ABSTRACT
Smallpox is no longer with us, but over the centuries, it killed hundreds of million people . In the twentieth century alone, it killed 300 million people-three times the number of deaths from all the twentieth-century wars . Smallpox has been involved with war, with exploration, and with migration . As a result, it changed the course of human history . Smallpox was indiscriminate, with no respect for social class, occupation, or age; it killed or disfigured princes and paupers, kings and queens, children and adults, farmers and city dwellers, generals and their enemies, and rich and poor .
