SMALLPOX EPIDEMICS

Waipa Post, Volume 32, Issue 1780, 8 July 1926, Page 6

SMALLPOX EPIDEMICS

BAFFLING TO' MEDICAL SCIENCE.

The recent smallpox epidemic in England, which was confined to the northern part of the country, was the most extensive for many years. "What is the cause of these recurring epidemics? asks a physician in the Daily Mail. It is impossible to say with certainty. Smallpox, historically one of the oldest diseases, has long baffled medical science. It seems to have been known from the earliest times in India. It existed in China many centuries before Christ. And the eruption on the skin of a mummy of the twentieth dynasty, 1200-1100 8.C., suggests that it was prevalent in Egypt. The Crusades were probably largely responsible for bringing the disease from the East to the West. Thus in the fifteenth and subsequent centuries numerous epidemics occurred, with a high mortality. Since the beginning of the twentieth century two distinct types of smallpox have been simultaneously present in Great Britain. The first of these is a mild, highly infectious type, with a mortality of less than 1 per cent, which originated in the United and Canada and was first introduced into England about 1903-05. The second is a much more virulent type, which originated in Northern Africa and spread thence to Spain, France, Italy and Great Britain. Although this variety is not so infectious, the mortality is greater, varying from 16.8 per cent in London and Paris to 24.79 per cent in Italy. Curiously, .there is a tendency for the mild, highly infectious American smallpox to attack the provinces, whereas the less infectious but more serious variety confines itself to 'London. Thus in 1922 a northern epidemic of 821 cases had only three deaths, whereas in a London epidemic of 74 case s 24 died. But although the tendency is for the northern type to be extremely; mild it is of the greatest importance that no precautions should be relaxed.. An originally mild type is capable of taking on a virulent character and causing the disfiguring and highly fatal type of classical smallpox. Vaccination and isolation of cases, is the surest means of fighting the disease.