On this day in 1979, the eradication of the smallpox virus was certified. Smallpox is the only human disease that has been completely driven from the earth, which is a good thing because smallpox was awful. Smallpox killed half a billion people just in the 100 years before its eradication.
The disease spreads person to person. The first symptoms are flu-like, fever, fatigue, nausea, but after a week, red spots appear in the mouth. These grow and burst and the virus attacks the skin, causing a rash. Up to thirty percent of those contracting the disease will die from a body-wide infection. Survivors were often left with scarring on the face, caused by the rash. Smallpox was also a major cause of blindness.
Smallpox caused terror whenever an epidemic hit an area. Scientists think the virus began in rats in Africa 60,000 years ago. From there it moved into Asia. Evidence of smallpox has been found on Egyptian mummies. Around 1,000 A.D., a clever Chinese physician discovered that inoculating a healthy person with a bit of the virus would give them immunity from the disease. How do people figure this out? We need these risk takers who are immune to the fear of death. I wonder how many physicians were executed when the emperor died from his inoculation.
It took a few centuries for inoculation to catch on especially since at least a few people would always die from the preventative dose. But by the 1600s, inoculation was widespread in China and began moving west, including to Africa. In 1721 smallpox was brought to the colonial city of Boston on a ship from the Caribbean. The crew was quarantined, but it was too late and the disease spread among the 11,000 citizens of the city.
A thousand of those residents were slaves. A slave named Onesimus belonged to Reverend Cotton Mather, of Salem witch trials fame. Onesimus told Mather that he had been inoculated against smallpox back in West Africa and he was immune to the disease. Mather interviewed other slaves who confirmed Onesimus's story.
Mather tried to find doctors who would help him with an inoculation campaign. He could only find one, Zabdiel Boylston. The rest of the doctors in Boston said it was unscientific to use the folk medicine of slaves. The ministers in town said it was a violation of Devine law to go against God's will. A bomb was thrown through Mather's window. Fortunately it did not go off so the attached note could be read: "Cotton Mather, you dog, dam you! I'll inoculate you with this; with a pox to you."
Mather and Dr. Boylston kept excellent records. Only 2% of those inoculated died compared with almost 15% of those who were not inoculated. Mather and Boylston's records are one of the earliest clinical trials on record.
By 1796, the British physician Edward Jenner had started vaccinating people with the safer cowpox virus. "Vacca" is Latin for cow. Nowadays a related virus is used, though almost no one gets vaccinated for smallpox anymore.
Smallpox may have been checked on the East Coast, but it made its way inland greatly reducing or wiping out various Indian tribes. Europeans had developed at least some immunity to smallpox. Indians had none. As for the slave Onesimus, he was able to earn enough money to buy his freedom. Reverend Mather used the money to buy another slave.
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