The great explorations and subsequent migrations of Europeans to the Americas in the 15th-18th centuries opened up those entire continents to the fatal impact of the infectious diseases of Europe. European conquests owed a good deal of their success to the effects of disease on the indigenous peoples, especially smallpox in the Americas. Before Spanish conquest of the New World, there was no sickness or great health related issues that Natives were forced to face. That all changed, however, when European explorers, Spanish conquistadors in particular, unknowingly brought the deadly disease of smallpox into Latin America. A recollection of days before the Spanish by an Indian of the Yucatan from the book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel shows just how disease free natives were before the Spanish arrival: “There was then no sickness; they had no aching bones; they had then no high fever; they had then no smallpox; they had then no burning chest; they had then no abdominal pain; they had then no consumption; they had then no headache. At that time the course of humanity was orderly. The foreigners made it otherwise when they arrived here.” Then, after the Spanish came to the New World and spread smallpox to the natives, over 95% of them were killed. The Taino population of Hispaniola that was once estimated to be as large as 8 million went virtually extinct. Central Mexico’s population went from 15 million in 1519 to 1.5 million a century later. ...

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Sale, Kirkpatrick. The Conquest of Paradise: Christopher Columbus and the Columbian Legacy. 1st ed. Vol. 1. New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1990. Print.

Snowden, Frank. "Epidemics in Western Society Since 1600." Lecture. Open Yale Courses. Yale College, 3 Feb. 2010. Web. 14 Oct. 2013. .

Steffano-Davis, Stephanie S. "A Great Desolation: Yellow Fever, Smallpox, and Influenza in American History." Thesis. Humboldt University, 2006. A Great Desolation: Yellow Fever, Smallpox, and Influenza in American History. Web. 14 Oct. 2013. .

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