The Greatest Killer: Smallpox in History

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University of Chicago Press, 15 sept. 2002 - 380 pages
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Once known as the "great fire" or "spotted death," smallpox has been rivaled only by plague as a source of supreme terror. Although naturally occurring smallpox was eradicated in 1977, recent terrorist attacks in the United States have raised the possibility that someone might craft a deadly biological weapon from stocks of the virus that remain in known or perhaps unknown laboratories.

In The Greatest Killer, Donald R. Hopkins provides a fascinating account of smallpox and its role in human history. Starting with its origins 10,000 years ago in Africa or Asia, Hopkins follows the disease through the ancient and modern worlds, showing how smallpox removed or temporarily incapacitated heads of state, halted or exacerbated wars, and devastated populations that had never been exposed to the disease. In Hopkins's history, smallpox was one of the most dangerous-and influential-factors that shaped the course of world events.
 

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Table des matières

Presumed spread of smallpox in ancient times
20
Two The Most Terrible of
22
Deaths from smallpox in seventeenth eighteenth
42
Deaths from smallpox in London and Geneva 15801869
86
Deaths from smallpox in nineteenthcentury Prussia Austria
92
St Nicaise patron saint of smallpox
100
Three Heavenly Flowers
103
TouShen Niang Niang Chinese goddess of smallpox
136
Five The Spotted Death
164
Early outbreaks and possible spread of smallpox in Africa
170
Shapona Yoruba god of smallpox
201
OmoluObaluaye Brazilian and Cuban god of smallpox
232
Seven A Destroying Angel
234
Spread of V minor in North America
288
Eight Erythrotherapy and Eradication
295
Decline in smallpoxendemic countries 3069
306

Four Kiss of the Goddess
139
Deaths from smallpox in India 18681930
155

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Expressions et termes fréquents

Fréquemment cités

Page 38 - The havoc of the plague had been far more rapid : but the plague had visited our shores only once or twice within living memory ; and the smallpox was always present, filling the churchyards with corpses, tormenting with constant fears all whom it had not yet stricken, leaving on those whose lives it spared the hideous traces of its power...
Page 211 - Elevated high above his vassals came the Inca Atahuallpa, borne on a sedan or open litter, on which was a sort of throne made of massive gold of inestimable value.
Page 48 - People send to one another to know if any of their family has a mind to have the small-pox : they make parties for this purpose, and when they are met (commonly fifteen or sixteen together), the old woman comes with a nut-shell full of the matter of the best sort of small-pox, and asks what vein you please to have opened. She immediately rips open that you offer to her with a large needle (which gives you no more pain than a common scratch), and puts into the vein as much matter as can lie upon the...
Page 48 - Every year thousands undergo this operation; and the French embassador says pleasantly, that they take the smallpox here by way of diversion, as they take the waters in other countries. There is no example of any one that has died in it'; and you may believe I am very well satisfied of the safety of this experiment, since I intend to try it on my dear little son.
Page 48 - ... to write to some of our doctors very particularly about it, if I knew any one of them that I thought had virtue enough to destroy such a considerable branch of their revenue for the good of mankind. But that distemper is too beneficial to them not to expose to all their resentment the hardy wight that should undertake to put an end to it. Perhaps, if I live to return, I may, however, have courage to war with them.
Page 47 - The smallpox, so fatal and so general amongst us, is here entirely harmless by the invention of engrafting (which is the term they give it). There is a set of old women who make it their business to perform the operation. Every autumn in the month of September, when the great heat is abated, people send to one another to know if any of their family has a mind to have the smallpox.
Page 270 - We shall not fail to teach our children to speak the name of Jenner ; and to thank the Great Spirit for bestowing upon him so much wisdom and so much benevolence.
Page 48 - ... are not superstitious, who choose to have them in the legs, or that part of the arm that is concealed. The children or young patients play together all the rest of the day, and are in perfect health to the eighth. Then the fever begins to...
Page 79 - Vaccinae, A Disease Discovered in Some of the Western Counties of England. Particularly Gloucestershire, and Known by the Name of the Cow Pox...
Page 38 - The smallpox was always present, filling the churchyard with corpses, tormenting with constant fears all whom it had not yet stricken, leaving on those whose lives it spared the hideous traces of its power, turning the babe into a changeling at which the mother shuddered, and making the eyes and cheeks of the betrothed maiden objects of horror to her lover.

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À propos de l'auteur (2002)

Donald R. Hopkins, M.D., is an associate executive director of The Carter Presidential Center in Atlanta. He is a former deputy and acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and a physician who participated in the World Health Organization's Smallpox Eradication Program. The first edition of this book was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1983.

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