Essay about VARIOLA VIRUS

Variola major and Variola minor. Those are the names of the two viruses that causes people to get Smallpox. The reason Variola major is more life threatening because it has a higher fatality rate by 25 percent The variola virus minor is less life threatening but not as worse .

Vaccinations have been actively used for over 200 years now and have been effective for over 200 years as well. Western medicine’s introduction to the practice is said to have occurred within the eighteenth century, when a traveling British aristocrat, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, reported her observations of Turkish children being injected with pus from smallpox victims. Although this practice seemed quite harsh, most of these children would contract only a mild version of the illness. In return, these recipients would retain a lifelong immunity to this terrible disease (World of Microbiology & Immunology). Similarly, in the United States, a Puritan minister by the name of Cotton Mather learned about inoculation from his African slave, Onesimus. Onesimus claimed that he was inoculated with smallpox pus and never caught the tragic disease (Williams). This type of medicinal treatment was initially rejected by most Western practitioners. They felt it was a dangerous and barbarous practice, but vaccination gained a tremendous amount of support at the turn of the nineteenth century when English physician Edward Jenner created a new smallpox vaccine derived from the relatively mild cowpox virus (Riedel). There’s no doubt that history has shown the positive outcomes of immunization and continued to show them as technology and medicine progressed.

There are many mysteries about the smallpox virus. Since the seventeenth century, doctors have understood that if the pustules merge into sheets across the body the victim will usually die: the virus has split the whole skin. If the victim survives, the pustules turn into scabs and fall off, leaving scars. This is known as ordinary smallpox.

Smallpox is a virus that was first founded in ancient times. The virus?s proper name is Variola rex, and it has various different forms as well as various symptoms. Among these forms are typical smallpox, hemorrhagic smallpox, and malignant smallpox, all of which usually always cause death in their victims. Some of the typical symptoms of smallpox include red vesicles and pustules all over, bleeding from all orifices of the body, swelling in the face, throat, and eyes, difficulty eating and swallowing, delirium, malaise, deterioration of the bone marrow, lymph nodes and mucus membranes of the body, and a multitude of other secondary symptoms. Smallpox is typically diagnosed by ruling out the possibility of other

Smallpox, also know as variola virus, is extremely contagious and lethal. In modern day it has been eradicated and we no longer vaccinate the human population. Symptoms begin 12-14 days after infection; after 1-2 days spots turn into blisters and then pustules and after 8-9 days these pustules become crusted. If the person survives, large disfiguring scars remain (Merck, 2003).

Smallpox is a viral infection caused by Variola major. This infection is currently one of the most dreaded diseases, and is believed to be more dangerous than the enemy’s sword. The exposure is usually an infection of the respiratory tract. After exposure, early symptoms are: headaches, back aches, fever, vomiting, discomfort, and feeling out of sorts. These symptoms go away usually in two days, and the patient feels better. Then about two days later, the patient has a flustered face, and lesions on the mouth, throat, and nasal membranes. At 5 days past exposure, red rashes and bumps appear on the skin, bleeding through skin, and mucous membranes. If the patients bleeds through their eyes, gums, or nose, the patient will not live much longer, but that is not usually the case. The bumps may touch each other or they may be separate from each other. If the bumps do not touch, the patients has a good chance of surviving. But if the bumps do touch, the patient has a forty percent chance of surviving. Dehydration is common in patients because it may be painful or difficult to drink. Around day ten, the bumps will become soft, and blisters will form. The fluid in the bumps is absorbed because of dehydration. A smell often comes from cracked bumps, and a second bacterial infection may occur due to the openings in the body. Two weeks after initial symptoms, the bumps and blisters are replaced by scabs. One week later the fever disappears, the patient returns to a normal life, and the

Smallpox is extremely dangerous because there is no known cure. Smallpox can spread through the air and physical contact with the pox marks or anything that the pox marks touch. The Variola Virus spread so quickly that it caused over 50 million infections per year. Symptoms of Smallpox include vomiting, chills, fever, rashes, malaise, blisters,

There are a couple symptoms to smallpox, mostly affecting your skin. The first couple of days, it will begin with normal symptoms of a fever. Eventually, there will be body aches, headaches, and you will begin to feel weaker. Small, round blisters appear all around the body. Within a week, the pox becomes filled with pus and gets bigger. Then eventually, the blisters crust and stomach pains will most likely occur. Within the next couple of weeks, the blisters become scabs and they fall off, which result in scars on the skin. You could get scars, blindness and your hands and feet could get deformed. The scars stay on your body.

The earliest indicator of smallpox in history is the extensive lesions on three Egyptian mummies. There are also recorded cases from the Hitties (1346 BC), Syracuse (595 BC), Athens (490 BC), China (48AD), Korean Peninsula (583 AD), and Japan (585 AD), however, they are not definite cases because these ancient physicians were unable to distinguish smallpox rashes from other skin rashes. Nevertheless, this distinction was made in 910 AD by physician Al-Razi. As Islam spread across North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula, smallpox followed. By 1000 AD, smallpox epidemics were widely recorded from Japan to Spain. In the 16th century, smallpox outbreaks hit large cities such as London and Geneva, and exploration across oceans facilitated the spread of smallpox as well to the Americas, Australia, and South Africa. In the Americas, natives were seen as lesser and put to work in mines and on plantations where the combination of poor working conditions and European disease thinned out their population. This encouraged the importation of slaves from Africa as replacements and eventual establishment of slave trade to the New World. Smallpox outbreaks killed many natives, starting in Hispaniola and spreading to Cuba, the Yucatan, and other parts of Mexico. The spread was almost systematic, and due to the nature of smallpox, affected isolated, indigenous populations. Even after Edward Jenner created a successful vaccine for smallpox, it remained a serious threat, as many people, especially in rural areas were not

Smallpox is a a disease that is contagious and can possibly be fatal. First, one type of the smallpox disease is the Variola major. Variola major comes in four different forms. These forms are ordinary, modified, flat, and hemorrhagic. Next, the other type of smallpox virus is Variola minor. This type of smallpox is less severe, and also less common.

Smallpox is a highly contagious infectious disease. The type of microbe for smallpox is the Variola virus. Smallpox is caused by either the Variola major or the Variola Minor. This virus is spread by direct contact. The disease was likely to be in human populations about 10,000 BC. An epidemic broke out in 1519 with the Aztecs and the Conquistadors in Tenochtitlan Mexico. The epidemic killed a total of twenty five percent of the Aztecs population leaving it easy for Cortes and the conquistadors to take over the desired

Smallpox was once one of the most severe infectious diseases that was endemic throughout the world for most of the recorded history. It is caused by variola virus (a DNA virus and a member of the Poxviridae family), and characterized by three phases: incubation, prodrome and rash. This disease killed and disfigured innumerable millions of people globally.

Smallpox killed about 500 million people. It was one of the world's most tragic epidemic. It was thought to have started Egypt 3,000 years ago. Also, it was eradicated in 1980, many people suffered. Smallpox is and was a very scary and dangerous virus.

Imagine a quick spreading rash throughout the entire body, leaving not a single space behind; every opening and crevice in your body, including your mouth and eyes covered in painful bumps accompanied by high fever and severe body aches. Flat red spots transforming into fluid-filled lesions and soon oozing out yellow pus, evidently emitting a pungent odor to anyone who dared get close. The live virus present in the darkening crusty scabs that would soon fall off only to leave behind a deep pitted scarred filled complexion on anyone who was fortunate enough to survive. These scars would be forever remembered as the hallmark for the smallpox epidemic which tormented the world for over 3,000 years. (Riedel “Deadly Diseases”).

As a brief history, smallpox was a disease that has afflicted and depopulated civilizations from as early as A.D. 400 in ancient India to as late as the 20th century. It is a unique disease because