Americ The Great Smallpox Epidemic Of 1775-82 By Elizabeth Fenn

In the book, Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82 by Elizabeth Fenn (2001), depicts the casualty of one of the deadliest virus in mankind -- the smallpox during the American War of Independence and how it shaped the course of the war and the lives of everyone in the North America. Smallpox is a highly contagious disease caused by an Orthopoxvirus known as variola major virus. Spread by direct transmission, the disease produces high fever, headache, excruciating back pain, anxiety, general malaise, blindness at times, and the most distinctive of all, blistering rashes that can leave deep-pitted scars. Its spread could be attributed through human civilizations, voyaging, expansion of trade routes. The European colonizers brought

During the Revolutionary war, it was believed that the British utilized the smallpox virus as a biological warfare to gain an edge in the succeeding battles against the American troops led by Gen. George Washington. The first ominous cases of smallpox had shown up in Boston and its outlying towns in 1774. Subsequently, the outbreaks of the disease had pressed Gen. Washington and his medical staff to make important policy decision regarding the control of the smallpox occurrence in their Continental Army. Gen. Washington, with his previous encounter with the disease itself, was extra cautious and diligent in his effort to prevent the smallpox in his Continental Army; he knew how it will undermine his men. Skeptic in the beginning, he finally ordered a mass inoculation for the American troops in 1777, but this was done under great secrecy, so the troops were isolated in camps and inoculated before they went to battle. As the revolution moves to the south, so did the havoc of smallpox especially amongst the Native Americans and African American slaves who never had any immunity from the