How The Human Body Fights off a Virus: Small Pox

Smallpox is an infection caused by the variola virus. Smallpox is localized in small blood vessels of the skin and in the mouth and the throat. The incubation period between contraction and the first obvious symptoms of the disease is around 12 days. Once the disease is inhaled the disease invades the mouth and throat and begins to multiply. Around the twelfth day of the many infected cells the virus is then found in the bloodstream in large numbers and a second wave of multiplication occur in the spleen. This disease has the initial symptoms similar to influenza and the common cold the fever of at least 38.5 degrees Celsius, muscle pain, headaches, back aches, and vomiting. The virus preferentially attacks skin cells causing the characteristic pimples that are called macules associated with the disease. The macules first appear on the forehead, then it rapidly spreads to the whole face and the rest of the body. At this point the infection can take different courses of either: ordinary, modified, flat, or hemorrhagic meaning lose blood from the body. Smallpox has an overall fatality rate of about 30 percent.

Smallpox is believed to have emerged in the human populations around 10,000 BC. This disease killed an estimate of 400,000 Europeans annually during the closing years of the eighteenth century and was responsible for a third of all blindness. Out of all the people who were infected 20-60 and over 80 percent that were infected were children who eventually died from this disease.Smallpox is an infection caused by the variola virus. For centuries, epidemics of smallpox affected people all over the globe, and the disease was often serious. In 1796, an English doctor named Edward Jenner discovered a way to protect people from getting smallpox, and his experiments eventually led to the development of the first smallpox vaccine. The smallpox vaccine worked so well that there hasn't been a case of smallpox in the United States since 1949. The United States stopped vaccinating the general population against smallpox in 1972 because the disease was no longer a threat. The world's last known case of smallpox was reported in Africa in 1977. In 1980, the World Health Organization announced that smallpox was wiped out. This was the first time in history that an infectious disease was declared eliminated from the planet.

Your body will produce antibodies to fight the virus or disease, and these antibodies remain in your blood to give you immunity, or fight off the disease if you are ever exposed to it again. In order for your immune system to do so two things must happen first. First