Variola

Variola 

Variola comes in two variants, Variola Major and Variola Minor. Both are extremely contagious, brutal, and deadly viruses. Variola is officially and colloquially known as Smallpox. Smallpox is an ancient virus that can be traced back to the Egyptians. Archeologists have exhumed the remains of mummies that date back to the 3rd century BC. There are scores of outbreaks, pandemics, and infectious diseases to focus on but I chose to focus on Smallpox today because its one of the few cases that has a “happy” ending. The carnage and death that it took to reach that end however, is unfathomable.

Smallpox had only one major pandemic in 1520, and mostly went from outbreak to outbreak throughout its prevalence. This is not to say that it isn’t a deadly virus, quite the contrary. It is estimated that during the 18th century smallpox killed around 400,000 people a year in Europe, including four reigning monarchs. Smallpox is responsible for the deaths of an estimated three hundred million people in the 20th century alone, and five hundred million in the last hundred years of its existence. So although Smallpox didn’t have pandemics like other viruses and diseases, the death toll is still extraordinary. 

The number of lives taken by Smallpox are massive, but people who survived weren’t entirely spared either. Almost a third of the people that survived being infected with smallpox were left with permanent long term effects from the disease. Most common are severe scarring left from the lesions, as well as blindness. Chronic headaches, GI issues, severe fatigue, back pain, and inflammation are just a few lasting effects from the disease. This is all to emphasize that this was an astonishingly brutal disease, it spared no one and in fact children were the most affected by Smallpox. So it should come as no surprise that from the 1500’s to the late 1960’s the world was united in coming up with solutions to fight this devastating disease. 

The Fall of the Aztec Empire

There were quite a few factors that led to the downfall of the Aztec empire, however undoubtedly the largest factor that lead to its demise, was Smallpox. Cortes brought Smallpox to Mexico and South America in the 1520’s. Cortes crossed the Atlantic from Spain with the sole intention of Conquest. He had no idea what to expect and unknowingly had a “secret weapon.” The Aztecs were very competent warriors, and at the beginning held their own against the Spanish invasion. To be clear, its not my intention to oversimplify the Spanish conquest of Mexico but it’s such a huge topic, I will have to cover it in a later essay. What I am trying to emphasize today is the significance of Smallpox in regards to the downfall of the Aztec Empire. All signs point to that the Aztecs might have held out against the Spanish invasion. However with around six hundred men Cortes was able to conquer the Aztec Empire in two years. They laid siege to Tenochtitlan, a city of two hundred thousand, and conquered it. This is because forty percent of its population was decimated in a single year by Smallpox, no one in the city carried an immunity to the virus. Having come from Europe many if not all of the Spanish invaders had the immunity. Major outbreaks of Smallpox popped up throughout Mexico and South America up until the early 1800’s. It is estimated that between the years 1492 and 1600, Europeans introducing smallpox to native cultures and lands in the Americas, are responsible for the death of over fifty six million people. 

Variolation

Methods of variolation were developed in the middle east and China as early as the fifteenth century. These methods were introduced and refined in England and North America around the 1720’s. Essentially Variolation is a method of immunizing a person against Smallpox. The name variolation comes from Variola, the clinical name for Smallpox. The method of immunizing people against smallpox is essentially to give them a mild version of the disease in hopes that immunities will develop in the patient. The way you would do this in the 1700’s is to slice or create on open wound on a healthy uninfected patient, then rub either powdered smallpox scabs into the wound or fluid from pustules into the superficial wound that was created. It was discovered that doing this would typically produce a mild version of the disease in the patient. This was the first time in history that people inoculated themselves en masse to prevent the spread of a disease. The hope was that not only would immunities be developed but what is also called “herd immunity.” The idea there, is that if a large enough group of people had immunities it would protect or stop the spread to people who were unprotected. Basically, if a person cant get the disease, they can’t spread it to other people. As disgusting as this method might seem, the alternative was much worse.

Vaccination

By the late 1700’s variolation was the go to method in preventing the spread of smallpox. It created new fields of scientific study and medicine. Knowing that immunizing the public against deadly diseases before they spread became the goal and even though the method wasn’t one hundred percent effective it was single handedly one of the most important innovations for health and healthcare studies. Because of variolation scientists began to think of ways to improve inoculation and make them more effective. 

Physician, Edward Jenner and at least six others in the 1790’s recognized that people who worked with cows and contracted Cowpox, would not contract Smallpox. In 1796 through various trials and error Jenner published his method to effectively create an inoculation against smallpox. He called it Variolae Vaccinae. It was created by using the cowpox virus. The Latin derivation of cows is vacca, Variolae Vaccinae eventually becomes, Vaccine.  The term vaccine is now used to describe any inoculation or immunization, so the smallpox vaccine is THE Vaccine. 

Eradication

The Vaccine evolved over the years and many countries by law mandated that its population be immunized against Smallpox. By 1966 smallpox was all but a footnote in Western history books and something that popped up from time to time. But globally, upwards of fifteen million people a year were still dying as a result of Smallpox. In 1967 due to advancements in vaccination production the WHO launched an effort to completely eradicate Smallpox. After a global effort and campaign to vaccinate as many people as possible the final naturally occurring case of Smallpox occurred in October of 1977. After two years of waiting to see if they were successful a commission of scientists certified that the disease had officially been eradicated on December 9th 1979. Smallpox is the first and only infectious disease to ever be eradicated. 

Conclusion

It took over three thousand years and the loss of countless lives to finally eradicate Smallpox. It’s tough to overstate the significance of Smallpox, in terms of advancing science and medicine. Fields of medicine and research such as epidemiology were established as a direct result of physicians researching ways to mitigate the spread of Smallpox. Vaccination’s alone have directly changed and influenced the course of human events. What I have come to realize is that until rather recently, rampant disease and suffering was a normal part of life for a majority of the world, since the beginning of time. Vaccinations, immunizations, and infectious disease research has allowed most of the world to be blanketed from the the spread of infectious disease for the last half century. It would be difficult to prove conclusively but it is my opinion that the advances of the 20th century, particularly the latter part of the 20th century might not have been possible without everything that led up to the eradication of Smallpox. Meaning we have been very sheltered from the constant threat of disease in recent history. Particularly here in the United States and the rest of the western world. When millions of people, particularly children aren’t dying in the streets or going blind it’s easy to focus efforts and money elsewhere. Like going to the moon for example. Vaccines, treatments, cures, and methods that mitigate the spread of infectious disease have allowed our culture and society to focus on other aspects of life. We have been able to enjoy life without any consideration for the spread of disease. There are still scourges that plague this planet, cancer being the one that comes to mind first. However, the world uniting to defeat Smallpox has given us the foundation, tools, perseverance, strength, and knowledge to battle whatever infectious disease might come our way.