In an attempt to innoculate them, the Chinese used to blow smallpox scabs up people's noses to give them a mild case of the disease, with only a one in fifty chance of dying. If they lived, they were proved immune.
How did Smallpox start? How did it spread?
It was during the war between the Hittites and Egypt in 1350 B.C. that the first case of Smallpox was seen. From there, it spread to Persia, India, and China. Both the Indians and Chinese worshiped their own Smallpox goddess for deliverance. Europe's first contact with smallpox was The Plague of Athens in 430 B.C. In 1492, Christopher Columbus, set sail on his voyage to the Indies.His promises of gold, slaves, and his conversion to Christianity marked the globalization of disease. The Native Americans had no immunity to diseases like hepatitis, influenza, typhus, typhoid, diphtheria, measles, mumps, and smallpox so the Europeans used it against them as a weapon. 10,000,000 to 100,000,000 Native Americans died. Smallpox had the most devastating impact; it killed more Native Americans than any other illness. Smallpox epidemics didn't appear again until Crusades in the 10th to 14th century brought it back from the Middle East. In 1438, an epidemic in Paris killed over 50,000 people and unfortunately, most of them were children. In 1516, smallpox appeared for the first time in Hispaniola. The Spanish's cruel treatment of their slaves decreased the Spanish population by 1,988,000, then, smallpox finished them. In 1510, the Spanish imported African slave replacements and in 1550, the Taino (who had no immunity) were nearly extinct. They discovered that domesticated animals were the main source of illness. The Americans had better hygiene than Europeans and were tall and healthy but defenseless. In 1527, smallpox spread to the Inca Empire and killed the emperor and 100,000 of his subjects. At the end of the 16th century, three fourths of the Incas were dead. In 1617, smallpox spread to New England, killing 90 to 94% of inhabitants. King George called it the "Blessed Pox" since it returned again and again. In 1636 all the way to 1717, Boston suffered seven different smallpox epidemics. In 1717, Lady Mary Wortley Montago, a smallpox survivor, learned about inoculation in Turkey. A year later, Montago had her son inoculated and in 1721, had her daughter inoculated. Both lived and were proved immune. In 1796, Edward Jenner proved that inoculation with the cowpox virus also prevented infection with smallpox and in 1977, WHO (World Health Organization) announced that they broke the last link of smallpox and had eradicated it from the wild. Nowadays, smallpox still exists, but is very rare.