Pox Americana is a book by Elizabeth Fenn where she writes about small pox, its effects and spread across the North American continent. Small Pox was a very dangerous disease at that time. She describes small pox as the deadliest disease to have attacked the world. In her book, she writes about how she came face to face with the disease in the 1770s and 1780s. Fenn uses the book to explain and even play an informatory role by explaining to people just what small pox was and its effects. Fenn believed that small pox was indeed the deadliest disease in the entire world. She argues that the small pox outbreak affected America and humanity so badly that it could have actually changed or shaped history. The mortality rates were particularly high among Native Americans and Indians because they did not have prior experience with the disease and therefore lacked natural immunity. European invaders on the other hand are reported in the book to have got off more easily because they had prior exposure and some had lifetime immunity. Fenn generally props up small pox as the deadliest disease in the world not even mentioning cancer and other known and more common killer diseases. In her book, Fenn explicitly looks at small pox, its effects and how its spread across America between 1775 and 1782. Pox Americana as written by Fenn seeks to make it known to the reader the deadly impact small pox had on America. It affected thousands of Americans, Indians and even the invading Europeans in a way that left a stream of deaths that cannot be forgotten. Fenn details the characteristics of the deadly disease (small pox) in terms of outbreaks, infectiousness and severity. Ms Fenn stresses how serious small pox was by pointing out that from the fourteen nineties to seventeen seventies as many as 23 small pox epidemics hit the North American continent. This was obviously a disturbing revelation. It was not until much later that the masters learned to quarantine the infected persons and prevent them from spreading the then deadly disease. It was later discovered that cutting the skin and rubbing in matter obtained from the Variola virus, from persons who showed mild symptoms, could actually boost immunity to the destructive virus. This went a long way in curbing the then common deaths and gave some hope to the ailing that they could recover. Before this revelation, all the sick were abandoned by their relatives for fear of infection because they under the impression that their sick could never get better. There are a couple of thoughts that Fenn brings out that are highly contested. One of the most heavily contested thoughts is that she describes small pox as the most dangerous or deadliest disease in the world. Critics argue that there are many other diseases in the world that affect people even more commonly than small pox which were not mentioned in the book. More common diseases like cancer, common cold and malaria were not mentioned as she talked about her supposed ‘deadliest disease’ in the world in pox Americana. It has also been argued that the numbers given in the book about how many people actually died were not confirmed anywhere. All the facts used by Fenn were not refere