Smallpox Quotes

Infectious diseases introduced with Europeans, like smallpox and measles, spread from one Indian tribe to another, far in advance of Europeans themselves, and killed an estimated 95% of the New World's Indian population.

Smallpox was the worst disease in history. It killed more people than all the wars in history.

We have completely eradicated smallpox; we have almost eradicated polio. That's the miracle of vaccines, which is even greater than that of antibiotics.

In the country parishes where vaccination [for smallpox] is not the custom, with no physician near, where the colored children are poorly fed and clad, and much exposed, they sicken, die, and are buried, without a record of their numbers. It is respectfully suggested that an order declaring vaccination to be a military necessity, would save many lives among these poor people. If physicians and surgeons were required to vaccinate all who apply, at a moderate public charge, and all were required to apply, it might arrest the ravages of this dreadful scourge

Smallpox is natural; vaccine ain't.

This year, 1996, has been designated the 'Year of the Vaccine,' commemorating the 200th anniversary of Edward Jenner's vaccination of James Phipps with cowpox virus and subsequent challenge with smallpox virus. Insight into the nature of viruses, and how viruses interact with mammalian cells, has evolved since the turn of the century.

What is the matter with us Indians that we are sick in our own air and these strangers [colonial whites] are well.

Abstractly considered, the hanging of the gamblers at Vicksburg was of little consequence. They constitute a portion of the population that is worse than useless in any community; and their death, if no pernicious example be set by it, is never a matter of reasonable regret with any one. If they were annually swept from the stage of existence by the plague or smallpox, honest men would perhaps be much profited by the operation.

Historical records show that smallpox was a human scourge for thousands of years. The virus produces high fever, severe back pain and scarring eruptions of flat red spots on the skin that turn into pustules and then into scabs - a two-week process during which the disease is highly contagious.

The U.S. government has known since the early 1990s about Soviet-era smallpox weapons, and collected circumstantial evidence of programs elsewhere.

Pacifism is a nice idea but it can get you killed. We're not there yet. Evolution is slow, small pox is fast.

Nobody spends any money on smallpox unless they worry about a bio-terrorist recreating it.

In the 19th century, smallpox was widely considered a disease of filth, which meant that it was largely understood to be a disease of the poor. According to filth theory, any number of contagious diseases were caused by bad air that had been made foul by excrement or rot.

When we appropriate money from the public funds to pay for vaccinating a horde of negroes, we do not do it because we have any sympathy for them or because we crave their blessings, but simply because we don't want them to be falling ill of smallpox

In 'Pox: An American History,' Michael Willrich meticulously traces the story of how the smallpox vaccine was pressed into service during a major outbreak.

The Highlanders regale themselves with whisky. They find it an excellent preservation against the winter cold. It is given with great success to the infants in the confluent smallpox.

I am unable to understand religious convictions or religious ideologies that stand in the way of saving hundreds of thousands of lives.

Every man that tried to spread smallpox and yellow fever in the North, as the instrumentalities of civilized war, was a Democrat.

With intensive research it should be feasible to inoculate against heroin which would be administered ... in the same way as vaccines against smallpox, polio, measles.

The Carter Center has the only existing international taskforce on disease eradication. Which means a total elimination of a disease on the face of the Earth. In the history of the world, there's only been one disease eradicated: smallpox. The second disease, I think, is gonna be guinea worm.

Smallpox in a blanket, which the U.S. Army gave to the Cherokee Indians on their long march to the West, was nothing compared to what I'd like to see done to these people

I hope that some day the practice of producing cowpox in human beings will spread over the world - when that day comes, there will be no more smallpox.

I was nauseous and tingly all over. I was either in love or I had smallpox.

In 1736 I lost one of my sons, a fine boy of four years old, by the small-pox, taken in the common way. I long regretted bitterly, and still regret that I had not given it to him by inoculation. This I mention for the sake of parents who omit that operation, on the supposition that they should never forgive themselves if a child died under it; my example showing that the regret may be the same either way, and that, therefore, the safer should be chosen.

Smallpox is the only human infectious disease ever eradicated by science.