vaccination has saved us. But even many of us, who may not be
included amongst those who know nothing of smallpox, do come
within the group of those who know next to nothing of the life
and work of Dr. Edward Jenner. A number of persons think he was
Sir William Jenner, physician to Queen Victoria.

An infectious or communicable disease is one caused by the
admission of some form of living matter into the body of a
human being or of a lower animal. All diseases are clearly not
communicable in the sense that they are due to the presence of
living things. Indigestion, for instance, I can not communicate
to my neighbor, however serious my dietetic indiscretions.

Now, while the actual microorganisms causing many of the
infectious diseases have been discovered in these recent days
through the agency of the microscope--one of science's most
valuable gifts to suffering humanity--a few diseases
undoubtedly infectious have, even up to the present time, not
had their microorganic causes discovered. Smallpox or variola
is one of these. The term variola is from the Latin varus, a
pimple.

The name Small Pox, which first occurs in Holinshead's
"Chronicle" (1571), was given to this disease to distinguish it
from the Great Pox or syphilis, the French disease, or Morbus
Gallicus which attained the proportions of an epidemic in
Europe about 1494. The expression "The Pox" in the older
medical literature always refers to the Lues Venereal The word
"pox" is the plural form of pock; the spelling "pox" is
phonetic; "pocks" is the correct form.[1]