This essay explains the history of Smallpox through the present.

Smallpox Smallpox, the most universally feared disease, killed nearly three hundred million people in the twentieth century alone. This is three times more than all the wars in the twentieth century combined. This virus does not infect animals, and it is limited to humans. Its course starts as an acute disease that produces distinct skin lesions, then afterwards leaves distinctive pock marks on the face of the survivor. Then after a ten to fourteen day …

…were then produced, one of which containing careful descriptions of twenty patients whose lasting immunity to smallpox followed vaccination with cowpox. In 1966 the World Health Organization (WHO), led by Donald Ainslie Henderson, finally received the desired budget to make the priority of ridding the world of smallpox a feasible reality. By 1980 the World Health Assembly announced worldwide eradication of smallpox mostly thanks to Edward Jenner and D. A. Henderson for their dedication to the cure.