CHAPTER XIII 



SMALLPOX 



TJAVING given some account of the causes and 

 prevention of the " filth diseases " and of the 

 diseases which are communicated through the medium 

 of material coughed up from the lungs or upper air- 

 passages of infected individuals, I shall now briefly 

 consider that group of infectious diseases known 

 under the general name of "eruptive fevers," and first 

 in importance comes smallpox. This disease, which 

 was formerly a scourge of the human race, has been 

 largely robbed of its terrors by vaccination. 



There is reason to believe that smallpox has pre- 

 vailed in India and China from a remote antiquity. 

 It was probably introduced into the British Islands 

 about the year 1241. From the end of the thirteenth 

 century until the general adoption of vaccination as 

 a preventive measure smallpox ranked as the most 

 destructive of the pestilential diseases. Lord Ma- 

 caulay describes the ravages of this disease in pre- 



vaccination times as follows : 



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