Depending on when and where you were born, you might have a particular scar on your arm that everyone else around you also has. This, as many of you probably already know, is the smallpox vaccine.

Think of it as the very first vaccine passport, if you will: a scar that told everyone you had been successfully vaccinated against smallpox. And yep, you guessed it, it’s that very scar that my ...

PENGUIN PRESS, MARCH 2011 O ur skins record the histories of life’s close scrapes. One of the most common marks that humans carry is, we hope, bound for extinction: the nickel-sized cicatrix left by a ...

The eradication of smallpox, undoubtedly one of public ... vaccination with cowpox was limited in clinical effect, produced a local scar indicative of response, and did not result in secondary ...

The first known victim of smallpox was Pharaoh Ramses V of Egypt, who died in 1157BC and whose mummy still bears the scars of the disease. • When the Spanish took it into Hispaniola - now Haiti ...

By William J. Broad In 1999, William J. Broad and two colleagues wrote a comprehensive article on the past, present and future of the smallpox virus. Feb. 12, 2025 President Trump’s order that ...

About 30% of infected people die from smallpox infection. People who recover from the infection are often left with permanent scars and sometimes blindness. The smallpox virus is classified as a ...

View Full Profile. Learn about our Editorial Policies. Thanks to a Cold War-era division of responsibility, smallpox has been held in just two places in the world since 1984: at the CDC labs in ...

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Not so with smallpox. To create this vaccine, you begin with another virus that is similar to the smallpox virus, yet different enough not to bring on the smallpox disease once it enters your body.

Symptoms of monkeypox can also be compared with smallpox — a related virus that was declared eradicated in 1980. Like smallpox, monkeypox causes pus-filled boils. But monkeypox is generally ...