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Smallpox Quotes

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Smallpox Quotes

“I attained a triumph so complete that it is now rare to meet an American with marks of small pox on his face... Benefits are valuable according to their duration and extent... but the benign remedy Vaccination saves millions of lives every century, like the [gift] of the sun, universal and everlasting. [Remark made near the end of his life]”

ScienceUniversalMedicineValueGiftTriumphRemedyEverlastingAmericanBenignBenefitRareSmallpoxVaccinationSaving Lives
Author:Benjamin Waterhouse
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“Up to 95 percent of the original Native American population, estimated at roughly twenty million people, disappeared after the invasion of European colonizers. While there was direct violence toward Native Americans, many of these deaths can be attributed to the introduction of smallpox. Smallpox is a virus that is spread when one comes into contact with infected bodily fluids or contaminated objects such as clothing or blankets. The virus then finds its way into a person's lymphatic system. Within days of infection, large, painful pustules begin to erupt over the victim's skin. In school curriculums, this has often been taught as an unfortunate tragedy, an accidental side effect of trade, and therefore a reason to claim that the Europeans did not commit genocide. However, in recent years, many historians have recognized that the spreading of smallpox was an early form of biological warfare, one which was understood and used without mercy from at least the mid-1700s. Noted conversations among army officials include letters discussing the idea of "sending the Small Pox among those disaffected tribes" and using "every stratagem to reduce them." Another official, Henry Bouquet, wrote a letter that told his subordinates to "try to Innoculate [sic] the Indians, by means of Blankets, as well as to Try Every other Method, that can serve to Extirpate this Execrable Race." They followed through on their plan, giving two blankets and a handkerchief from a Smallpox Hospital alongside other gifts to seal an agreement of friendship between the local Native tribes and the men at Fort Pitt, located in what is now western Pennsylvania.”

EuropeNativeGenocideNative AmericanIndigenousUs HistorySmallpoxEuropean HistoryBiological WarfareHenry Bouquet
Book:Thinning Blood: A Memoir of Family, Myth, and Identity
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“On April 30 Lucy cheerfully reported that, after three days' illness, she was on the mend. Although she had no mirror, she could feel twenty pockmarks on her face. 'I am almost glad you do not see it.," she wrote, "I don't believe I should get one kiss and yet the doctor tells me it is very becoming.”

American HistorySmallpoxYAcnnmSmallpox Vaccination
Book:Defiant Brides: The Untold Story of Two Revolutionary-Era Women and the Radical Men They Married
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“They were as good and as strong as Rome. Historical fluke the Spanish ever managed to get the better of them.’ ‘How did they?’ I said, wanting suddenly and badly to know. ‘Smallpox,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t strategy or anything like that. The Spanish brought smallpox with them when they landed in Mexico. It arrived in Peru before they did. And the Inca had built a wonderful, efficient road system for it to travel on. The royal family was obliterated in five years, the administration of the empire collapsed, and Pizarro took the whole thing with five thousand men. One of the most ridiculous confluences of bad luck in history.”

HistoryBad LuckSmallpoxInca Culture
Author:Natasha Pulley
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“Only yesterday mankind lived in fear of the scourges of smallpox, cholera and plague that once swept nations before them. Now our major concern is no longer with the disease organisms that once were omnipresent; sanitation, better living conditions, and new drugs have given us a high degree of control over infectious disease. Today we are concerned with a different kind of hazard that lurks in our environment-a hazard we ourselves have introduced into our world as our modern way of life has evolved.”

WorldWayKindDifferentTodayGivenNationsEnvironmentModernConditionsMankindDrugDiseaseDegreesMajorsConcernConcernedYesterdayOur WorldDifferent KindsOrganismsPlagueOur EnvironmentHazardsScourgeCholeraSanitationSmallpoxInfectious DiseasesLiving Conditions
Book:Silent Spring
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“Welcome baby it's your turn to live they're laying for you chicken pox whooping cough smallpox malaria TB heart disease cancer and so on unemployment hunger and so on train wrecks bus accidents plane crashes on-the-job injuries earthquakes floods droughts and so on heartbreak alcoholism and so on nightsticks prisons doors and so on they're laying for you the atom bomb and so on welcome baby it's your turn to live they're laying for you socialism communism and so on.”

HeartJobsTurnsDoorsBabyDiseasePrisonTrainHungerCancerAccidentsSocialismWelcomeCommunismPlanesBombsInjuryChickensBusAtomsCrashFloodUnemploymentAlcoholismWrecksEarthquakesDroughtHeart DiseaseMalariaAtom BombSmallpoxPlane CrashesPoxTrain WrecksWhooping Cough
Author:Naz?m Hikmet
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“Science, pure science, is leading us in a sense astray. Leading us astray with the idea that everybody has got to have everything that they want even if it means polluting the entire environment. It is a case of lets just keep one or two canisters of the smallpox virus because we'll never know when we might need it. Science is becoming very much a Dark Power, in many ways.”

IfsKnowsWayWantNeedsMeanTwoIdeasMightDarkCasesEnvironmentBecomingPureVirusesSmallpox
Author:Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki
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“Certainly there was the Affordable Care Act part, then unaccompanied children [there has been a surge of children entering the country illegally and without parents, particularly in Texas], and things like, we find smallpox in an NIH lab, after 50 years? Why didn't you find it, like, five weeks ago or three years ago? There was thing after thing. But the big ones were [dealing with] the Ebola [outbreak], the unaccompanied children. [It was] perhaps a bigger challenge than I had calculated on my yellow pad as I was thinking about this role.”

ThinkingYearsChildrenHas BeensCountryBigsCareThreeParentChallengesRolesFiveWeekYears AgoBiggerTexasYellowThree YearsEnteringAffordableLabsPadsEbolaOutbreaksSmallpoxAffordable Care Act
Author:Sylvia Mathews Burwell
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“He who controls the past controls the future.”

PastFutureLibertarianDystopianMy FuturePast And PresentPresent TimePast PresentPast Present And FutureForget The PastLimiting GovernmentPast Present FutureLimited FreedomPower And ControlBright FuturePresent FutureFuture And PresentSmallpoxLooking To The FutureObjective RealityFuture TimeGreat FuturePast LovePast FuturePast Present Future LoveIgnorance In 19841984 ImportantPolitical LanguageSlavery FreedomRevisionismRewriting HistoryShaping The Future
Author:Laozi
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“A child who had been introduced to misery in Saudi Arabia, a teenager who went to wage jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan, a deeply devout Muslim who had graduated with honors in medicine, a man who had fed a stranger to wild dogs in Damascus, a zealot who had dosed three foreigners with smallpox and watched them die in agony, gave thanks to Allah for the blessings that had been bestowed upon him.”

MenChildrenDiesThreeDogHonorBlessingMedicineMiseryStrangerThanksTeenagerFedsAfghanistanAgonyForeignersArabiaSaudi ArabiaSaudisJihadSmallpoxZealotWild Dogs
Book:I Am Pilgrim: A Thriller
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“The Mayans were right, as it turns out, when they predicted the world would end in 2012. It was just a select world: the G.O.P. universe of arrogant, uptight, entitled, bossy, retrogressive white guys. [...] Instead of smallpox, plagues, drought and Conquistadors, the Republican decline will be traced to a stubborn refusal to adapt to a world where poor people and sick people and black people and brown people and female people and gay people count.”

PeopleWorldEndsGuyTurnsUniverseBlackWhitePoorRepublicanGayFemaleSickBrownBlack PeopleDeclineArrogantEntitledStubbornPoor PeoplePlagueSelectRefusalGay PeopleDroughtWhite GuysBossyUptightSmallpoxConquistadorsMayans
Author:Maureen Dowd
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“If you were to go, and hopefully someday you will, you would see a lot of paintings of dead people. You'd see Jesus on the cross, and you'd see a dude get stabbed in the neck, and you'd see people dying at sea and in battle and a parade of martyrs. But Not. One. Single. Cancer. Kid. Nobody biting it from the plague or smallpox or yellow fever or whatever, because there is no glory in illness. There is no meaning to it. There is no honor in dying of.”

PeopleIfsKidsJesusSeaDyingPaintingHonorBattleGloryCrossesCancerIllnessHopefullyNecksSomedayYellowPlagueMartyrFeverParadesBitingDead PeopleSmallpoxPeople DyingYellow Fever
Author:John Green
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“The last few centuries have seen the world freed from several scourges-slavery, for example; death by torture for heretics; and, most recently, smallpox. I am optimistic enough to believe that the next scourge to disappear will be large-scale warfare-killed by the existence and nonuse of nuclear weapons.”

WorldBelieveWarEnoughLastsNextExistenceCenturyExampleWeaponsSlaveryDisappearNuclearScalesOptimisticTortureNuclear WeaponsWarfareHereticLarge ScaleScourgeSmallpox
Author:Luis Walter Alvarez
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“While the vaccine discovery was progressive, the joy I felt at the prospect before me of being the instrument destined to take away from the world one of its greatest calamities [smallpox], blended with the fond hope of enjoying independence and domestic peace and happiness, was often so excessive that, in pursuing my favourite subject among the meadows, I have sometimes found myself in a kind of reverie.”

WorldKindSometimesScienceJoyFoundFeltEnjoySubjectsDiscoveryIndependenceInstrumentsProgressiveFavouriteDestinedCalamityVaccinesMeadowsPeace And HappinessReverieSmallpox
Author:Edward Jenner
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“I do think the Roman Catholic religion is a disease of the mind which has a particular epidemiology similar to that of a virus... Religion is a terrific meme. That's right. But that doesn't make it true and I care about what's true. Smallpox virus is a terrific virus. It does its job magnificently well. That doesn't mean that it's a good thing. It doesn't mean that I don't want to see it stamped out.”

ThinkingWantMindWellsMeanDoeCareJobsAtheismParticularDiseaseCatholicGood ThingsI CareTerrificVirusesMemesRoman CatholicSmallpoxEpidemiologyCatholic Religion
Author:Richard Dawkins
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“We do know that the Iraqi regime has chemical and biological weapons. His regime has amassed large, clandestine stockpiles of chemical weapons - including VX, sarin, cyclosarin and mustard gas. His regime has amassed large, clandestine stockpiles of biological weapons—including anthrax and botulism toxin, and possibly smallpox.”

KnowsWeaponsIncludingGasChemicalsRegimesMustardChemical WeaponsToxinsSmallpoxBiological WeaponsClandestineAnthraxMustard Gas
Author:Donald Rumsfeld
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