The fall of smallpox

The fall of smallpox began with the realization that 1 of the disease were immune for the rest of their lives. This led to the practice of variolation- a process of exposing a healthy person to infected material from a person with smallpox in the hopes of producing a mild disease that 2 immunity from further infection the first written account of variolation describes a Buddhist nun practicing around 1022 to 1063 AD. By the 1700s, this method of variolation was 3 practice in China, India, and Turkey. In the late 1700s European physicians used this and other methods of variolation, but reported “devastating” results in some cases. Overall, 2% to 3% of people who were variolated died of smallpox, but this practice decreased the total number of smallpox 4 by 10-fold.