Not until the early 1700s did a chance encounter in the Ottoman empire bring the process to Britain, and bend the axis of history. But the intervention was terribly flawed it killed about one in every 50 patients. Inoculation often worked-pustules would form at the injection site, and a low-grade version of the disease would typically follow.
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Then they would stick the same blade, wet with infection, into the skin of a healthy individual. This discovery was passed down through the generations in Africa and Asia, where local cultures developed a practice that became known as inoculation-from the Latin inoculare, meaning “to graft.” In most cases, people would stick a sharp instrument into a smallpox-infected pustule to collect just a little material from the disease.
Many noticed that survivors earned lifetime immunity from the disease. Over time, different communities experimented with different cures. The Chinese called it tianhua, or “heaven’s flowers.” Throughout Europe, it was known as variola, meaning “spotted.” In England, where doctors used the term pox to describe pestilent bumps on the skin, syphilis had already claimed the name “the great pox.” And so this disease took on a diminutive moniker that belied the scale of its wretchedness: smallpox. About a third of those who contracted it were dead within weeks. In the early 1500s, Spanish and Portuguese conquistadors conveyed it west across the Atlantic, where it ravaged native communities and contributed to the downfall of the Aztec, Mayan, and Inca empires.īy the end of the 1500s, the disease caused by the virus had become one of the most feared in the world. Christian soldiers spread it through Europe during the 11th- and 12th-century Crusades. By the fourth century A.D., it had gained a foothold in China. Some speculate that it swept through ancient Egypt, where its scars appear to mar the mummified body of Pharaoh Ramses V. View MoreĪs civilizations bloomed across the planet, the virus stalked them like a curse. Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read.
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