Symptoms
Hand with pustules
"The newly infected person felt perfectly well for the first seven to ten days. Throughout that time, however, the virus would be growing and silently establishing itself. Then it struck with a sudden onset of chills and a high fever, usually with a headache and backache so severe that the patient had to go to bed. Some people became delirious. Children sometimes had convulsions. After two or three days, the fever and symptoms temporarily ebbed. Small red spots appeared on the inside of the mouth. Angry-looking red spots cropped up on the face and, soon after, on the body; these were most dense over the face and extremities. The patient felt miserable and had trouble eating or swallowing because of lesions in the mouth or throat, which grew in size as they filled with a milky fluid and gradually became pustular. Individual pocks were buried deep in the skin and caused pain, like boils, as they expanded. There could be thousands of these pocks. Sometimes they completely covered the face, leaving scarcely a patch of untouched skin. The pustules continued to grow until nearly the end of the second week, when scabs began to replace the pustules. As the scabs began to separate, symptoms disappeared and the patient was no longer contagious. Eventually, the scabs on the face went away, leaving deeply pitted scars that lasted a lifetime. Some survivors were left blind. All who recovered were immune for life from a second attack."
- D.A. Henderson, MD; Smallpox: The Death of a Disease
- D.A. Henderson, MD; Smallpox: The Death of a Disease
D.A. Henderson explains the symptoms of smallpox.
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A video showing the progression of smallpox.
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