Scourge: The Once and Future Threat of Smallpox

Scourge: The Once and Future Threat of Smallpox

2001 • 291 pages

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Smallpox, the only infectious disease to have been eradicated, was one of the most terrifying of human scourges. It covered the skin with hideous, painful boils, killed a third of its victims, & left the survivors disfigured for life. Here is the story of this deadly disease, the heroic efforts to eradicate it, & the looming dangers it still poses today. The smallpox virus afflicted rich & poor, royalty & commoners, & repeatedly altered the course of human history, as when the Spanish conquistadors brought it to the New World where it decimated the indigenous pop's. In 1796 Edward Jenner developed a vaccine against smallpox, which caused it to eventually disappear in industrialized countries. But lab. stocks of the virus still exist, & clandestine stocks pose a mil. threat.

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