Purple spots, the bloody and parchment pox, hemorrhages of blood at the mouth, nose, fundament, and privities; ravings and deliriums; convulsions, and other fits; violent inflammations and swellings in the eyes and throat; so that they cannot see, or scarcely breathe, or swallow anything, to keep them from starving. Some looking as black as the stock, others as white as a sheet; in some, the pock runs into blisters, and the skin stripping off, leaves the flesh raw. (...) Some have been filled with loathsome ulcers; others have had deep, and fistulous ulcers in their bodies, or in their limbs or joints, with rottenness of the ligaments and bones: some who live are cripples, others idiots, and many blind all their days.
description of smallpox by an 18th Century Bostonian Doctor. Found in The Pox And The Covenant: Mather, Franklin, And The Epidemic That Changed America’s Destiny by Tony Williams.
