The Waco daily examiner. [volume] (Waco, Tex.) 187?-1888, 1882-02-17
HISTORY OF sMALE-PON.
The Plague which Battles Med"
icnI Science.

OF all the plaques which have arisen
from time To time, or infested cities and
countries, none is more dreaded, or Is
more persistent, none Is more communl-
cable or fatal than was smallpox cen
tury ago. But whence or how the DIS
ease arose is not easy TO say. Other
pIapues have visited the earth for
lime. and then passed away, leaving no
yasti1e of their ravages. as did the great
plague of Athens, during the Peloponne-
sian war, OF the plague III England dur
mo the reign of Charles IL, but smallf
Dox. not content with twelve centuries
SWAY, holds its own, despite the dlscoV-
cries of science 1t is unquestloRably
true that diseases of such contagious
nature generally arise among filthy aud
ill-conditioned people, confined III mar
row quarters. This was the case with
the Athenian plague, and 1t was again
the case in the Jewish quarters of Euro
pean cities. Contagious diseases were
comparatively rare among the Romans
and Greeks of the illustrious periods,
owing to tue free public baths and excel
lent sanitary and gynlnastic habits of
the times.
Ii was reserved for the middle or
dark ages to furnish the most dreadful
examples of pestilence. Smallpox
arose in the very darkest period of me-
dieval times. Ii first invaded England
in the ninth century; it was common III
Arabia in the tenth the Crusaders car
ried it through ali southern Europe; it
reached Norway Ill the fourteenth; in
1917 it was carried to ST. Domingo by
the Spanlards along with slavery, the In
QUESTION, the rack, and lots of other
blessings; three years later it crossed to
Mexico and slew three millions; it
invaded Iceland in 1907, and Green
land in 1888, Staying a fourth
part of the residents in the former and Il
large proportion of those in the latter
country, and III spite of all that medical
skill has done and is doing to cast If
from the earth, it bids fair to retain its
hold, in some measure, as long as popu-
lar ignorance, destitution, negligence
and carelessness continue to combat the
physicians and the dictates of common
sense.
Its history is thus unique. Other
contagious diseases have proved as fatal
under similar circumstances for limited
periods; none have continued their
blasting work for ten centuries in eli
mates from Mexico to Greenland 1t is
not unreasonable, therefore, that its ap-
prOach should be hailed with terror As is
the approach of no other disease. Vel
low fever and Asiatic cholera, even,
have caused no such potent and wide
spread destruction. The very air it
taints carries destruction. The very air
it taints carries infection; garments in
contact with patients carry their bane-
full power for years if shut up in tight
closets; it can be communicated by
mail or by the wind, by railroad,
by ocean voyage by manifest means
which cannot be prevented It is not
only dangerous, but loathsome III its
progress it drives away ones friends,
thrusts him into unutterable tortures
and leaves him often wreck for life,
with ruined health and disigured coun-
tenance. When to all this is added its
persistent temperance at almost def
mite periods, it is not 10 be wondered at
that smallpox scares are so common.