Small pox essays

Small pox essays Remember having the Chicken Pox when we were little? If you never had Chicken Pox, it consists of having several small bumps that cover the entire body over and over, they itch, some would hurt, and all you would hope for would be for them to go away. Chicken Pox would last an average healthy person a few days. With Small Pox a person can run a high fever for up to eight days before the skin pustules will even appear (Concise). Small Pox is known scientifically as Variola, because it exists as one main strand, Variola Major. Small Pox is considered a virus, and is highly infectious. Small Pox can be spread airborne, directly, or even indirectly. Variola enters through the respiratory tract, then multiplies the other internal organs, the rash or pox signifies the peak stages of the infection (Britanica). The virus can live out side of the body for long periods of time. The virus has been found to survive in bales of cotton for 18 months. This was part of the problem in Europe, was that patients in the hospitals were getting contaminated by the bed linens. However, the most common way it was spread was airborne. Small Pox could be contracted from a carriers breath, or saliva (Grolier). The thing about Small Pox is that the virus was very sneaky. A person who had been vaccinated for the virus could still contract it, of course they would show no symptoms, and the virus would not directly affect them. Although this same could unknowingly spread the virus to someone else who has not been vaccinated The vaccination of Smallpox came from an English physician named Edward Jenner. Jenner had noticed that milk maids who had contracted Cowpox earlier in their lives were immune to the Smallpox virus (Concise). Therefore he decided to test his hypothesis. He took the lymph from Cowpox pustules on the hands of the milk maid, Sarah Nelmes, then he scratched ...