The Opelousas journal. [volume] (Opelousas, La.) 1868-1878, 1877-08-04
THE HISTORY OF BM4tL-POX

How smallpox first arose among tiletl
it is difficult to conjecture. 1t has been
supposed that it may have been originally
derived from some disease in the
camel. It's history leads to the settled
belief that, while few persons are not
readily susceptible of it, it never occurs
now except from contsgion. 1cdoes not
appear tt have been known in Europe
till the beginning of the eighth century.
No mention of any such distemper is to
be found in the Greek or Roman authors
of antiquity. Now, whatever may
have been the deficiencies of these ancient
physicians, they were excellent obserV-
ers, and capital DISORDERS, Of disease :
and it seems to me scarcely possible that
a disorder 80 diffusive, and marked by
characters so definite and conspicuous,
should have escaped their notice, or if
known should have been obscurely por-
trayed in their writings. On the other
hand, Mr~Moore, in his learned and in
teresting history of smallpox, has shown
that it prevailed in China and Hindostat1
from a very early period-even more
than q thousand years before the advent
of our Saviour. That 1t did not Don
make its way westward into Persia, and
| thence into Greece, may be attributed
partly to the horror which the complaint
everywhere inspired, and the attempts
which were consequently made to check
its progress by prohibiting all communi
cation with the sick, partly to the limi-
ted intercourse which then took place
among the Eastern nations, but prinCi-
pally to the peculiar position OF the
regions through which the infection was
distributed, separated as they were from
the rest Of the world by immense deserts
and by the ocean. The disease is said
to have broken out in Arabia at
the siege of Mecca in the year
in which Mobammed was born, !. e. in
the latter half of the sixth century. 1t
was widely propagated by his wars, and
by those of the Arabs afterward and it
is generally believed to have first found
entrance into Europe at the time of the
| overthrow OF the Gothic monarchy in
Spain by the Moors, when, to avenge the
we'll known outrage upon his daughter,
Count Julian called the invaders. +"
Whatsoever and wheresoever it came, it
spread with fearful rapidity and havoc.
What is worthy of special remark is this
That while almost all men are prone to
take the disorder, large portions Of the
world have remained for centuries en-
tirely free from it, until at length it was
imported; and tk4t it then infallibly
diffused and established itself in those
parts. Of the more modern history of
the disease our knowledge is more precise
and sure. 1t tends uniformly to the
same conclusion. There was no small
pox in the new world before it's discovery
| by Columbus in 1892. In 1917 the dis
ease was imported into San Domingo.
Three years later, in n of the Spanish
expeditions from Cuba to Mexico, a
negro covered with the pustules of small
pox was landed on the Mexican coast.
From him the disease spread with such
desolation that within a veryshort time,
according to Robertson, three millions
and half of people were &2stroyedi in that
kingdom alone. Smallpox was intro
duced into Iceland in 1907, when sixteen
thousand persons were carried off by its
ravages-more than a fourth part of the
whole population of the island. 1t
reached Greenland still later appearing
there for the first time in 1888, and
spreading so fatally as almost to depopu-
late the country. Evidence to the same
effect is furnished by the results of vacci-
nation in some countries. To take one
instance: vaccination wa adopted in
Denmark in 1901, and made compulsory
in 1910. From that time smallpox dis
appeared altogether tor fifteen years,
whereas, during the twelve years preced-
ing the introduction of the preventive
disorder, upward of three thousand per
III Z -- = 49,