Medication
While some antiviral drugs may help treat it or prevent the smallpox disease from getting worse, there is no treatment for it that has been proven effective in people sick with the disease. Smallpox can be prevented by the smallpox vaccine. If you get the vaccine: Before contact with the virus, the vaccine can protect you from getting sick.
Nutrition
Many of the symptoms of smallpox are similar to any cold or flu and can be treated with similar medications. The fever or aches and pains of smallpox are responsive to the usual remedies for those symptoms. However, treating those symptoms does not treat smallpox itself. [8]
Is there a cure for smallpox?
Heat treating. Heat treatments are also used in the manufacture of many other materials, such as glass. Heat treatment involves the use of heating or chilling, normally to extreme temperatures, to achieve a desired result such as hardening or softening of a material. Heat treatment techniques include annealing, case hardening,...
How is smallpox (varicella) treated?
Historical sources suggest that in the 1800s, when smallpox still posed a serious threat, the Micmac native Americans of Nova Scotia treated the disease using a botanical infusion derived from the insectivorous plant Sarracenia purpurea, a species of pitcher plant.
What is heat treating?
How did Native Americans treat smallpox disease?
How was smallpox treated in ancient times?
Knowing that no one can contract smallpox twice, survivors of the disease were often called upon to try and nurse victims back to health. Throughout much of the last millennium, this involved herbal remedies, bloodletting and exposing them to red objects.
How did doctors treat smallpox in the 1800s?
Between 1796 and 1798, British physician Edward Jenner used bovine serum containing the cowpox virus to successfully inoculate patients against smallpox.
How did they treat people with smallpox?
No cure for smallpox exists. In the event of an infection, treatment would focus on relieving symptoms and keeping the person from becoming dehydrated. Antibiotics might be prescribed if the person also develops a bacterial infection in the lungs or on the skin.
How was smallpox treated in the 1700s?
Inoculation used actual smallpox material, while vaccination used immunologically-related cowpox, and now Vaccinia virus.
How was smallpox treated in the Victorian era?
Smallpox was a common killer in nineteenth century Britain. It spread rapidly and killed around 30% of those who contracted it and left many survivors blinded or scarred. In 1850s, the government passed a series of laws that made vaccination against smallpox compulsory.
What animal did smallpox come from?
Smallpox is an acute, contagious disease caused by the variola virus, a member of the genus Orthopoxvirus, in the Poxviridae family (see the image below). Virologists have speculated that it evolved from an African rodent poxvirus 10 millennia ago.
How was smallpox prevented before the vaccine?
At the end of the 18th century , a British doctor called Edward Jenner observed that milkmaids who had already had cowpox did not get smallpox. From this, he deduced that getting cowpox — which occurs due to a milder type of orthopoxvirus — could protect people against the more severe disease.
What was the method of vaccination of smallpox?
The smallpox vaccine is given by a special technique. It is not administered as a “shot” in the way that most other vaccines are. It is given using a two-pronged (bifurcated) needle that is dipped into the vaccine solution. When removed, the needle holds a droplet of the vaccine.
What is the most effective treatment for smallpox?
In July 2018, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved tecovirimat (also referred to as ST-246 or its brand name Tpoxx), the first drug with an indication for treatment of smallpox.
How was the first smallpox vaccine administered?
On May 14, 1796, Jenner took fluid from a cowpox blister and scratched it into the skin of James Phipps, an eight-year-old boy. A single blister rose up on the spot, but James soon recovered. On July 1, Jenner inoculated the boy again, this time with smallpox matter, and no disease developed. The vaccine was a success.
How was smallpox prevented and treated in colonial times?
Colonies dealt with smallpox in two different ways: quarantine and inoculation. Each colony had its own quarantine laws, which took different forms and were often enforced at the local level. Some colonials, particularly the wealthy, chose to be inoculated.
What was smallpox in the 1800s?
During the 1770s, smallpox killed at least 30% of the Northwestern Native Americans, killing tens of thousands. The smallpox epidemic of 1780–1782 brought devastation and drastic depopulation among the Plains Indians. This epidemic is a classic instance of European immunity and non-European vulnerability.
Which method of preventing smallpox was used before vaccination?
However, the most successful way of combating smallpox before the discovery of vaccination was inoculation. The word is derived from the Latin inoculare, meaning “to graft.” Inoculation referred to the subcutaneous instillation of smallpox virus into nonimmune individuals.
At what age was the smallpox vaccine given?
Who should get the smallpox vaccine? A different version of the smallpox vaccine was at one time given routinely to all children in the United States at about 1 year of age.
How was smallpox prevented before the vaccine?
At the end of the 18th century , a British doctor called Edward Jenner observed that milkmaids who had already had cowpox did not get smallpox. From this, he deduced that getting cowpox — which occurs due to a milder type of orthopoxvirus — could protect people against the more severe disease.
Smallpox Vaccine
Smallpox can be prevented by the smallpox vaccine, also called vaccinia virus vaccine. The vaccine is made from a virus called vaccinia, which is a poxvirus similar to smallpox, but less harmful. There are two licensed smallpox vaccines in the United States and one investigational vaccine that may be used in a smallpox emergency.
Antiviral Drugs
In July 2018, the FDA approved tecovirimat (TPOXX) for treatment of smallpox. In laboratory tests, tecovirimat has been shown to stop the growth of the virus that causes smallpox and to be effective in treating animals that had diseases similar to smallpox.
What is the treatment for a bacterial infection?
Antibiotics might be prescribed if the person also develops a bacterial infection in the lungs or on the skin. Tecovirimat (Tpoxx), an antiviral drug, was approved for use in the U.S. in 2018.
Is smallpox considered an emergency?
Even one confirmed case of smallpox would be considered an international health emergency. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention can do definitive testing using a tissue sample taken from one of the lesions on the skin of the infected person.
Expert Q&A
Include your email address to get a message when this question is answered.
Tips
If you got vaccinated against smallpox as a child, you would likely need another vaccination in the event of an outbreak. Immunity or partial immunity only lasts up to 10 years after vaccination. [13]
Warnings
Even a single case of smallpox would be considered an international health emergency, considering the disease is believed to be eradicated in the natural world. [14]
About This Article
This article was medically reviewed by Erik Kramer, DO, MPH and by wikiHow staff writer, Jennifer Mueller, JD. Dr. Erik Kramer is a Primary Care Physician at the University of Colorado, specializing in internal medicine, diabetes, and weight management.
Who discovered that cowpox was a disease?
Smallpox ravaged human populations for thousands of years, but in 1796 Edward Jenner discovered that exposure to cowpox lesions could provide immunity to smallpox. This led to the creation of the first vaccine for a disease.
Why is it important to develop therapies?
Developing therapies is therefore important in order to treat people if a bioterror event does occur.
How to treat smallpox?
No known treatment is effective for smallpox. Medical management of smallpox is mainly supportive. Supportive care in patients with symptomatic smallpox consists of the following: 1 The patient should be isolated until all scabs have fallen off (about 3-4 wk after rash onset) to prevent transmission of the variola virus to nonimmune persons. 2 The fluid and electrolyte balance should be monitored and maintained to avoid dehydration. 3 Oral antiviral agents (ie, tecovirimat, cidofovir) are available from the US government’s Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) . 4 Medications should be given for fever and pain. 5 Good nutritional support should be maintained. 6 Skin care should be instituted. 7 Complications should be monitored for and treated. 8 Unless the diagnosis of smallpox is confirmed in a laboratory, patients should receive smallpox vaccination if they will be isolated with other patients with confirmed or suspected smallpox, to prevent accidental transmission. 9 Corneal lesions may be treated with topical idoxuridine.
When was the first drug approved for smallpox?
The first drug for the treatment of smallpox, tecovirimat, was approved in July 2018 should smallpox ever be used as a bioweapon. Tecovirimat is an antiviral that inhibits the activity of the orthopoxvirus VP37 protein.
How long does it take for smallpox to scab?
Smallpox begins with fever, headache, and severe backache. A rash appears after 2-4 days and progresses through characteristic stages of papules, vesicles, pustules, and, finally, scabs. The scabs desquamate at the end of the third or fourth week.
Can you treat corneal lesions at home?
Corneal lesions may be treated with topical idoxuridine. Whenever possible, patients should be cared for at home in the event of a large smallpox outbreak. However, in the event of an outbreak with only a few cases or when patients cannot be cared for at home, hospital admission is advisable. The CDC recommends that authorities consider designating ...
What is the significance of the eradication of smallpox?
The successful eradication of smallpox is a unique story in the history of medicine. But it is keenly read as an incentive to eradicate other infectious diseases. Donald Henderson once described the eradication of smallpox as a historic milestone and "one of the most brilliant accomplishments in medical history.".
How long did the WHO's smallpox program last?
Donald Henderson, who directed the WHO's global smallpox eradication program between 1966 and 1977.
How many people died from smallpox in the 20th century?
Alone in the 20th century, about 300 million people died because of smallpox. But with an unprecedented, worldwide vaccination program, the WHO was able to put an end to the virus that had held humanity hostage for so long.
Where are samples of smallpox held?
There are now only two locations where, officially, samples of the smallpox virus are held — one is a Russian research laboratory called VECTOR, southeast of Novosibirsk, and the other is an American research center, run by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in Atlanta.
Is the smallpox virus secretly held?
But it is possible that other states are holding samples of the deadly virus, secretly. After the 2001 terrorist attacks in the U.S., the potential for a biological weapons attack was hotly discussed. It was felt that without the once-compulsory vaccine, many people would have no protection against a smallpox epidemic.
Why is heat treatment called an arrest?
This temperature is referred to as an "arrest" because at the A temperature the metal experiences a period of hysteresis.
What is the process of heating something to alter it?
Process of heating something to alter it. Heat treating furnace at 1,800 °F (980 °C) Heat treating (or heat treatment) is a group of industrial, thermal and metalworking processes used to alter the physical, and sometimes chemical, properties of a material. The most common application is metallurgical. Heat treatments are also used in the ...
Does cooling a metal cause precipitation?
Cooling a metal will usually suppress the precipitation to a much lower temperature. Austenite, for example, usually only exists above the upper critical temperature. However, if the austenite is cooled quickly enough, the transformation may be suppressed for hundreds of degrees below the lower critical temperature.