20th Century

Compiled by Wayne Blanchard; last edit 10-30-2024 for upload to: http://www.usdeadlyevents.com/

–41  US Bureau of the Census. Vital Statistics 1939, Part I, Table XI, p. 24.

Narrative Information

Crosby: “Smallpox is a disease with seven-league boots. Its effects are terrifying; the fever and the pain; the swift appearance of pustules that sometimes destroy the skin and transform the victim into a gory horror; the astounding death rates, up to one-fourth, one-half, or more with the worst strains. The healthy flee, leaving the ill behind to face certain death, and often taking the disease along with them. The incubation period for smallpox is ten to fourteen days, long enough for the ephemerally healthy carrier to flee for long distances on foot, by canoe, or, later, on horseback to people who know nothing of the threat he represents, and there to infect them and inspire others newly charged with the virus to flee to infect new innocents….” (Crosby, Alfred W.  “Virgin Soil Epidemics,” in Warren, American Environmental History, 2003, 53-54.)

Lamb: “Between 1600 and 1775, smallpox was both universal and fatal in Europe and North America; it was a major cause of death in colonial America (Duffy 1953^[1]).  Smallpox is a highly communicable viral disease that causes 3 to 4 days of high fever and rapid pulse with intense headache and back pain, followed by skin eruptions that eventually develop into pustules.  Once infected, the person either dies or survives with an extended period of immunity.  The virus typically is passed from host to host, but it can also remain infectious for months on inanimate objects, including bedding and clothing.” (Lamb. “Historical and Epidemiological Trends in Mortality in the United States,” 2003. 185.)

MN Health Board: “`The origin of this destructive disease is involved in obscurity. It is said to have been mentioned in very ancient Chinese manuscripts, and in Brahmin records 3366 years old.’ We have positive record of its occurrence in the last quarter of the 6^th century. It soon became, throughout the known world, a naturalized plague. In the 18^th century it was the cause of mortality in 1 in 12 of all deaths. Among those attacked by the disease 20 per cent died. In the confluent form it killed one-half. It is altogether probable that no other pestilence, including the other plagues of the middle ages, has ever been so fatal to man as small pox. The annual mortality in Europe alone from this disease was very nearly 500,000. This was due to the fact that unlike other pestilential diseases ‘it was universally prevalent, among all races of men; among all ranks of society; in both sexes, at all ages and in all seasons; it made itself at home everywhere; attacked a large proportion of the population; and caused a very large proportion of deaths.’ Evidence of its secondary influence is found in the fact that from one-half to two-thirds of the blind in England before the 19^th century owed the loss of sight to the small pox.

“Two methods of preventing the great mortality of this disease have been thoroughly tried: inoculation and vaccination. Inoculation was the first experiment. ‘There is no doubt that it was practiced by the Brahmin’s of Hindostan from a very remote period; and the Chinese have long ‘sown’ the small-pox by inserting a crust into the nose. In 1717 the wife of the English Ambassador to the Turks, had her son inoculated there, and in 1722 her daughter of the same age was inoculated in England. It was then tried on six condemned criminals; then on five paupers; then on children of aristocratic families, and lastly upon the English royal family, after which it became general. One advantage of inoculation was the assured mortality of the disease, 1 in 50 as against 1 in 5 from the natural diseases. In 1721, in New England, the natural disease killed 1 in 7; inoculation 1 in 51; in North Carolina the proportion was 1 in 5 to 1 in 100.

“The misfortune was that small pox by inoculation was as contagious as the natural disease and so became a cause of its universal spread. Still it is probable that good resulted from the practice in the absence of anything better. 

“The discovery of vaccination was in this way: Edward Jenner was apprenticed to a surgeon near Bristol, England, in a country where cow pox prevailed. One day a young woman came into his master’s surgery and speaking of small pox and its dangers, said: ‘I cannot take the disease for I have had the cow pox.’ The remark impressed itself in Jenner’s mind, he spoke of it to his fellow students, to the great Dr. John Hunter, his preceptor, and after beginning practice for himself talked of it so much in his medical club that his fellow practitioners threatened to vote him a bore. He made his first experiments in 1795, published the result in 1798, lived to see the triumph of vaccination, and died in 1823, aged 74 years.

“The vaccine virus is a matter found in pustules on the udder and teats of the milch cow. This local disease is the small pox modified by passing through the body of the cow. The operation of vaccination consists in the insertion of this matter (direct from the cow or that has passed through the human body) into the human system by punctures in the skin. It gives rise to a local inflammation and the formation of a little pustule. The appearance of this pustule on the seventy day after the operation was stated, by Dr. Jenner himself, to a lady who asked, to be ‘that of the section of a pearl on a rose leaf.’ The description is as accurate as could be given.

“It is proven by long trial that vaccination is ‘a preventive of the natural small pox in the great majority of cases, and that when it does not prevent an attack it mitigates its severity more certainly than a previous attack of small pox itself does.’

“Jenner lived long enough to witness the complete vindication of his claims, and now small pox is by his simple discovery almost completely under human control. The objections to vaccination at present are directed chiefly against the use of humanized virus (that which has passed through a number of human bodies.) It is claimed that in this way other and dangerous diseases have been communicated….”  (p. 61-62)

Sources

Crosby, Alfred W.  “Virgin Soil Epidemics,” in Warren, American Environmental History, 2003, pp. 53-54.

Lamb, Vicki L. “Historical and Epidemiological Trends in Mortality in the United States.” Pp. 185-197 in Bryant, Clifton D. (Ed.). Handbook of Death & Dying. Thousand Oaks, CA:  Sage Publications, 2003. Google preview accessed 3-12-2018 at:  http://books.google.com/books?id=3z9EpgisKOgC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_atb#v=onepage&q&f=true

Secretary, Minnesota State Board of Health. Appendix “F” “Small Pox. Its History and the Means Used For Its Prevention,” pp. 59-63 in Fifth Annual Report of the State Board of Health of Minnesota, January, 1876. Saint Paul: The Pioneer Press Co., 1877. Google digitized at: http://books.google.com/books?id=10VNAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

United States Bureau of the Census, Department of Commerce. Vital Statistics of the United States 1939, Part I, Natality and Mortality Data for the United States Tabulated by Place of Occurrence. Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1941. Accessed 10-30-2024 at: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsus/VSUS_1939_1.pdf

[1] Duffy, John.  1953.  Epidemics in Colonial America.  Baton Rouge:  Louisiana State University Press.