@caesarsaladinn I had a whole discussion with a history major who was extremely confident that smallpox is a “common childhood illness” with a very low death rate. Therefore, she believed that historical smallpox outbreaks were either massively exaggerated or used as a cover-up for something else (since “smallpox isn’t that bad.”) I eventually asked if she was possibly confusing smallpox with chickenpox, at which point she said, “aren’t they the same thing?”
One of the less deadly variants of smallpox was called cowpox, and the fact that dairy maids who contracted it tended to avoid the worst affects of smallpox is part of the development of vaccination
Cowpox is actually a separate (but very similar!) virus!
There's a lot of confusion about different "poxes" in this post (which wasn't my intention, and now I feel bad), so here's a general overview (also, obligatory apology for messiness, this was written at like 1 AM):
Smallpox:
Smallpox, caused by variola virus, was a massive problem historically. It existed in the Western hemisphere for thousands of years (genetic evidence of smallpox has been found in Egyptian mummies from ≈1500 BCE, but it was probably around long before then), and it was introduced to the New World during the Columbian exchange, which had devastating consequences for indigenous populations (which were already suffering from colonialist violence, which made epidemics much worse than they already would've been). Historically, smallpox had a case fatality rate between 30-50%, and survivors were often left disfigured or permanently disabled (you've probably seen pictures of smallpox scars, but smallpox can also cause blindness and other complications). Importantly, smallpox only affects humans—it has no animal hosts—which is why it's one of the few infectious diseases to have been completely eradicated. As of May 8, 1980, it officially no longer exists outside of certain designated American and Russian laboratories. (There are, however, concerns that it could be used as a bioweapon, which is why the government still stockpiles smallpox vaccines and antivirals. I wrote my bioethics term paper on this exact issue, and incidentally, it's one of the major reasons why I believe that STEM majors should take ethics courses!)
There were two strains of variola virus: variola major and variola minor. Variola major was much more dangerous, with a much higher mortality rate; variola minor typically didn't cause severe disease. Fortunately, infection with one strain conferred immunity against the other. Both strains are now eradicated. (People sometimes confuse variola minor with other viruses like cowpox and horsepox, but they're different things.)
There were four clinical forms of smallpox: ordinary (classic smallpox, associated with the rash you usually see in pictures), modified (less severe, often occurred in vaccinated people who got infected anyway), malignant (caused a flat rash instead of the usual pustules, associated with immune dysfunction, almost always fatal), and hemorrhagic (caused severe bleeding, and also near-universally fatal.) All of the non-ordinary forms could be difficult to diagnose because they looked so different from typical smallpox. The less serious "modified" form was often confused with chickenpox, and the hemorrhagic form was sometimes assumed to be a completely different disease. Occasionally, historical sources will refer to hemorrhagic smallpox as "black pox," with or without an understanding that it's caused by the same virus as ordinary smallpox.
Other relevant viruses:
Cowpox, caused by cowpox virus (an orthopoxvirus similar to smallpox) causes mild disease in cows, humans, and several other animals. Infection with cowpox virus confers immunity to variola—Edward Jenner noticed this relationship and used material from cowpox lesions to inoculate people against smallpox.
Vaccinia virus, another orthopoxvirus, is the source of the modern smallpox vaccine. It's closely related to both cowpox and horsepox (weirdly, it's actually closer to horsepox), but it's distinct enough to be its own species. Infection usually causes mild symptoms, and, of course, confers immunity to smallpox.
Chickenpox is an entirely different thing. It's caused by the varicella-zoster virus, which is a herpesvirus, not a poxvirus at all! Infection with varicella-zoster does not confer immunity to smallpox or any other poxvirus—chickenpox is from a totally different family.
So why are the names so weird and confusing? Why is everything about all of this so weird and confusing?
There are multiple reasons for this, so bear with me.
Historically, a "pox" was any disease that caused a bumpy rash of pustles/blisters. Chickenpox, smallpox, and the other "poxes" all cause superficially similar rashes—thus the similar names. (Even though we know now that chickenpox comes from a completely different family, this wouldn't have been apparent before the dawn of modern medicine.)
Smallpox was given that name to differentiate it from syphilis, which was known as the "great pox" when it first appeared in Europe. (Fun[?] microbiology fact: There are debates about the origins of syphilis, but the most common theory holds that it originated in the New World, and Christopher Columbus brought it back to Spain. In that way, it's kind of the inverse of smallpox.) Historically, smallpox was also known by a variety of other names in different European, Asian, and African cultures. Again, this gets murky, because historical physicians sometimes struggled to distinguish between similar-looking-but-different diseases.
Other poxviruses are often named after the animals in which they were first identified. This is not a hard-and-fast rule, though, and it can sometimes be misleading (for example, monkeypox virus was first discovered in laboratory monkeys, but it more often affects rodents and other small mammals. The disease formerly known as "monkeypox" was recently renamed "mpox" because the name wasn't accurate.) Also, some poxviruses aren't named after animals at all! It's a weird and inconsistent system (but a lot of virus names are kinda weird and inconsistent).
Related to the above: We don't even know where the name "chickenpox" comes from. I mean, we know it was called a "pox" because it causes a pox-y rash, but we don't know where the "chicken" part originated. There are multiple theories about this, none of which are definitive. The disease itself has nothing to do with chickens.
Basically, a lot of the weirdness is a result of historical naming practices—people identified and named these diseases before modern virology existed, and those names stuck, so now we have similar names for superficially-similar-but-ultimately-different viruses, and names whose origins have been completely lost to time. Later, virologists muddied the waters further by naming newly-discovered poxviruses after the animals in which they were first seen, even when these animals aren't natural hosts or reservoirs of those viruses. It's a mess! And, again, all of this is complicated by the fact that some of these diseases were very hard to diagnose (or distinguish from one another) before modern medicine existed. Now, we can sequence viral DNA and figure out what's actually going on—which viruses caused which symptoms, whether those viruses were closely related, and whether being infected with one disease conferred immunity to another—but historical doctors and scientists didn't have those tools, so they were doing they best they could with very limited information, and that led to a lot of weirdness in terms of how these viruses were named and classified. Our current system inherited some of that weirdness, so here we are.
TL;DR: Poxvirus names are messy. Smallpox is caused by variola virus, which has two strains: variola major (the more severe one) and variola minor (less severe). Cowpox and vaccinia are different viruses in the same family, and being infected with one of them confers immunity to smallpox. Chickenpox isn't a poxvirus at all, but a herpesvirus—it just happens to cause a pockmark-y rash that looks superficially similar to smallpox pustules (and mild forms of smallpox were historically confused with chickenpox).
(P.S. none of this is super relevant to the average person, so don't feel bad if you didn't know any of it. Unless you are a history major inventing new conspiracies about smallpox, in which case you definitely should feel bad.)
Sources & further reading under the cut!
Edward Jenner and the history of smallpox and vaccination
The History of Smallpox (CDC)
The Triumph of Science: The Incredible Story of Smallpox Eradication
Scientific Background on Smallpox and Smallpox Vaccination (from Scientific and Policy Considerations in Developing Smallpox Vaccination Options: A Workshop Report) <- this article is like 20 years old, but it has some interesting information about the clinical forms of smallpox and how difficult they would be to diagnose accurately
Phasing out monkeypox: mpox is the new name for an old disease <- discusses the renaming of monkeypox to mpox, also mentions issues with other poxvirus names and virus names in general
Poxes great and small: The stories behind their names
has anyone noticed that after the porn ban of 2018 tumblr was essentially killed from the mainstream and everyone flocked to other social media sites like twitter and meta. then those sites got enshittified to where twitter became Nazi Central and meta sites had an entire meme around getting “zucced” aka mark zuckerberg himself would ban you for saying a no-no word like fuck. and then the mainstream shifted to tiktok where infamous toddlerspeak sentences like “he got unalived by a pew pew” were born because if you once again say a no-no word like kill or gun or any other word that isn’t corporate i mean kid friendly then the algorithm will bury your post into the ground. and somehow we’ve come full circle and tumblr is now the most bearable social media site because although we can’t have female presenting nipples we can at least talk to each other like adults. has anyone noticed that at all or is it just me and the flaming skull
Since some of you don't seem to understand how this 'new notes' thing works, I'll break it down:
I'm the OP. I'm making this post. If you like, comment, reblog (without comment) on this post, then I'm the one who will see all those notes in my activity page.
However...
If you reblog (with comment), I will get a notification that you did that, but any likes/comments/reblogs (without comment) you get on that reblog will only be shown to you. As OP I won't see them.
If someone adds a reblog (with comment) to your reblog...as OP I won't see that. I won't see any of those notes in my activity page.
Basically, if someone with a large following makes a comment, then they will get all the notes and OP will see nothing. If OP has said something silly because they're, y'know, 21 and it happens, and then someone reblogs it onto the dash of someone with a large following who then dunks on them for fun? OP doesn't see it, doesn't get notes for it, but they're gonna get the harrassment for it in their inbox.
If I, someone with a 5 digit follower count, reblog something to correct misinformation on Ancient Egypt, then OP will never see it unless it was on the original post, but I will continue to get notes on that post even though it's not my post. If I reblog fanart, or just art in general, with a comment like 'Oh this is so lovely!' then OP will not see any of the notes from people reblogging it from me. They'll only see my reblog. So it's possible for an art post by someone else to have 200 notes for them, but 9000 for someone who reblogs it with a comment, and the OP artist will have no idea it's been seen by that many people.
It's killing blow to the community we've built here, by someone higher up who doesn't understand that being able to see all the comments and reblogs is what makes this site the place I keep coming back to.
That's what sucks.
I encourage people to go to tumblr's support page, select contact support, and then in the dropdown menu select 'Feedback' and leave polite and constructive feedback (for those of you who enjoy 'emails worded politely but are a strong 'are you an idiot?', try that way of wording it). They're more likely to listen to you if you're not an asshole about it. I've already gone and done this, and I hope others will too.
Hey OP, thank you explaining this for us. I'd like to also add to please submit all feedback by commenting on tumblr's CHANGES sideblog (link below). based on the tumblr support email i just received and many others have already received, tumblr engineers are monitoring their feedback more closely there.
You can access it here.
Please.
We need all the feedback we can. Support tickets, reblogs, but most importantly THE CHANGES SIDE BLOG.
I think what a lot of people are missing when it comes to Liam Hemsworth replacing Henry Cavill is that the Netflix series does not have the rights to adapt the Witcher Games, just the Witcher books. Book fans have been saying for a long time that Henry Cavill's Geralt is nothing like book Geralt and is much closer to Game Geralt - Henry Cavill has even admitted to basing his performance off of Game Geralt. But that's not the story that they're telling - this season has been one of the most faithful to the books, including Hemsworth's portrayal of Geralt. Geralt in the books is much more affectionate, open with compliments, openly loving and respectful of his friends - Book Geralt would never have treated Jaskier/Dandelion like Henry Cavill's Geralt did and as a big book fan, I'm pleasantly surprised by the change. If you want Game Geralt play the games because it isn't an adaptation of the games
Geralt finds ye olde romantic fanfiction of “the White Wolf and his loyal bard” being published when he goes back on the Path after winter one year. Immediately he assumes Jaskier’s done it and storms straight to Oxenfurt to confront him.
Except—it turns out Jaskier didn’t write it and has no idea who did. The author is a mystery. And people everywhere now believe they’re together.
This causes multiple problems.
One. Both men’s prospects of romantic flings dry up immediately because no one is willing to risk either a Witcher’s wrath or a bard writing defamatory songs in retaliation.
Two. Geralt knows his brothers will inevitably get a hold of these books and mock him to death next Winter.
Three. Geralt secretly wants the books to be true.
“Alright,” Jaskier said, tapping the parchment with a dramatic sigh. “So far we’ve ruled out Yennefer, Ciri, and every other witcher with enough literacy to hold a quill. Which leaves us with one pressing question—who in the world wrote a love story about us?”
Geralt frowned. “One of your fellow bards?
Jaskier shook his head immediately. “Impossible. Bards would never pass up the chance to sign their name in letters twice the size of the poem itself.”
They stared at the pages again, equally baffled. It was, undeniably, a mystery—one neither of them had the slightest idea how to solve.
Meanwhile, in the stables, Roach calmly gripped one of Jaskier’s discarded quills between her teeth. She tugged a quilt closer, flattened it with a hoof, and began scratching out the next installment of The White Wolf and His Loyal Bard.
