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Smallpox The Triumph Over The Most Terrible of The Ministers of Death
Smallpox The Triumph Over The Most Terrible of The Ministers of Death
Ministers of Death
Nicolau Barquet, MD, and Pere Domingo, MD
More than 200 years ago, Edward Jenner performed an BC) and in the well-preserved mummy of Ramses V,
experiment that laid the foundation for the eradication of who died as a young man in 1157 BC (4-6).
smallpox and transformed humankind's fight against dis- The first recorded smallpox epidemic occurred in
ease. Smallpox afflicted humankind as no other disease
1350 BC during the Egyptian-Hittite war. The ill-
had done; its persistence and diffusion were without par-
allel. The disease brought down at least three empires.
ness was passed to the Hittite population by Egyp-
Generations watched helplessly as their children suc- tian prisoners and affected soldiers and civilians
cumbed to the disease or were disfigured or blinded by it. alike. The Hittite King Suppiluliumas I and his heir,
Attempts were made to contain smallpox by isolating its Arnuwandas, were victims; their civilization fell into
sufferers and, later, by using variolation with varying de- sharp decline (2).
grees of success. However, the definitive solution was not During the epidemic in Athens in 430 BC,
found until Jenner's work was done at the end of the 18th Thucydides noted that those who survived the dis-
century. Milkmaids who had developed cowpox from con- ease were later immune to it (7). These observations
tact with cow udders informed Jenner that they were were reiterated by Rhazes (Abu Bakr Muhammad Ibn
protected from the human form of the disease; he listened
Zakariya al-Razi), to whom we owe the first medical
to their folk wisdom and raised it to the status of scientific
fact. Jenner did not discover vaccination, but he was the
description of smallpox, De variolis et morbillis com-
first to demonstrate that this technique offered a reliable mentarius, which was written in about AD 910.
defense against smallpox. It was also a reliable defense Rhazes also noted that the illness was transmitted
against other illnesses, such as poliomyelitis, measles, and from person to person (8). His explanation of why
neonatal tetanus, although this was not known in Jenner's survivors of smallpox do not develop the disease a
lifetime. second time is the first theory of acquired immunity.
From Centre d'Assistencia Primaria Gratia, Institut Catala de la Smallpox greatly affected the development of
Salut and Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau, Barcelona, western civilization. The first stages of the decline
Spain. For current author addresses, see end of text.
of the Roman Empire, around AD 180, coincided
with a large-scale epidemic: the plague of Antonine,
Smallpox was always present, filling the churchyard which killed between 3.5 and 7 million persons (9,
with corpses, tormenting with constant fear all whom it 10). The Arab expansion, the Crusades, and the
had not yet stricken, leaving on those whose lives it
spared the hideous traces of its power, turning the discovery of the West Indies all contributed to the
babe into a changeling at which the mother shuddered, spread of the illness. Unknown in the New World,
and making the eyes and cheeks of the betrothed smallpox was introduced by Spanish and Portuguese
maiden objects of horror to the lover (1).
conquistadors. It decimated the local population
and was instrumental in the fall of the empires of
15 October 1997 • Annals of Internal Medicine • Volume 127 • Number 8 (Part 1) 641
642 15 October 1997 • Annals of Internal Medicine • Volume 127 • Number 8 (Part 1)