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Smallpox: The Triumph over the Most Terrible of the Ministers of Death Smallpox has been one of humankind's greatest scourges since time immemorial. Even illnesses as terrible as the plague, cholera, and yellow fever have not had such a universal and persistent impact. Smallpox is believed to have appeared at the time of the first agricultural settlements in northeastern Africa, around 10 000 BC (2). It probably spread from Africa to India by means of Egyptian merchants in the last millennium BC (3). The earliest evidence of skin lesions resembling those of smallpox is found on the faces of mummies...

Today is Memorial Day, once also known as Decoration Day, hallowed to honor our military dead. Started to honor our Civil War dead, it has been expanded to honor all of our military dead of the United States from the Revolutionary War on (1775 to present). Yet in doing so, we still leave some out unless we become more expansive yet and include the 10,000+[1] of an even earlier conflict. I request those who read this, cast their minds back to a war that too many have forgotten but that forged an unbreakable mold upon our continent, "The French and...

(Image: Everett Collection/Rex Features) A document has just gone on display at Mount Vernon, Virginia - the museum in the former home of George Washington, first US President. It is an order dated 1777 and signed by Washington himself to send troops that had not been vaccinated for smallpox - or survived it - to Philadelphia to be vaccinated. These troops were then to join up with the main army, where the disease was raging. It sounds like amazing foresight for its day. "Washington's careful handling of the smallpox epidemic at the beginning of the war was a significant...