Variola (smallpox)

Variola (smallpox): Highly contagious and frequently fatal viral disease characterized by a biphasic (double-humped) fever and a distinctive skin rash that (if the patient survived) left pock marks in its wake. The English physician Edward Jenner (1749-1823) exploited the fact that cowpox created immunity to smallpox and successfully developed an attenuated (weakened) virus vaccine for smallpox. Thanks to vaccination , smallpox has been eradicated. It was so named because the pocks were small and the disease was seen as less than the ôgreat poxö (syphilis).