For 10,000 years, humanity suffered from the scourge of smallpox. The virus killed almost a third of its victims within two weeks and left survivors horribly scarred. But Simona Zompi commends the brave souls – a Buddhist nun, a boy, a cow, a dairymaid and physician Edward Jenner – ...
Fast forward to the 1940s, scientists had finally gained a grasp both on bacteria and viruses, thanks largely in part to powerful microscopes that allowed them to study deadly bacteria and viruses. Today’s modern imaging and AI didn’t exist but it was enough for scientists to slowly figure...
That’s why Washington eventually made the bold decision to inoculate all American troops who had never been sickened with smallpox at a time when inoculation was a crude and often deadly process. His gamble paid off. The measure staved off smallpox long enough to win a years-long fight wit...
Like other species, we are the products of millions of years of adaptation. Now we're taking matters into our own hands.
Deadly outbreaks have plagued societies for centuries. But they can lead to medical breakthroughs—if we learn the right lessons from them.
How deadly is monkeypox? Most cases of monkeypox are mild. The West African strain of monkeypox, which appears to be the one responsible for cases being reported around the world, is the least fatal, with just about 1% of infected people dying. A stronger strain of the disease found in...
Smallpox had quite a history. The first recorded case was 2000 years ago in China. The Pharaoh Ramses V died of smallpox in 1157 B.C. The disease reached Europe in 710 A.D. and was transferred to America by Hernando Cortez in 1520. It was so deadly that 3,500,000 Aztecs died from...
Many years of research on treatments for smallpox have led to the development of products that may also be useful for treating mpox, it adds. It says an antiviral developed to treat smallpox called tecovirimat was approved by the European Medicines Agency for the treatment of mpox ...
Monkeypox can occasionally be deadly, especially in poor places with inadequate healthcare, and is closely related to smallpox, which plagued humans for millennia. Smallpox was eradicated due to a worldwide vaccination campaign. In the United States, mass vaccinations ended in 1972, but the vacci...
University of Florida researchers have learned more about how smallpox conducts its deadly business — discoveries that may reveal as much about the human immune system as they do about one of the world's most feared pathogens.