Photo Gallery: Smallpox

Formaldehyde Fumigation

Photograph by Thomas Riggs, Jr.

After a long day treating smallpox-infected Indians in the Yukon Territory, circa 1900, a doctor fumigates all but his head inside a formaldehyde tent. After about ten minutes the germs were considered dead.

Smallpox Virus

Photograph by 3D4Medical.com

The smallpox virus, seen in this illustration through the lens of a microscope, killed as many as 30 percent of those it infected. The disease, for which no effective treatment was ever developed, left 65 to 80 percent of survivors marked with deep pitted scars (pockmarks), most prominent on the face. Many survivors were also blinded.

Mexicali and Calexico

Photograph by Karen Kasmauski

Heavily traveled international borders, like the one seen here between Mexicali, Mexico, (right) and Calexico, California, (left) can present acute public health concerns. Migrants from Mexico, where health care is often poor and vaccination rates low, can carry diseases that have been nearly eradicated in the United States. Likewise, U.S. travelers can introduce new diseases to rural Mexico, where they can spread quickly. The smallpox virus changed much of Mexican history when, in the early 1500s, Spanish conquistadors brought the disease to the New World. A subsequent epidemic wiped out much of the local population, bringing on the collapse of the Aztec Empire.

Tayaho River, Peru

Photograph by Bill Hatcher

"The Great Dying" was the name Native Americans gave to the smallpox pandemic ignited by Spaniards in the 1500s. Indigenous peoples had no natural resistance to the virus, so it swept quickly through the Americas, from the Aztec Empire in Mexico to the Inca Empire of Peru's Amazon River Basin, shown here.

Smallpox Survivor

Photograph by Karen Kasmauski

Infection by the smallpox virus can lead to corneal ulcerations, which can cause blindness. This close-up of a smallpox survivor in Niger shows the clouded, sightless eyes often left by the disease.

African Smallpox Idol

Photograph by Victor R. Boswell Jr.

The Yoruba people of Nigeria hoped to avoid infection by worshipping Sopona, the god of smallpox. Scientists think smallpox may have originated in Africa about 3,000 years ago. If they're right, then Africa is where smallpox was born and where it died. The worldwide eradication effort cornered the disease in the Horn of Africa in 1977, and the last natural case occurred in Somalia that year.

Smallpox Check, Ethiopia

Photograph by Marion Kaplan

In 1978, an Ethiopian health officer investigates a rumor of smallpox. He shows villagers a photo of a victim and asks "Have you seen anyone with a rash like this?" The answer was no—and the rumor was wrong. Smallpox had been eradicated the year before.

Smallpox Vaccination

Photograph by Marion Kaplan/Alamy

An Ethiopian baby receives a smallpox vaccination in the mid-1970s, during the latter stages of the World Health Organization's (WHO) eradication effort. By 1980, WHO recommended that countries discontinue vaccination.

Niger Farmer

Photograph by Karen Kasmauski

A farmer in Niger who may have been one of the world's last smallpox victims receives treatment for guinea worm disease. An effective treatment for smallpox was never developed. But in parts of Asia, people employed a technique called variolation to prevent infection. Developed in India more than a thousand years ago, scabs from a victim were ground up and snorted through the nose. This usually brought on a mild form of the disease and immunized the person to future infection.

Quarantine Training

Photograph by Karen Kasmauski

Military medical personnel at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland, conduct quarantine training as part of a biological attack simulation. Here, the medics use scrub-down chemicals designed to kill the world's most feared microbes, such as smallpox.

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Medical Rescue Team

Photograph by Karen Kasmauski