SMALLPDX. The date of the origin of smallpox, as is the case with other similar dis eases, has not been definitely established. The probabilities are that it made its first appear ance in the Orient and was thence introduced into western Europe. A severe epidemic of smallpox is said to have occurred in Iceland in 1241; we have no trustworthy record, how ever, of the disease before the 15th century, when it began to appear in Europe. Epidemics became progressively more common in the 16th and 17th centuries and reached their maximum of frequency and extent in the 18th century. For official data concerning the disease in the 17th and 18th centuries we are chiefly indebted to the London Bills of Mortality, which gave a weekly account of burials and christenings, and from 1629 to 1845 the specific causes of death, including smallpox.
It has been estimated that the population of London in 1685 was 530,000. The mortality from smallpox for an average of 10 years from 1681 to 1690 was over three in a thou sand. In most of the years of the century, indeed, the mortality was in the neighborhood of two in a thousand, sometimes more and at other times less. This would mean an aver age of over 1,000 smallpox deaths in London a year. As it has been reckoned that about one in five would die, there were evidently about 5,000 cases of smallpox annually in the English capital.
As will be readily comprehended, smallpox was a great scourge before the days of vac cination; but a small percentage of people es caped its ravages. Indeed smallpox was as prevalent in the 18th century as measles is at the present time. Haygarth gives an account of an epidemic of smallpox in Chester, Eng land, in 1774, at which time, out of a popula tion of 14,713, 1,202 persons took the disease and 202 died. At the termination of the epi demic there were but 1,060 persons, or 7 per cent of the population, who had never had smallpox. In 1722 smallpox devastated the small English town of Ware, whose popula tion numbered 2,515 souls; of this number there were only 914 persons susceptible to smallpox, inasmuch as 1,601 had already passed through an attack of the disease. During the epidemic referred to 612 persons were attacked, leaving but 302 individuals in the entire town who had never had smallpox. Eighty-five per cent of the population, therefore, were smallpox sur vivors.
With these official figures in mind, we may be better able to appreciate the general esti mate of the extent of smallpox given by writers of the day. In 1802 Admiral Berkeley, in a speech before the House of Commons, said: °It is proved that in this United Kingdom alone 45,000 persons die annually of the small pox; but throughout the world what is it? Not a second is struck by the hand of Time but a victim is sacrificed upon the altar of that most horrible of all disorders, the smallpox? King Frederick William III of Prussia, in a dispatch dated 1803, stated that 40,000 people succumbed annually to smallpox in his kingdom. The
French Minister of the Interior, in reporting on vaccination in 1811, estimated that 150,000 people died in France annually from smallpox; the 4isease is reported to have destroyed in Russia 2,000,000 lives in a single year. The distinguished mathematician, Daniel Bernouille, writing in 1760 to 1765, calculated that not less than 15,000,000 human beings died of smallpox every 25 years. This would give a yearly aver age of 600,000. Dr. Lettsom estimated that Europe alone claimed 210,000 victims annually. Juncker placed the yearly sacrifice from small pox in Europe at 400,000. When to these figures are added the deaths due to devastating epi demics in Asia, Africa and America, the esti mate of Bernouille does not appear to be over stated.
Smallpox was introduced in the western hemisphere by the Spaniards about 15 years after the discovery of America; in Mexico within a short period 3,500,000 persons are said to have died of the disease. It is alleged that in Mexico, smallpox has exterminated whole tribes of Indians, sparing no one to tell the story of the annihilation. Robertson refers to smallpox among the South American Indians as follows: °In consequence of this (various calamities), together with the introduction of smallpox, a malady unknown in America and extremely fatal to the natives, the number of people both in New Spain and Peru was so much reduced that in a few years the accounts of their ancient population appeared almost incredible? Catlin states that of 12,000,000 American Indians, 6,000,000 fell victims of smallpox. Washington Irving's (Astoria) makes mention of terrible epidemics of smallpox among the Indians in which °almost entire tribes were destroyed? Lloyd, who translated Prince Maximilian's 'Travels in the Interior of North America,) states in the preface, in refer ence to a smallpox epidemic among the In dians in 1837: °°The Big-Bellied Indians and the Ricarees, lately amounting to 4,000 souls, were reduced to less than the half. The As siniboins, 9,000 in number ... are, in the literal sense of the expression, nearly exterminated." According to records published by the gov ernment of Denmark, a devastating epidemic of smallpox appeared in Iceland in 1707, which destroyed 18,000 out of the 50,000 inhabitants; 36 per cent of the total population perished. It is stated on good authority that in the Danish colony of Greenland, in 1734, 6,000 to 7,000 persons perished from smallpox, representing nearly two-thirds of the population. The dis ease was introduced by a Danish ship.