First and foremost, smallpox first diffused from India and Egypt. It diffused all over the world mostly in Europe. Smallpox were first introduced to the Aztecs by the Spaniards. When Europeans got to the Americas they brought more than just smallpox, they brought disease like Cholera and Dengue fever, influenza, measles, and even High fevers, and these diseases were incurable at that time. Not only did the Europeans and Spaniards…
The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-1782 affected many people. When a person caught smallpox they could already assume their lives were at ends. Smallpox came unexpectedly without a known cure. Throughout the book ,”Pox Americana”, by Elizabeth A. Fenn, she has a different story for each one of her chapters. Every story shares life experiences of different men that experience the same disease, variola or smallpox, in their lifetime. Elizabeth Fenn states, “Variola [small pox] was a virus of empire. It made winners and losers, at once serving the conquerors and determining whom they would be (Fenn, 275)”. Within this message she is saying that the deadly disease of smallpox hurt some more than others and due to death some people conquered while others perished. Elizabeth Fenn not only spoke of the disease itself but spoke primarily about what this disease did to shape historical events.…
Another factor which contributed to Spain’s successful conquest in the New World were the various diseases that the Spaniards brought to Mexico from Europe. These became known as virgin soil epidemics, as Europeans brought diseases which the native people had no immunity for. These plagues were deadly and wiped out large amounts of the native population. An example of this was when the Spaniards were in Tlaxcala, “a great plague broke out in Tenochtitlan” (92). This plague spread in the city rapidly and “a great many died… and many others died of hunger.” Hence, the Spaniards were always at an advantage during battle with the native inhabitants as the Spaniards rarely fought against a healthy…
Smallpox is an extremely deadly disease which, in one point in time, was the most feared disease on the planet. In the book Pox Americana, Elizabeth A. Fenn writes about the encounter with the deadly disease in the 1770's to the 1780's. Her book was first published in 2001 in New York City, where she originally wrote it. Her book contains just under 400 words that explain the disease, some of the first encounters with it, who and where it affected people, and how they got the epidemic under control. Pox Americana is a very informative book that teaches the reader various things.…
At roughly the same time as the influx of smallpox in Mexico, Hernán Cortés and his Spanish Conquistadors had commenced in hostilities with the native Aztec Empire. Cortés and his men, despite an alliance with native warriors hostile to the Aztec Empire, were hugely outnumbered. However, Cortés had another ally, a biological weapon that even he was unaware of, smallpox. Smallpox was a European disease that the natives in Latin America had never been exposed to. It took a hold…
The Europeans, unaware, brought disease into the New World to which the Native Americans lacked immunity. James Lockhart’s excerpt from “We People Here: Nahuatl Accounts of the Conquest of Mexico”, described how bad the conditions were for the Native Americans who developed smallpox. Lockhart described how no one took care of one another for fear of catching the disease and how the victims suffered terribly. In defense of the Europeans, although they were land hungry, they didn’t mean to purposely kill masses of Native Americans. Columbus even includes in his letter to the King and Queen his positive impressions of the Natives and how he was optimistic that they could be converted to Christianity and develop loyalty to Spain.…
At the beginning of the Columbian Exchange, native Americans were weakened by disease brought by the conquerors, reducing their population by millions. It would have been impossible, in such a short amount of time, for the conquerors to subdue millions of people with only hundreds of soldiers, even with their horses and guns, unless natives were somehow weakened. It is because of this that J.R. McNeill (n.d.) stated, “By far the most dramatic and devastating impact of the Columbian Exchange followed the introduction of new diseases into the Americas.” Diseases like smallpox, typhus fever, or measles, among many others, were the silent monsters that almost completely annihilate American native populations. Two examples of the destructive nature…
The most known member of the Poxviridae family is variola virus, the causing agent of smallpox disease. From the time of its suspected emergence after 10,000 BC to the time of its eradication, smallpox was a worldwide feared disease that took hundreds of millions of lives (8). The first recorded smallpox epidemic was in 1350 BC during the Egyptian–Hittite war. Smallpox then spread to Europe between the 5th and 7th centuries and to the North American colonies during the 17th and 18th centuries. These widespread epidemics caused millions of deaths in Europe and Mexico (9). Additionally, smallpox was used to demolish select human populations. The first recorded use of smallpox as a biological weapon was in 1763 during the French and Indian War,…
population of the Taino Indians to very few numbers. “A smallpox epidemic in Hispaniola in 1520…
The discovery of the vaccine for smallpox disease ended a global outbreak of death and helped keep powerful empires from falling. Smallpox ranks among the most devastating illnesses ever suffered by humankind, smallpox is an acute contagious disease caused by the variola virus. The disease is spread through direct contact with infected people or body fluids or with contaminated objects. The disease is thought to have originated in India or Egypt about 3,000 years ago, with the earliest evidence dating back to 1157 B.C. In the 20th century it killed some 300 million people globally (National 1).…
As a result, the Spanish Conquistadors almost wiped out the native population through warefare, overwork (Slave) and disease that were brought by the Spanish conquistadors.…
In the early settlement of America, disease and forced labor played a significant role. In the Spanish colonies from Florida and Southward, smallpox took an enormous toll on the conquerors and the native peoples. The so-called “black legend” regarding the Spanish and Portuguese was actually somewhat true, but also somewhat misleading. The concept held that “the conquerors merely butchered or tortured the Indians (‘killing for Christ’), stole their gold, infected them with smallpox, and left little but misery behind.” (Kennedy, p. 23) All of this was actually true – but that wasn’t all the conquerors did, and is therefore the error of the “black legend”. The Spanish and Portuguese conquerors built an enormous empire that spanned two continents. It was not just bad traits that they brought with them – they brought good things too, like culture. Soon, their culture would be integrated into the native societies, including the conquerors’ language, laws, and religion.…
It killed tens of thousands of Natives in the New World. In 1707, smallpox first spread to Iceland and killed 18,000 of the 50,000 inhabitants in two years. In the Old World, the new disease called syphilis had a strong effect on the Europeans. Because sailors were without women for long periods of time the sexually transmitted disease spread quickly. In the 16th century began the slave trade.…
Between April and December of 1721, over six thousand colonists in Boston contracted a world-wide feared viral infection known as smallpox. After the occurrence of over nine hundred deaths in Boston alone, the infestation of this disease in the colony became known as the Smallpox Epidemic. During the epidemic, it became widely acknowledged that survivors of smallpox were immune to later occurrences of the disease. This led to the consideration of the medical practice of inoculation—the deliberate introduction of the living smallpox virus to cause a mild case of the disease that would provide immunity. In contrast to the claims of its creators, inoculation was not always successful and did result in a small number of deaths in patients, but…
Those who did not comply with the Spanish were treated harshly. They often temped to escape from Spanish rule. There were threats to the indigenous population, such as measles and small pox epidemics. As the number of Native Americans declined, the number of people from Mexico living in the area continued to grow.…