Smallpox Research Paper
Sean Strickland
Deborah Moreno
History Pre-1862
April, 2016
Smallpox
Smallpox is believed to have emerged in human populations around 10,000 BC. The earliest physical evidence of it seems to be the rashes on the mummified body of Pharaoh Ramses V(the fourth) of Egypt. Small pox is a virus known by a Latin name Variola, it is derived from Varius “spotted” or Varus “Pimple”. The virus starts out in the small blood vessels of the skin, mouth and throat before viciously spreading. Smallpox is easily transmitted through saliva, or any other bodily fluid. Sometimes, if the condition was right, the virus could go airborne sweeping through communities. The mortality rate in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle-east had a mortality rate of 20%-30%, …show more content…
however later I’ll discuss in the mortality rate for Native Americans were different.
The first phase is the Incubation period which lasts from 7 – 14 days, it’s the pretty common for the virus to break out on the 9th day, from initial contact. The Second phase is the Initial Symptoms phase which lasted 1-4 days after fully being affected with Smallpox. During this time the victim would come down with a pretty serious fever and will become extremely fatigueless. The next two phases are the most extreme, because these are the phases that are most deadly and contagious---- Where most people will die. In phase three, the smallpox begins to emerge as little red dots inside the tongue and in the mouth. And then spreading from the mouth onto the face and then onto the body with crater like bumps that look like big zits with yellowish thick fluid that is visible to the naked eye; All within 24 hours. Now, if the individual gets to phase four, the crater like wounds will become very hard and then start to scab. But, the individual will still remain highly contagious and very ill. Phase five is when the scabs begin to fall off. Leaving behind super deep pitted scars that are clearly visible. Most scabs will fall off after 3 weeks from initially becoming sick. Once all the scab have fallen off the person can’t get the virus again.
In the “old world” people were very close living and were in constant contact with traders and products from around the globe. The “old world” was living in an endemic society that was adapting to diseases that took many lives in the process. The old world people had stronger immune systems. This in part decreased the mortality rate amongst those individuals through constant contact with travelers and traders. A major reason Europeans were so disease stricken was because of domesticated animals which are largely the reason most of these diseases existed. However, on the other side, in the “New world” was a society that didn’t have domesticated animals in their homes and extremely unbalanced diets. The Native Americans had a sophisticated way of governing and extremely well built trade routes and canals that made peace in most of the Americas. In the Americas disease wasn’t as rampant and deadly as in the “old world”; people were much cleaner and nourished until the arrival of European Settlers. When Europeans settlers arrived the mortality rate of smallpox with natives was 50-100% because their bodies were defenseless to completely new diseases. The increase in mortality rate was contributed to the fact that the “old world” diseases didn’t exist in the new world resulting in a extremely weak immune system amongst native Americans. The mortality rate was from 50-100%.
Christopher Columbus discovered Hispaniola ~now known as Haiti in 1492.
The island of Haiti was first inhabited by Taino Natives the most advanced Indians in all of the Caribbean. While in Haiti around 1496, before Columbus returned to Spain he told his brother Bartolome to do a headcount of all Natives on the island. Bartolome reported that there was ~1.1 million male adults; he didn’t count children and females. It’s safe to say there used to be about 3 million people. Some researchers argued that there was up to eight million natives in Haiti at the time of Columbus’s arrival. Also, Spanish brought slaves to Haiti in 1507. Slave ships were notorious for being extremely dirty and disease ridden. The Spanish claimed that slaves brought smallpox that infected the native’s tribes on Haiti. Small pox swept through the Haiti mercilessly killing millions. By 1517, 26,000 Taino were alive, and then by 1542, that number reduced to about two-hundred Taino. Documents say Taino went extinct in Haiti two decades …show more content…
later.
A Spanish conquistador named Hernando Cortez sailed from Cuba to Mexico in 1518 encountering the Aztec Civilization and their Emperor Montezuma. Upon arrival Cortez’s army brought smallpox and many more diseases that infected the capital of the Aztec Empire; Tenochtitlan. The powerful empire that stretched from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean had a vast network of trading routes that connected the entire empire. However, the big network of trade that stretched from South America through much of North America was a highway for smallpox and other diseases to spread. The virus was faster than the Spanish armies and didn’t take casualties. Smallpox proved to be an unstoppable force spreading and decimating communities. The disease spread into North America reaching a relatively unknown society of Indians. The Mississippian Culture isn’t as documented as some of the Native empires. Although, we do know there were millions of Mississippian Natives that lived in the Middle, south, and south-east of the US. The Mississippian culture disbanded when European settlers and trade started arriving. Mississippians weren’t exempt from the disease of European settlers. It’s known that many Indians contacted these deadly diseases and died, but the number is unknown. Researchers say that the tribes making up the Mississippian Culture split and went separate ways, primarily north and west.
As the great migration to the “new world” started happening by European settlers many landed in North-east United States looking for trade and product to profit from, bringing with them a load of nasty diseases. In Colonial America It is thought that British settlers brought disease to surrounding Indians in the 13 colonies. But, in fact, the first individuals to set foot in north-eastern Americas were Portuguese merchants looking for trade. The Portuguese were the first Europeans to give Natives in North-eastern United States Smallpox and yellow fever. There were reports by Spanish explorers that landed in North Carolina that came upon villages full of skeletons and desolate villages. Many, too all tribes were affected by disease in America. But, amongst the most afflicted by smallpox during the beginning of the colonial age was Wampanoig, Massachuesett, and Nauset tribes. Mainly because they were the closest natives to the colonials.
In what now is called Plymouth, Massachusetts was essentially a ghost town by the time the Pilgrims stepped foot off the Mayflower. the entire coastal region had been ravaged by primarily Smallpox and various other diseases wiping out most of the native Wampanoag and neighboring Massachusetts, Pennacook, and Nauset populations. Deserted villages and untended fields were visible all over the place with the land, with stocks of crops, tools and other supplies left behind… along with the skeletal remains of the former native. A very early recount by Daniel Denton describing his thoughts on the epidemic. He said “How strangely they have decreased by the Hand of God… and it hath generally been observed that where the English come to settle, a Divine Hand makes way for them.” – Daniel Denton (early American colonist).
The colonials clearly saw what was happening to the Indians in surrounding villages and how they died by the thousands. They declared that it was an act of god to clean the savages of the land. “A divine plan and a miraculous pestilence”. An English settler named Thomas Morton was very outspoken on the native epidemic, praising the fact that the land is “much the more fit for the English Nation to inhabit in, and erect in it Temples to the glory of God.”3 He also describes a vivid account of a village he came upon in the Massachusetts Bay telling
“For in a place where many inhabited, there hath been but one left a live, to tell what became of the rest, the living being (as it seems) not able to bury the dead, they were left for the Crowes, Kites and vermin to prey upon. And the bones and skulls upon the severall places of their habitations, made such a spectacle after my coming into those partes … it seemed to mee a new found Golgotha.”
In 1618, at the height of the epidemic, a strange comet appeared over the skies of North-Eastern United states. The great medicine men of the Wampanoags and Penacooks interpreted this event as a tell-tale sign that the terrible sickness would soon overtake the land. The Wampanoags called the Native pandemic of Massachusetts “The great dying” Inoculation is a historical method for the prevention of smallpox by purposely introducing the skin with material from the smallpox virus. The earliest and first inoculation to Smallpox occurred in china during the 10th century, but didn’t become widely known till the early 1700s century in the west. A wife of a British Ambassador named Mary Wortley who herself had smallpox early in her life served in Istanbul with her husband for 3 years and witnessed a widespread inoculation process in Istanbul. She quickly inoculated her children, and then took knowledge of the procedure to England and France in which it eventually became a widely known medical practice. At first, the inoculation process was known by just a few common people and some royal families. However, that quickly changed once smallpox outbreaks happened in France and England. The countries eventually encouraged people to get inoculated from nearby physicians. The first initial inoculation known in the Americas happened in 1721, when Zabdiel Boylston successfully inoculated two slaves and his son. The inoculation process then became a big deal in the colonies. However after Zabdiel took on much scrutiny because 6 out of 300ish individuals died after trying to be inoculated.
The Inoculation procedure involves taking a needle and a piece of a smallpox virus and puncturing or scratching it into the individuals arm inducing a smallpox effect.
The mortality rate amongst inoculated individuals was significantly lower at around 6%, unlike receiving the virus naturally --which is about 30-50% mortality rate in “old world” peoples. When the Inoculation procedure started becoming a wide known procedure amongst people in America, the smallpox virus wasn’t the ultimate killer of diseases by the end of the 18th century. Though it still lived in the population, it wasn’t as worrisome. Yellow fever and the plague started being the ultimate killer of colonials. But, that didn’t change for the natives, unfortunately the United States didn’t fully implement an inoculation program for Native American till 1833. But on a more positive note, the world’s last known case of the deadly disease Smallpox was in 1975 in
Bangladesh.
Bibliography
Thomson, Mark. “Junior Division Winner: The Migration of Smallpox and Its Indelible Footprint on Latin American History”. The History Teacher 32.1 (1998): 117–131
Becker, Ann M.. “Smallpox in Washington's Army: Strategic Implications of the Disease During the American Revolutionary War”. The Journal of Military History 68.2 (2004): 381–430.
Krebsbach, Suzanne. “The Great Charlestown Smallpox Epidemic of 1760”. The South Carolina Historical Magazine 97.1 (1996): 30–37.
Oxley, Deborah. “'the Seat of Death and Terror': Urbanization, Stunting, and Smallpox”. The Economic History Review 56.4 (2003): 623–656. Web
Jackson, Robert H. "Demographics, Historical." Encyclopedia of American Indian History. Ed. Bruce E. Johansen and Barry M. Pritzker. Vol. 1. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2008. 104-111. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 5 Mar. 2016.
Gilman, Larry. "Smallpox." Infectious Diseases: In Context. Ed. Brenda Wilmoth Lerner and K. Lee Lerner. Vol. 2. Detroit: Gale, 2008. 770-775. In Context Series. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 5 Mar. 2016.
Ed. Peter C. Mancall. "Smallpox." Encyclopedia of Native American History. Vol. 3. New York: Facts on File, 2011. 787-789. Facts on File Library of American History. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 5 Mar. 2016
Ed. Peter C. Mancall. "Disease." Encyclopedia of Native American History. Vol. 1. New York: Facts on File, 2011. 216-219. Facts on File Library of American History. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web5Mar. 2016.
Deborah Moreno
History Pre-1862
April, 2016
Smallpox
Smallpox is believed to have emerged in human populations around 10,000 BC. The earliest physical evidence of it seems to be the rashes on the mummified body of Pharaoh Ramses V(the fourth) of Egypt. Small pox is a virus known by a Latin name Variola, it is derived from Varius “spotted” or Varus “Pimple”. The virus starts out in the small blood vessels of the skin, mouth and throat before viciously spreading. Smallpox is easily transmitted through saliva, or any other bodily fluid. Sometimes, if the condition was right, the virus could go airborne sweeping through communities. The mortality rate in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle-east had a mortality rate of 20%-30%, …show more content…
however later I’ll discuss in the mortality rate for Native Americans were different.
The first phase is the Incubation period which lasts from 7 – 14 days, it’s the pretty common for the virus to break out on the 9th day, from initial contact. The Second phase is the Initial Symptoms phase which lasted 1-4 days after fully being affected with Smallpox. During this time the victim would come down with a pretty serious fever and will become extremely fatigueless. The next two phases are the most extreme, because these are the phases that are most deadly and contagious---- Where most people will die. In phase three, the smallpox begins to emerge as little red dots inside the tongue and in the mouth. And then spreading from the mouth onto the face and then onto the body with crater like bumps that look like big zits with yellowish thick fluid that is visible to the naked eye; All within 24 hours. Now, if the individual gets to phase four, the crater like wounds will become very hard and then start to scab. But, the individual will still remain highly contagious and very ill. Phase five is when the scabs begin to fall off. Leaving behind super deep pitted scars that are clearly visible. Most scabs will fall off after 3 weeks from initially becoming sick. Once all the scab have fallen off the person can’t get the virus again.
In the “old world” people were very close living and were in constant contact with traders and products from around the globe. The “old world” was living in an endemic society that was adapting to diseases that took many lives in the process. The old world people had stronger immune systems. This in part decreased the mortality rate amongst those individuals through constant contact with travelers and traders. A major reason Europeans were so disease stricken was because of domesticated animals which are largely the reason most of these diseases existed. However, on the other side, in the “New world” was a society that didn’t have domesticated animals in their homes and extremely unbalanced diets. The Native Americans had a sophisticated way of governing and extremely well built trade routes and canals that made peace in most of the Americas. In the Americas disease wasn’t as rampant and deadly as in the “old world”; people were much cleaner and nourished until the arrival of European Settlers. When Europeans settlers arrived the mortality rate of smallpox with natives was 50-100% because their bodies were defenseless to completely new diseases. The increase in mortality rate was contributed to the fact that the “old world” diseases didn’t exist in the new world resulting in a extremely weak immune system amongst native Americans. The mortality rate was from 50-100%.
Christopher Columbus discovered Hispaniola ~now known as Haiti in 1492.
The island of Haiti was first inhabited by Taino Natives the most advanced Indians in all of the Caribbean. While in Haiti around 1496, before Columbus returned to Spain he told his brother Bartolome to do a headcount of all Natives on the island. Bartolome reported that there was ~1.1 million male adults; he didn’t count children and females. It’s safe to say there used to be about 3 million people. Some researchers argued that there was up to eight million natives in Haiti at the time of Columbus’s arrival. Also, Spanish brought slaves to Haiti in 1507. Slave ships were notorious for being extremely dirty and disease ridden. The Spanish claimed that slaves brought smallpox that infected the native’s tribes on Haiti. Small pox swept through the Haiti mercilessly killing millions. By 1517, 26,000 Taino were alive, and then by 1542, that number reduced to about two-hundred Taino. Documents say Taino went extinct in Haiti two decades …show more content…
later.
A Spanish conquistador named Hernando Cortez sailed from Cuba to Mexico in 1518 encountering the Aztec Civilization and their Emperor Montezuma. Upon arrival Cortez’s army brought smallpox and many more diseases that infected the capital of the Aztec Empire; Tenochtitlan. The powerful empire that stretched from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean had a vast network of trading routes that connected the entire empire. However, the big network of trade that stretched from South America through much of North America was a highway for smallpox and other diseases to spread. The virus was faster than the Spanish armies and didn’t take casualties. Smallpox proved to be an unstoppable force spreading and decimating communities. The disease spread into North America reaching a relatively unknown society of Indians. The Mississippian Culture isn’t as documented as some of the Native empires. Although, we do know there were millions of Mississippian Natives that lived in the Middle, south, and south-east of the US. The Mississippian culture disbanded when European settlers and trade started arriving. Mississippians weren’t exempt from the disease of European settlers. It’s known that many Indians contacted these deadly diseases and died, but the number is unknown. Researchers say that the tribes making up the Mississippian Culture split and went separate ways, primarily north and west.
As the great migration to the “new world” started happening by European settlers many landed in North-east United States looking for trade and product to profit from, bringing with them a load of nasty diseases. In Colonial America It is thought that British settlers brought disease to surrounding Indians in the 13 colonies. But, in fact, the first individuals to set foot in north-eastern Americas were Portuguese merchants looking for trade. The Portuguese were the first Europeans to give Natives in North-eastern United States Smallpox and yellow fever. There were reports by Spanish explorers that landed in North Carolina that came upon villages full of skeletons and desolate villages. Many, too all tribes were affected by disease in America. But, amongst the most afflicted by smallpox during the beginning of the colonial age was Wampanoig, Massachuesett, and Nauset tribes. Mainly because they were the closest natives to the colonials.
In what now is called Plymouth, Massachusetts was essentially a ghost town by the time the Pilgrims stepped foot off the Mayflower. the entire coastal region had been ravaged by primarily Smallpox and various other diseases wiping out most of the native Wampanoag and neighboring Massachusetts, Pennacook, and Nauset populations. Deserted villages and untended fields were visible all over the place with the land, with stocks of crops, tools and other supplies left behind… along with the skeletal remains of the former native. A very early recount by Daniel Denton describing his thoughts on the epidemic. He said “How strangely they have decreased by the Hand of God… and it hath generally been observed that where the English come to settle, a Divine Hand makes way for them.” – Daniel Denton (early American colonist).
The colonials clearly saw what was happening to the Indians in surrounding villages and how they died by the thousands. They declared that it was an act of god to clean the savages of the land. “A divine plan and a miraculous pestilence”. An English settler named Thomas Morton was very outspoken on the native epidemic, praising the fact that the land is “much the more fit for the English Nation to inhabit in, and erect in it Temples to the glory of God.”3 He also describes a vivid account of a village he came upon in the Massachusetts Bay telling
“For in a place where many inhabited, there hath been but one left a live, to tell what became of the rest, the living being (as it seems) not able to bury the dead, they were left for the Crowes, Kites and vermin to prey upon. And the bones and skulls upon the severall places of their habitations, made such a spectacle after my coming into those partes … it seemed to mee a new found Golgotha.”
In 1618, at the height of the epidemic, a strange comet appeared over the skies of North-Eastern United states. The great medicine men of the Wampanoags and Penacooks interpreted this event as a tell-tale sign that the terrible sickness would soon overtake the land. The Wampanoags called the Native pandemic of Massachusetts “The great dying” Inoculation is a historical method for the prevention of smallpox by purposely introducing the skin with material from the smallpox virus. The earliest and first inoculation to Smallpox occurred in china during the 10th century, but didn’t become widely known till the early 1700s century in the west. A wife of a British Ambassador named Mary Wortley who herself had smallpox early in her life served in Istanbul with her husband for 3 years and witnessed a widespread inoculation process in Istanbul. She quickly inoculated her children, and then took knowledge of the procedure to England and France in which it eventually became a widely known medical practice. At first, the inoculation process was known by just a few common people and some royal families. However, that quickly changed once smallpox outbreaks happened in France and England. The countries eventually encouraged people to get inoculated from nearby physicians. The first initial inoculation known in the Americas happened in 1721, when Zabdiel Boylston successfully inoculated two slaves and his son. The inoculation process then became a big deal in the colonies. However after Zabdiel took on much scrutiny because 6 out of 300ish individuals died after trying to be inoculated.
The Inoculation procedure involves taking a needle and a piece of a smallpox virus and puncturing or scratching it into the individuals arm inducing a smallpox effect.
The mortality rate amongst inoculated individuals was significantly lower at around 6%, unlike receiving the virus naturally --which is about 30-50% mortality rate in “old world” peoples. When the Inoculation procedure started becoming a wide known procedure amongst people in America, the smallpox virus wasn’t the ultimate killer of diseases by the end of the 18th century. Though it still lived in the population, it wasn’t as worrisome. Yellow fever and the plague started being the ultimate killer of colonials. But, that didn’t change for the natives, unfortunately the United States didn’t fully implement an inoculation program for Native American till 1833. But on a more positive note, the world’s last known case of the deadly disease Smallpox was in 1975 in
Bangladesh.
Bibliography
Thomson, Mark. “Junior Division Winner: The Migration of Smallpox and Its Indelible Footprint on Latin American History”. The History Teacher 32.1 (1998): 117–131
Becker, Ann M.. “Smallpox in Washington's Army: Strategic Implications of the Disease During the American Revolutionary War”. The Journal of Military History 68.2 (2004): 381–430.
Krebsbach, Suzanne. “The Great Charlestown Smallpox Epidemic of 1760”. The South Carolina Historical Magazine 97.1 (1996): 30–37.
Oxley, Deborah. “'the Seat of Death and Terror': Urbanization, Stunting, and Smallpox”. The Economic History Review 56.4 (2003): 623–656. Web
Jackson, Robert H. "Demographics, Historical." Encyclopedia of American Indian History. Ed. Bruce E. Johansen and Barry M. Pritzker. Vol. 1. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2008. 104-111. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 5 Mar. 2016.
Gilman, Larry. "Smallpox." Infectious Diseases: In Context. Ed. Brenda Wilmoth Lerner and K. Lee Lerner. Vol. 2. Detroit: Gale, 2008. 770-775. In Context Series. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 5 Mar. 2016.
Ed. Peter C. Mancall. "Smallpox." Encyclopedia of Native American History. Vol. 3. New York: Facts on File, 2011. 787-789. Facts on File Library of American History. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 5 Mar. 2016
Ed. Peter C. Mancall. "Disease." Encyclopedia of Native American History. Vol. 1. New York: Facts on File, 2011. 216-219. Facts on File Library of American History. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web5Mar. 2016.