Smallpox described

Through trade with many regions, the Arabians learned and extended medical knowledge. Their major contribution is perhaps the knowledge of medical preparations and distillation methods, although the techniques were probably derived from the practices of alchemists. Avicenna, around ad 900-1000, recorded a vast encyclopedia of medical description and treatment. Another noted physician was Rhazes, who accurately described measles and smallpox. 

The word vaccination comes from vaccinia, the name of the virus now known to cause cowpox vaca is the Latin word for cow ). The term vaccination is now broadly used to describe the process of causing a mild disease in order to protect a person from a more dangerous disease. Vaccination is one form of immunization, exposing the body to a material to stimulate a protective response from the immune system. Vaccination is routinely used to prevent many illnesses, including measles, rnmnps, German measles (rubella), chicken pox, and polio. Many of these illnesses have disappeared or become very rare in developed countries that provide widespread vaccinations. Smallpox has been eradicated worldwide, thanks to... 

Al-Razi (Rhazes, 854-925) was a Persian who studied in Baghdad. Al-Razi wrote extensively on medicine, philosophy, astronomy, and alchemy, but he was primarily a physician. Al-Razi was less mystical than his contemporary alchemists and classified chemicals by their origin. According to Al-Razi, chemicals came from either animals, plants, and minerals or were derived from other chemicals. Al-Razi wrote The Comprehensive Book, which was an enormous medical encyclopedia that synthesized medical practices of ancient Greeks, Syrians, Arabs, and Persians. Al-Razi was the first person known to describe the disease smallpox. Most of his alchemical writings have been lost, but Al-Razi believed in the atomic nature of matter. Al-Razi took a systematic approach to science and rejected the idea of divine intervention. His rational methods and descriptions were more consistent with modern science than most individuals of his time. Ali al Husayn ibn Sina (Avicenna, 980-1037) was another Persian physician whose voluminous works, including The... 

For many years the preferred approach to immunity to infectious disease lias been by development of active immunity through the injection of a vaccine. The vaccine may be either an attenuated live infections agent, or an inactivated or killed product. In either case, protective substances called antibodies are generated in the bloodstream these, are described in the next section. Vaccines for a number of diseases have been available for many years and have assisted in the eradication of some diseases, such as smallpox. As new strains of bacteria and viruses are discovered, additional vaccines becomes available from time to time. See also Vaccine Technology,... 

The characteristic rash of smallpox is described as synchronous and centrifugal. What does that mean with regard to the pattern of lesions on an affected individual ... 

Robinson [48] described a gas chromatographic method for measuring residual water in freeze-dried smallpox vaccine in 1972. The method was developed to optimize quality control of a tissue-culture smallpox vaccine. Water is extracted from the sample with benzene and determined by gas chromatography with thermal conductivity (hot wire) detection and columns packed with Chromosorb 102. 

Acute myocarditis after vaccination against smallpox has been reported (22). Fatal myocarditis is rare, but electrocardiographic evidence of myocarditis has been found more frequently this adverse effect is probably not always noticed (23-25). Pericarditis after smallpox vaccination has also been described (26). 

Pericarditis after smallpox vaccination has been described (26). 

Polyneuropathy (39) and bacterial meningitis (40) have been described after smallpox vaccination. 

Disturbances of hearing and balance are described after smallpox vaccination (41). 

It clearly and knowledgeably explains the symptoms, incubation period and available treatments for each agent, providing specific details, like the definition of weaponized anthrax and the government plan for containing a smallpox ontbreak. Sidebars describe how the organisms have been used as weapons in the past. 

But this was not the first description of the possible association since an experienced inoculator by the name of Dr. Fewster had sent a report to the Medical Society of London in 1765 entitled Cowpox and its ability to prevent smallpox. It is also alleged that a Dorestshire farmer, Benjamin Jesty, inoculated his wife and two sons using cowpox virus taken from an infected udder. Jenner s own experimental contribution was much more scientific, if wholly unethical by today s standards. In a letter of July 1796 sent to his friend, the wine merchant Edward Gardner, he described his first experiments carried out in May 1796 ... 

Some 200 tons of smallpox virus have been produced by the USSR as a weapon and inherited by Russia. Their fate is unclear. However, details of the development of smallpox as a weapon by the Soviets became available. A report was elicited from General Prof. Peter Burgasov, former Chief Sanitary Physician of the Soviet Army and a senior researcher within the BWP. Admitting that development of BW by the Soviets did take place, in the form of live field tests, he described a smallpox incident that happened in the 1970s, and was then hashed up On Vozrazhdenie Island in the Aral Sea, the strongest recipes of smallpox were tested. Suddenly I was informed that there were mysterious cases of mortalities in Aralsk. A research ship of the Aral fleet came 15 km away from the island (it was forbidden to come... 

The value of vaccines, even in the limited uses described above, justifies an accelerated research effort to improve the licensed vaccines, such as the anthrax, plague, and smallpox vaccines, and to complete the development process and seek licensure for those vaccines still in IND status. 

The World Health Organization (WHO) was established on April 7, 1948. It is a special agency of the United Nations (UN) and is very concerned with international public health. Since it started, the organization has had a leading role in the eradication of smallpox. Its current focus includes communicable diseases like HIV/AIDS, Ebola, tuberculosis, and malaria. Other areas of interest include non-communicable diseases, development and aging, nutrition, food safety, substance abuse, and occupational health (which can be affected by contaminants at the workplace). This chapter describes the World Health Organization and discusses its standards (acceptable limits of various contaminants present in the air, water, etc.), especially in regards to the heavy metals and several other metallic materials. 

In 1961, Hampar and Ellison reported chromosomal alterations in Chinese hamster culture cells [181] infected with herpesvirus, and Nichols [182, 183] demonstrated an abnormal incidence of chromosome breaks in cultured leukocytes obtained from children with measles. Since then the list of publications on the effect of viruses on chromosomes has grown into an innumerable bibliography, and chromosomal anomalies have been described after infection with rubella, mumps, chicken pox, and even after vaccination for smallpox or yellow fever. 

Viruses cannot replicate by themselves. Like many of the rickettsial bacteria, viruses require a host cell in order to reproduce and are technically described as obligate intracellular parasites. But viruses are many times smaller than bacteria, the latter being about 1 micron in size on average. Smallpox is among the largest viruses known (about 0.3 microns in diameter) while the smallest known disease-causing virus in humans is the poliovirus (0.028 microns). 

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