smallpox

(noun)

A fatal, infectious disease that causes fever, a rash, and often death.

Related Terms

Examples of smallpox in the following topics:

  • Smallpox

    • Smallpox broke out in army camps in 1775, during an epidemic that lasted for most of the war.
    • At the same time, smallpox was also rampant in the Continental Armies that had invaded Canada.
    • This 16th-century Aztec drawing depicts smallpox victims.
    • A new epidemic of smallpox would ravage North America during the Revolutionary War.
    • Discuss the impact of the smallpox epidemic during the American Revolution

  • Changes in American Indian Life

    • Smallpox proved particularly fatal to American Indian populations.
    • While precise figures are difficult to determine, some historians estimate that at least 30% (and sometimes 50% to 70%) of some American Indian populations died after first contact due to Eurasian smallpox.
    • In 1618–1619, smallpox killed 90% of the American Indians in the area of the Massachusetts Bay.
    • Smallpox epidemics in 1780–1782, and 1837–1838, brought devastation and drastic depopulation among the Plains Indians.
    • By 1832, the federal government established a smallpox vaccination program for American Indians, known as the Indian Vaccination Act.

  • The Pequot War

    • The second event that weakened the Pequot was the smallpox epidemic which they suffered in 1633-34.
    • The separation of the Mohegan and the smallpox cost the Pequot almost half of their people.

  • Disease in the New World

    • One of the most devastating diseases was smallpox; other deadly diseases included typhus, measles, influenza, bubonic plague, cholera, malaria, mumps, yellow fever, and pertussis (whooping cough).

  • The Middle Passage

    • Furthermore, outbreaks of smallpox, syphilis, and measles were fatally contagious in close-quarter compartments.

  • Quebec, New York, and New Jersey

    • The Patriot forces were disorganized and weakened by smallpox by this point.

  • Discontent on the Frontier

    • In what is now perhaps the best-known incident of the war, British officers at Fort Pitt attempted to infect the besieging Native Americans with smallpox using blankets that had been exposed to the virus.

  • European Wars in the Colonies

    • Having to reckon with Quebec's formidable natural defenses, its superior number of soldiers, and the coming of winter, Phips sailed back to Boston with his hungry, smallpox-ridden, and demoralized force.

  • Internment of Japanese Americans

    • Overcrowded and unsanitary conditions forced assembly center infirmaries to prioritize inoculations over general care, obstetrics and surgeries; at Manzanar, for example, hospital staff performed over 40,000 immunizations against typhoid and smallpox. 

  • Virginia

    • By the mid-17th century, the Powhatan and allied tribes were in serious decline in population, due in large part to epidemics of newly introduced infectious diseases such as smallpox and measles, to which they had no natural immunity.