Variola

Variola The smallpox epidemic affected the economy, politics, and society of the thirteen English colonies in the eighteen-century. Smallpox also known as variola virus had a course of about one month leading to death or immunity and with strong remembrance of the pain. This highly contagious virus was transmitted through body fluids when in contact with an infected victim, and also through the clothing and the dried scabs of an infected person. The symptoms of an infected person showed after the eleventh day. These symptoms involved fever, headaches, backache, nausea, and malaise. Between the twelfth day through sixteenth day, the symptoms got worse, leading to macules, papules, vesicles and pustules. If during the tenth through the sixteenth day death didn’t occur, it was a sign of survival. During the twenty-fifth day scabs came in and the person was left with numerous scars, and some were blinded but had acquired immunity to smallpox for a lifetime. This epidemic did not discriminate peoples age, sex, race, religion, nor did it have any respect for social status, pregnancy or nutritional status - it affected everyone. This effect is described in the scholarly book of Elizabeth Fenn. The help control the spread of smallpox people used inoculation and quarantine. Two journal articles I have used are Henry R.Viets, "Some Features of the History of Medicine in Massachusetts during the Colonial Period (1620-1770)” and Cynthia, Scheider P., and Michael D. McDonald, “The King of terrors”. The primary source I have used is from William Quentin Maxwell, “A True state of the Small pox in Williamsburg.” In this paper, I will examine how smallpox changed the science in medicine as well as how it affected the society, economy and politics. Immunization was discovered in 1796 when an English physician, Edward Jenner, saw that milkmaids didn’t get infected from the cowpox virus. This discovery led Dr. Jenner to an experiment infecting a boy by the name