The story of Smallpox and how it was conquered....

A thread

12,000 years

That's how long Smallpox had been around, decimating whole civilizations and even wiping out others completely...the fall of the Roman empire was partly due to Smallpox

For years, this disease kept popping up and killing millions without a cure in sight

But it was until the 6th century that the disease really started making mad moves when it landed in Europe which was becoming a highly populated continent. That was when smallpox started doing big league numbers

This was later spread to other continents like Africa, Asia and the Americas, taken there by European traders and religious missionaries who wanted to spread the gospel to the "savages" who were doing very okay

We have all read, or at least some of us, about how smallpox was the major reason why conquering North America was easy, the white missionaries gave out blankets deliberately infected with smallpox to the native Indians and the disease took out 90% of indigenous people