Smallpox scars were bigger and deeper than chickenpox scars they covered the whole face. It is an infection that is highly contagious or easily spread from person to person.
Smallpox was spread by people breathing it in. It entered the body and found a home in the back of the throat where it mixed with saliva.
Smallpox is caused by variola virus, a member of the orthopox virus. Orthopox viruses include cowpox and chicken pox. A virus is a microscopic agent that infects and replicates in living cells.
People who got smallpox had tiny little bumps all over their body. Pox is from Latin word for ‘spotted’.
When variola invades human cells, the cell is forced to reproduce the virus until there are hundreds of thousands of viruses inside.
Smallpox deaths attributable to complications other than hemorrhage usually occurred eighteen days or more after symptoms began.
These other potentially life-threatening complications most often resulted from secondary bacterial infection of wounds in the skin originally case by the virus.
Smallpox
