Quotes about Small Pox

"The most terrible of all the ministers of death..."
T.B. Macaulay

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"The smallpox was always present, filling the churchyards with corpses, tormenting with constant fears all whom it had 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 bighearted maiden objects of horror to the lover."
T.B. Macaulay
The History of England from the Accession of James II, Vol IV

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"...no man dared to count his children as his own until they had had the disease."
Comte de la Condamine
18th century mathematician and scientist

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      "...on the night when the Aztecs drove Cortez and his men out of Mexico City, killing many of them, an epidemic of smallpox was raging in the city. The man who had organized the assault on the Spaniards was among those who died on that 'noche trista', as the Spaniards later called it. The paralyzing effect of a lethal epidemic goes far to explain why the Aztecs did not pursue the defeated and demoralized Spaniards, giving them time and opportunity to rest and regroup, gather Indian allies and set siege to the city, and so achieve their eventual victory.

      Moreover, it is worth considering the psychological implications of a disease that killed only Indians and left Spaniards unharmed. Such partiality could only be explained supernaturally, and there could be no doubt about which side of the struggle enjoyed divine favor. The religions, priesthoods, and way of life built around the old Indian gods could not survive such a demonstration of the superior power of the God the Spaniards worshiped. Little wonder, then, that the Indians accepted Christianity and submitted to Spanish control so meekly. God had shown Himself on their side, and each new outbreak of infectious disease imported from Europe (and soon from Africa as well) renewed the lesson."

William H. McNeill, 1977
 Plagues and Peoples

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"...but what renders the Cow Pox virus so extremely singular, is that the person who has been thus affected is for ever after secure from the infection of the Small Pox..."
Edward Jenner, 1798

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"Future nations will know by history only that the loathsome smallpox has existed and by you has been extirpated."
Thomas Jefferson, 1806
in a letter to Edward Jenner

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"Where have all the smallpox gone?"
Peter, Paul, and Mary

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Created by Jennifer Yuan, Human Biology, Class of 1998
Stanford University, Stanford, CA
Last modified: February 19, 1999