Mankind: The Story of All of Us TV - Horizon TV - T B Macaulay - William H McNeill - Edward Jenner - Michael Mosley TV - Genius of Britain TV - The UnXplained with William Shatner TV -
The people of the Americas have no immunity to a deadly threat – disease. Mankind: The Story of All of Us VII: New World, History 2012
Six months later half the city is dead from Smallpox. ibid.
There are probably two diseases that have caused more fear in the population than anything else: the plague and smallpox. Horizon: Smallpox on Death Row, BBC 1997
On June 30th 1999 all the stocks of smallpox will be destroyed, and research of the live virus will end for ever. ibid.
The world’s most violent killer – the Smallpox virus. Pandemic: A Horizon Guide, BBC 2012
In a phenomenal effort a team of hand-picked doctors worked tirelessly to vaccinate or treat every case of smallpox. ibid.
It was deemed a public health miracle. By 1979 smallpox was the first infectious disease to have ever been eradicated from the world. In a stroke millions of lives had been saved. ibid.
The pox viruses steal our genetic information. ibid.
Smallpox uses every trick there is. ibid.
The stocks weren’t destroyed. ibid.
The smallpox was always present, filling the churchyards with corpses, tormenting with constant fears all whom it had stricken, leaving on those whose lives it spared the hideous traces of its power, turning the babe into a changeling at which the mother shuddered, and making the eyes and cheeks of the bighearted maiden objects of horror to the lover. T B Macaulay, The History of England from the Accession of James II
On the night when the Aztecs drove Cortez and his men out of Mexico City, killing many of them, an epidemic of smallpox was raging in the city. The man who had organized the assault on the Spaniards was among those who died on that ‘noche trista’, as the Spaniards later called it. The paralyzing effect of a lethal epidemic goes far to explain why the Aztecs did not pursue the defeated and demoralized Spaniards, giving them time and opportunity to rest and regroup, gather Indian allies and set siege to the city, and so achieve their eventual victory. William H McNeill, Plagues and Peoples, 1977
But what renders the Cow Pox virus so extremely singular, is that the person who has been thus affected is for ever after secure from the infection of the Small Pox. Edward Jenner, 1798
I hope that some day the practice of producing cowpox in human beings will spread over the world – when that day comes, there will be no more smallpox. Edward Jenner
Viruses are up to a hundred times smaller than bacteria, and far far simpler. Michael Mosley, Pain, Pus and Poison: The Search for Modern Medicines II: Pus, BBC 2013
The smallpox virus is held in a Level 4 containment lab. ibid.
‘Edward Jenner was a country doctor ... Jenner was interested in everything.’ Genius of Britain II: A Roomful of Brilliant Minds, Richard Dawkins, Channel 4 2012
Edward Jenner took on the number one killer in the eighteenth century: Smallpox. ibid.
Jenner had demonstrated the possibility of vaccination. ibid.
Jenner is rightly regarded as the father of immunology. ibid.
A staggering 95% of the indigenous population [Native Americans] would eventually die from smallpox … Smallpox ran rampant for thousands of years. It is estimated the smallpox has killed between 300 and 500 million people in its more than 10,000 year existence. The UnXplained with William Shatner s2e6: The Mystery of Plagues, History 2022