Course:History 344 Nasty Families/Diseases/Smallpox
The Disease
Smallpox was perhaps the most feared killer of the seventeenth and the majority of the eighteenth century. “Relatively mild and infrequent before 1600, it seems to have become much more common and lethal by the mid seventeenth century.” [1] It is suggested that the disease became lethal in the 1630’s after a particularly virulent strain began to afflict people with a gradual but significance increase in the fatality rate.[2]Smallpox succeeded to the plague’s position as the most widely dreaded disease because like the plague, it caused disfiguration which was particularly distressing to close relatives of the sufferers. [3] Alongside being the most feared and dreaded disease, Smallpox has also been described as being the most infectious human disease because the disease was virally transmitted, commonly being transmitted by personal contact and can also easily be spread by coughing and sneezing.[4]
Symptoms and Disfigurement
Smallpox had many marked symptoms such as sudden shivering, followed by the primary fever, thirst, constipation, intense headache, vomiting, pain in the back and rashes that would appear on the lower abdomen and inner thighs. [5] The disfiguration to the face and upper body was the absolute worst of all of the symptoms and effects of smallpox. The disfigurement started with “eruptions that began to appear on the face and on the third day grew in size and changed into pustules by the eighth or ninth day, with an inflammation and swelling of the surrounding skin.” If the pustules were punctured and burst they gave off a horribly offensive smell and the mucous membranes, specifically the mouth and throat, were also affected. The pustules began to dry up and scabs formed and on the eleventh or twelfth day the scabs that were formed dropped off leaving permanent scars. [6]
Who Got the Disease?
Anyone could contract the disease but it was more commonly found in children. “Smallpox in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in England was almost wholly a disease of children…commonly the age of 2.6 years and 4.5 years.”[7] Not only was age a contributing factor of who could contract the disease, but location was also a contributing factor. The level of the infection possibility was correlated with the size and population of the town you lived in. Very small cities that were below the normal population level didn’t have many recorded cases of the infection. Medium sized cities that had a normal level of population had a decent account of infected cases. Moreover, large cities like London for example that had high levels of population had a level of epidemic infections and a lot cases were present and prominent.[8]Another contributing factor to contracting the disease was the prominent malnutrition and famine after higher prices of foods like grains which include wheat and barley were installed. Causing malnutrition and famine resulted in higher mortality rates particularly among infants and young children.[9] Lastly, smallpox has been known to travel in intervals and could actually revisit any town from anywhere to 2-5 years depending on the population level; larger cities saw a 2-3 year interval and small to medium cities saw a 5 year interval. [10]
Attempted Treatment
Many herbal remedies, as well as cold treatment and special cloths, were used to attempt to prevent or treat smallpox. Dr. Sydenham (1624–1689) treated his patients by allowing no fire in the room, leaving the windows permanently open, drawing the bedclothes no higher than the patient's waist, and administering twelve bottles of small beer every twenty-four hours. [11] His method was obviously flawed, some patients did recover, but due to the body overcoming the illness rather than Dr. Sydenham methods. The Japanese created a treatment concerning red cloth, where red cloth was hung in the rooms of the inflicted patients. [12] Not only was the patient to wrap up in red cloth, the room and bed are furnished with red; also all persons that come near the patient must be clad in gowns of the same colour. In European countries the red treatment was practised from the 12th century onwards, and when he caught smallpox, King Charles V of France (reigned 1364-1 380) was dressed in a red shirt, red stockings and a red veil. Queen Elizabeth I of England was likewise wrapped in a red blanket when she fell ill with smallpox in 1562, and similar treatments were applied to other European monarchs.[13] “The red treatment was given scientific authority by Finsen, who claimed that the treatment of smallpox patients with red light reduced the severity of scarring, and later developed rules governing erythrotherapy”. [14] However, the most successful way of combating smallpox before the discovery of vaccination was inoculation. Inoculation referred to the subcutaneous instillation of smallpox virus into nonimmune individuals.[15] The practice of inoculation seems to have arisen independently when people in several countries were faced with the threat of an epidemic, although inoculation was rather dangerous asmany who were inoculated fell drastically ill with the virus and died. [16]
References:
- ↑ Ralph Houlbrooke, Death, Religion and the Family in England 1480-1750 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 13.
- ↑ S. R. Duncan, S. Scott, and C.J. Duncan, “Modelling the Different Smallpox Epidemics in England,” Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences, 346, No. 1318 (Dec., 1994), 407.
- ↑ Houlbrooke, 16.
- ↑ Houlbrooke, 16-17.
- ↑ Houlbrooke, 17.
- ↑ Houlbrooke, 17.
- ↑ Duncan, 408.
- ↑ Duncan, 415.
- ↑ Duncan, 408.
- ↑ Duncan, 408.
- ↑ Riedel, Stefan. Edward Jenner and the history of smallpox and vaccination. roc (Bayl Univ Med Cent) 2005 January; 18(1): 21–25. Retrieved from PubMed database.
- ↑ Fenner, Frank. Smallpox and its eradication. Geneva: World Health Organization, 1988, 228.
- ↑ Fenner, 228.
- ↑ Fenner, 228.
- ↑ Riedel, 221-225.
- ↑ Riedel, 221-225.