What is Smallpox?
"Smallpox was always present, filling the churchyard with corpses, tormenting with constant fear all who it had not yet stricken, leaving on those whose lives it spared the hideous traces of its power, turning the babe into a changeling at which the mother shuddered, and making the eyes and cheeks of the betrothed maiden objects of horror to the lover."
- Lord Thomas Macauley, History of England
Smallpox is an infectious disease caused by the variola virus, a member of the orthopox family. Other members of this family are monkeypox and cowpox. There are two strains of variola- variola major and variola minor. Variola major killed as many as one in every three people infected. On the other hand, variola minor was less deadly.
- Lord Thomas Macauley, History of England
Smallpox is an infectious disease caused by the variola virus, a member of the orthopox family. Other members of this family are monkeypox and cowpox. There are two strains of variola- variola major and variola minor. Variola major killed as many as one in every three people infected. On the other hand, variola minor was less deadly.
"The culprit of smallpox is called variola, a member of the orthopoxvirus family and one of the largest of all viruses. It consists of little more than a brick-shaped shell that houses a long strand of DNA, which carries the genetic instructions for making copies of itself. It has no means of locomotion and is able to multiply only by invading a human cell and then taking over its metabolism and reproducing itself.
Where or how variola originated is unknown. We believe it may have started as a mutation of a related virus of the orthopoxvirus family. Such viruses affect many animals and are especially prevalent in rodents. Presumably, the strain that first infected a human changed over time as it spread and lost its ability to infecy other animals. Today, humans are the only animals that can be infected with smallpox virus and that can transmit it to others."
- D. A. Henderson; Smallpox: The Death of a Disease