The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82: Elizabeth A. Fenn Examines a Little Known Catastrophe That Reshaped the History of a Continent
Magazine article by Elizabeth A. Fenn; History Today, Vol. 53, August 2003
Magazine Article Excerpt
The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82: Elizabeth A. Fenn Examines a Little Known Catastrophe That Reshaped the History of a Continent. by Elizabeth A. Fenn CRUISING THE NORTHWEST coastline of America in 1792, Captain George Vancouver was troubled. Where, he wondered, were all the natives? The land was abundant, with a seemingly unlimited supply of salmon and fresh water, but there severe strikingly few people. Instead, the British navigator found deserted villages. The first, encountered south of Vancouver Island on the shores of Discovery Bay, was 'over-run with weeds; amongst which were found several human skulls, and other bones, promiscuously scattered about'. As Vancouver charted, the Strait of Juan de Fuca, the scene, repeated itself regularly. 'During this Expedition', crew member Thomas Manby noted, 'we saw a great many deserted Villages some of them ... capables of holding many hundred Inhabitants'. For Manby, the conclusion was inescapable: 'By some event, this country has been considerably depopulated, but from what cause is hard to determine.' Vancouver agreed. All the evidence, he believed, indicated 'that at no very remote period this country had been far more populous than at present'. There had indeed been a disaster, one so vast, in fact, that even its witnesses and victims could not appreciate its extent. In the years from 1775 to 1782, as the Revolutionary War reshaped society and politics along the eastern seaboard, a very different cataclysm shook the entire North American continent. The cataclysm, huge and hideous, was smallpox. Caused by a moderately contagious virus known as Variola major, the initial signs of smallpox came twelve days after exposure, usually by infection of the respiratory tract. Mild at first, the early symptoms were much like those of the flu. They included headache, backache, fever, vomiting and general malaise. In many cases, victims began feeling better after the first day or two. often thinking that they had indeed suffered a bout of influenza. Relief, however, wax fleeting. By day four, the face flushed and the first painful lesions appeared--not on the surface of the skin, but in the mouth, throat and nasal passages. Within twenty-four hours, the distinctive skin rash surfaced. On some, the rash turned inward, haemorrhaging beneath the skin and through the mucous membranes. These patients died early, bleeding from the eyes, nose, gums or vagina. On most patients, however, the pustules pushed to the surface of the skin. If they did not run together the prognosis was fairly good. But if the pustules ran into each other in what was called 'confluent' smallpox, patients stood at least a 60 per cent chance of dying. As the rash progressed in the mouth and throat, drinking became difficult, and dehydration often set in. Around day ten, when the pustules softened and turned blistery, many dehydrated patients simply reabsorbed the fluid they contained. Soon thereafter, in the words of an eighteenth-century Boston physician, the sores began 'to crack run and smell'. Even under hygienic conditions, secondary bacterial infections might well set in, with consequences fully as severe as those of the smallpox. Near the end of the second week, scabs started to form. In his description of smallpox among the Narragansett Indians in 1634, William Bradford described this condition: |
... they lye on their hard matts, the
poxe breaking and mattering, and
runing one into another, their skin
cleaving (by reason therof) to the
matts they lye on; when they turne
them, a whole side will flea of[f] at
once.
| By week three, mortality dropped off sharply. Fever subsided, and patients generally improved as unsightly scars replaced scabs and pustules. The usual course of the disease, from initial onset to the loss of all scabs, took roughly one month. Survivors, though often scarred and on rare occasions even blinded by the disease, were also blessed. Having endured smallpox once, they were now immune. They would never catch the disease again. Fearsome though it was, eighteenth-century Americans did not face smallpox unarmed. Even without an understanding of virology, they employed two weapons against the disease: isolation and inoculation. Isolation or quarantine simply meant avoiding contact between individuals sick with the disease and individuals susceptible to it. Bed linens and clothing might receive special handling. Done properly, quarantine could often halt further contagion. In the colonial period, isolation was used by colonists and Native Americans alike.The second weapon--employed even after Edward Jenner's discovery of vaccination in 1796--was inoculation. Unlike vaccination, which utilised the cowpox virus, inoculation involved the deliberate infection of a susceptible ... |
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