The Scourge of the World
Nestled deep in the bowels of the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia, locked away in a blue and silver freezer lays what remains of humankind’s deadliest enemy. Neatly tucked away in a virology institute in Siberia, guarded twenty-four hours a day, lays it’s counterpart. No, not a man made weapon of mass destruction; just a natural born killer of man. This insatiable killer is known in the scientific community as the Variola Virus. To the layperson, it is called, smallpox. The smallpox virus first presented itself between three thousand and twelve thousand years ago, possibly in Egypt at the time of the Pharaohs (Preston44). There are two types of Variola virus, Variola Major and Variola Minor. Variola Minor is a mutated form of the Variola Major. Variola Minor was first discovered in Jamaica in 1863. Variola Minor is not the strain responsible for millions of deaths: only one percent of the people who contract Variola Minor die from the virus (Preston45). The classic virus, Variola Major is responsible for one in three deaths among the people who contract this form. The Variola virus has had more victims than any other infectious disease including the Black Death, in the Middle Ages (Preston44). Although “smallpox” was officially declared eradicated, by the World Health Organization, it is still a topic of great concern and controversy to many scientist and governments, and the virus is coveted by many terrorist organizations.
The virus spreads through droplet infection, such as sneezing, or through contact with the dried scabs of a victim, or even their clothing. Patients infected with smallpox will often begin to show symptoms within nine to twelve days after exposure. The symptoms present themselves in an almost “flu” like state. Beginning with a high fever, back aches, chills, and headaches. The next stage of the disease produces a rash on the face, arms, legs, chest and back. In a few days, the rash turns to a blister-like pustule. In the following days, the virus attacks the eyes, lungs, throat, heart, and liver, which lead the patients’ to a painful death. If the infected person is lucky enough to live, through the disease, the victim is left scarred and permanently disfigured. Smallpox has been around for centuries, and spreads with alarming ease. The Spanish brought the disease to Mexico in the 1500’s where nearly three million Indians were infected and died (Buran).
This summer we had an opportunity to dive into the world of bioweapons, through Richard Preston’s novel The Demon in the Freezer. His book explored the colorful world of smallpox and its use as a biological weapon. Earlier this week we were graced with this authors present for an ACES event. He discussed some of the found topics in his book such as animal testing, what small pox is, and even its eradication. One of the great things we had the chance of vocalizing were our many opinions on the gloom associated with this intriguing disease.
“Future nations will know by history only that the loathsome smallpox has existed and by you extirpated”. This quote comes from Thomas Jefferson to Edward Jenner, he founder of the smallpox vaccine. It would only be 100 years later that Jefferson would see his dream fulfilled, but not without struggle. In House on Fire, author William H. Foege shares his first hand view of the lengths that society needed to go through to rid the world of the disease that had plagued it for so long. The story of the fight against smallpox extends long before our efforts for global eradication and is a representation of how society deals with widespread disease. House on
The Demon in the Freezer by Richard Preston is an intriguing book that discusses the anthrax terrorist attacks after 9/11 and how smallpox might become a future bioterrorist threat to the world. The book provides a brief history of the smallpox disease including details of an outbreak in Germany in 1970. The disease was eradicated in 1979 due to the World Health Organization’s aggressive vaccine program. After the virus was no longer a treat the World Health Organization discontinued recommending the smallpox vaccination. In conjunction, inventory of the vaccine was decreased to save money. The virus was locked up in two labs, one in the United States and one in Russia. However, some feel the smallpox virus exists elsewhere. Dr. Peter Jahrling and a team of scientists at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Maryland became concerned terrorists had access to the smallpox virus and planed to alter the strain to become more resistant. These doctors conducted smallpox experiments to discover more effective vaccines in case the virus were released. Preparedness for a major epidemic is discussed as well as the ease with which smallpox can be bioengineered.
In closing, the variola virus affected a great amount in that era including, military strategy, trade, and native populations. Elizabeth A. Fenn’s book Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82 sheds light on a significant aspect of that era that had not been given proper credence beforehand. She also illuminated the effect of smallpox when it came to race and social status. With regard to race, smallpox decimated much of the non European populations partly because of their lack of an innate immunity to that virus and Europeans lack of regard for those of a different race. Fenn’s argument on social status showed how the poorer strata’s of society suffered more severely from the variola virus because of their lack of finances to get inoculated; thus, the poor often suffered a worse strain of the virus which often lead to death.
Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth century a disease dominated the world killing one in three people who caught it, smallpox. The few that survived the disease were left with very disfigured bodies and weak immune systems. In modern days this disease seems very unusual and hard to catch; it is all because of one man, Edward Jenner.
With no treatment half of patients who enter the second phase die within ten to fourteen days. Similar to yellow fever, malaria was transmitted to humans through mosquito bites, causing symptoms such as fever, fatigue, and vomiting. Difficult to recognize at first malaria continues to cause yellowing of the skin, seizures, and even death; these symptoms normally begin after ten to fifteen days after being contracted. Malaria was brought over to early America through slavery and killed millions of people between the seventeenth and twentieth century. Throughout the growth and expansion of America there was been several disease outbreaks both endemic and epidemic such as small pox, measles, yellow fever, and malaria. Starting with the Colombian exchange and slavery these diseases were brought to the new world and spread like wildfires that devastated populations both native and nonnative. Most commonly known for the death toll on the native Americans these diseases were so costly due to low resistance, poor sanitation, and inadequate
The perspective the author gives to this book is a unique. Smallpox according to most histories does not play the role of a major character, but a minor part. In my opinion smallpox was a major factor during the Revolutionary War, and Feen focuses on several key areas which allows us to see just how bad this epidemic was and the grip it had not only on the soldiers, but the colonist as well.
1. The contrast between Cottard and the other characters is that while everyone else is in constant fear of catching the plague and doing everything they can to fight the disease, Cottard is cheerful in the fact that the plague has put a stop to the police investigating his mysterious crime . Cottard probably also enjoys the camaraderie of everyone else finally being in the same position as he is.
Native Americans were completely susceptible to contracting the disease, but they weren't the only victims. Twenty people died on the Mayflower as a result of smallpox. There was a smallpox outbreak in Plymouth Colony around 1633. Twenty people died including their only physician. This was the beginning of the colonial's struggle with the disease.
In order to understand the history of smallpox one first has to understand how diseases like it evolve. Much like other species, diseases that survive in the long run are the microbes that most effectively reproduce and are able to find suitable places to live. For a microbe to effectively reproduce, it must "be defined mathematically as the number of new infected per each original patient." This number will largely depend on how long each victim is able to spread the virus to other victims (Diamond, 198).
It was spread very slowly and less broadly than other viral illnesses which took a long time to identify the infection in the first two weeks. Infection of smallpox started to grow between 7 to 10 days when the scabs formed into bruises. The signs and symptoms of this disease include high fever, widespread rashes, redness, muscle pain, headache, common cold, vomiting, nausea and many more. Consequently, the virus was found in the bone marrow along with bloodstream in huge numbers. There are different types of the smallpox disease with other classifications.
Smallpox is a highly infectious and fatal disease caused by the Variola virus. It causes extremely painful pustules to sprout across the entire body. Spread from human to human, it has since been eradicated from the world through the efforts of the World Health Organization. However, there is a distinct possibility that it may be reintroduced through bioterrorism. Biological weapons may cause another pandemic to erupt across the world and kill millions of individuals. Through constant vigilance and careful planning, mankind can prevent this scenario.
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.
Until its eradication, smallpox was a disease that had been ravaging the human race for a very long time. It emerged as much as 10,000 years ago, probably in the Nile Valley and what is now the Middle East. This emergence occurred around the time that humans began to create farming communities and turn away from nomadic existence, thus allowing the smallpox virus a chance to move from person to person (Ogden 2). Since that time, outbreaks have occurred in all different regions of the globe, although the disease was not introduced into the New World until 1518 when a Spanish ship landed on the island of Hispaniola, thus wiping out half of the population. The Spanish sailors had previously been infected by a strain of the smallpox virus and were therefore immune. The natives, however, had never been exposed to the virus and their bodies were unable to fight it off at all. It is thought that as much as 90 percent of the native populations of the New World were killed by smallpox in conjunction with the other previously unseen diseases that were brought over by explorers (Ogden 3).
Malaria (also called biduoterian fever, blackwater fever, falciparum malaria, plasmodium, Quartan malaria, and tertian malaria) is one of the most infectious and most common diseases in the world. This serious, sometimes-fatal disease is caused by a parasite that is carried by a certain species of mosquito called the Anopheles. It claims more lives every year than any other transmissible disease except tuberculosis. Every year, five hundred million adults and children (around nine percent of the world’s population) contract the disease and of these, one hundred million people die. Children are more susceptible to the disease than adults, and in Africa, where ninety percent of the world’s cases occur and where eighty percent of the cases are treated at home, one in twenty children die of the disease before they reach the age of five. Pregnant women are also more vulnerable to disease and in certain parts of Africa, they are four times as likely to contract the disease and only half as likely to survive it.