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The Smallpox Virus

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The particular weapon or better yet biological microorganism that I have chosen to outline this week is that of a particularly nasty strain of disease which has wiped out an unknown multitude of people throughout history. This infectious disease, known as the genus Orthopoxvirus, from the the family Poxviridae and subfamily of chordopoxvirinae, is potentially believed to have laid to waste whole civilizations of people. It also goes by the name “Red Plague”, or in more common parlance, “The Smallpox Virus.”

Historically, this virus made its way to Europe sometime between the 5th and 7th centuries. According to Reidel (2005), “It was frequently epidemic during the Middle Ages. Smallpox continued to be a problem throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, affecting populations on a large scale.” It was one of the primary annihilator’s of the native indigenous population of the Americas during the first arrivals of the Europeans who brought it with them. One notable incident which many believe led to a severe outbreak of the smallpox amongst various Indian tribes in the Ohio Valley in 1763 was the case of the British Army giving away blankets from a pox hospital with the hopes of passing the disease onto the Indians they were fighting. Gill (2004) shares purported correspondence between two British officers with the following: …show more content…

We must, on this occasion, Use Every Stratagem in our power to Reduce them." He ordered the extirpation of the Indians and said no prisoners should be taken. About a week later, he wrote to Bouquet: "You will Do well to try to Innoculate the Indians by means of Blanketts as well as to try Every other method that can serve to Extirpate this Execrable

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If it was suspected that a person was either infected with smallpox, or had come in contact with someone infected with smallpox, they could be taken from their home and sent to the Quarantine Station with as little as five minutes notice. This, combined with the shortages of the Quarantine stations facilities resulted in so many complaints that a Royal Commission was ordered resulting in the dismissal of the Superintendent of the Quarantine Station and the establishment of a ‘Board of Health’ to operate the Quarantine

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The tribe took their past experiences with germs and disease outbreaks and their beliefs in the connection between the spirit world and disease to systematically deal with the presence of smallpox (81). These spiritual practices even display effects that were beneficial in stopping the spread of smallpox. One of these effects that proved beneficial in reducing the spread of smallpox within the Cherokee tribe was a practice that was common practice: social distancing. The Cherokee “counseled against traveling into disease-ridden settlements, while the smallpox ceremonies they conducted closed villages off against the outside world and helped curtail the spread of contagion” (101). Actions of quarantining the sick and reducing travel were both common practices for the Cherokee as well as a modern stance on how to prevent the spread of disease in the developed world.

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Penn experienced this he lost a third of his passengers to smallpox, it had been spreading quickly. Especially in Europe, and it came with the Europeans that came to Pennsylvania. A big issue with smallpox was that the native Americans were really sensitive to it, so most of them got really sick and

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Another similarity between Smallpox and the black death is that they both advanced important movements. Smallpox is credited with being the cause of the rise of the American abolition movement. White people living in the slave ports feared for their own health, which brought the notion of the movement itself. The Black Death is credited with being the cause of the Reformation. Due to people like William the One-day Priest, the church was thought to be corrupt.

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One of the biggest summer nuisance would be the mosquito, but more specifically the Ades aegypti mosquito. The Aedes aegypti is the vector for yellow fever and the cause of the numerous deaths. In her book The American Plague: The Untold Story of Yellow Fever, The Epidemic the Shaped Our History, Molly Caldwell Crosby presents the idea that the mosquito is not just the only reason an epidemic occurred in the 18th century. This story accounts for the disease that broke out across the world and nearly destroyed almost all of North America’s population, which some believe could have been avoided by simple quarantine analysis and sanitary methods.

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This shows how the Mongols used Biological Warfare against their enemies which as a result inflated into one of the deadliest pandemics in history, with estimates pointing to around one quarter or one third of Europe’s population dying.(Wheelis) This shows yet again that the Mongols caused such a widespread plague just trying to take a city over! As a result, the Mongols can be accredited to spreading the Black Plague to Europe which killed millions of people, in addition to the number of civilians they already

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The new world was much more impacted than the old world from diseases exchanged. The Native Americans were more impacted because they had no previous contact with Old World diseases, and were immunologically defenseless. “Before Europeans initiated the Columbian Exchange of germs and viruses, the peoples of the Americas suffered no smallpox, no measles, no chickenpox, no influenza, no typhus or parathyroid fever, no diphtheria, no cholera, no bubonic plague, no scarlet fever, no whooping cough, and no malaria5”. The first recorded smallpox epidemic in the new world was in 1518 in the Greater Antilles and swept through Mexico and Central America. It caused “in all likelihood the most severe loss of aboriginal population that ever occurred6.”

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During the 18th century, smallpox caused by Variola virus was a dreaded disease. It spared no monarchs, no emperors, no rank, no age, and no constitution. It is believed to be as one of deadliest virus in mankind. No one is for sure when small pox appeared in human history, some say it started during the first agricultural settlements. Scientist believe it started as an animal virus, and at some point, the virus made a jump into the human population.

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Smallpox inoculation was an early method of preventing smallpox by giving a patient a minor case of it, which then gave them immunity for the rest of their life. Giving a patient a minor case of smallpox was done by taking a small amount of matter from the pustules of a patient infected with smallpox and putting it into their skin. Inoculation was an earlier, less safe treatment that started before vaccination became common practice. It had pros and cons, and many people at the time were against it while others were not. Pros of inoculation include the possibility of being immune to the disease and the reduced risk of death.

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The European conquerors had built up an immunity to certain diseases that were common in Europe. Some of the diseases that decimated the Indian population included the following: smallpox, measles, influenza, typhus, and the bubonic plague. Centuries of living near livestock had basically inoculated the European settlers against these diseases. However the Indians were not used to such diseases, resulting in a dramatic decline in the Native American population. According to Diamond, smallpox was a major role in the domination of the Americas by the Europeans.

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As the Europeans found native along the coasts of the New World, they found them easily malleable and able to be used, so they enslaved them and those who fought back were wiped out. Europeans, as well as the Africans, had built up a resistance to many diseases such as smallpox and were therefore not really affected as much by the diseases if they became sick. However, the Native Americans had not had contact with the disease and it quickly spread rapidly and slowly helped the Spanish rid themselves of the natives so they could take control of the land. Geoffrey Cowley offers insight on just how profound the effect of smallpox was when he writes, “ ...When the newcomers arrived carrying mumps, measles, whooping cough, smallpox, cholera, gonorrhea and yellow fever, the Indians were immunologically

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The “Black Death” was one of, if not the most devastating pandemics to sweep the earth since humans have populated it. It was widely thought to be caused by a bacteria called Yersinia Pestis and in recent studies and research, evidence has made a strong case for the confirmation of that bacteria as the cause of the Black Death. Graves in Europe that were tied to that time period and the Black Death showed traces of that bacteria in both southern and northern Europe (Haensch et al. 4). In the 14th century about 20-30 years before the outbreak of the Black Death, there was a great famine occurring in much of Europe and coincidentally the same was happening in a large part of Asia along with China. The occurrence of these famines caused a large

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The Spanish conquistadors arrived via boat to Lake Texaco, the conquistadors and cortez brought a plague of Small pox; "A contagious, deadly disease" …  (Mayo Clinic. 2013). The biological warfare was transmitted between both colonies which killed 90% of adults and 10% of children.   Weapons/

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The rabies virus does a virus-induced aggressive biting behavior that increases the chances of taking over the host. (The Rabies Virus) The rabies virus can be spread from animals to humans in different ways and can cause many painful symptoms relating to the nervous system. Rabies also has a very complex structure and has multiple functions that can leave people in awe. The nervous system is no match for rabies and most people infected with rabies die unless treated with medication within around 24 hours.

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Human monkeypox is a viral zoonotic disease caused by the monkeypox virus (MPXV), a member of the genus Orthopoxvirus (family Poxviridae, subfamily Chordopoxvirinae), that occurs mostly in the rain forests of central and western Africa. People living in or near the forested areas may have indirect or low-level exposure, possibly leading to subclinical infection. However, the disease recently emerged in the United States in imported wild rodents from Africa. Monkeypox has a clinical presentation very similar to that of ordinary forms of smallpox, including flulike symptoms, fever, malaise, back pain, headache, and characteristic rash. Given this clinical spectrum, differential diagnosis to rule out smallpox is very important.

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