Smallpox death rate
by Dr Shelton DC
If the death rate of smallpox and fevers was so enormous, it was largely due to the medical treatment of that time. A number of eruptive diseases such as measles, chicken pox, scarlet fever etc. were regarded as smallpox before Dr. Sydenham differentiated between the various symptom-complexes. How great the number of deaths was from scarlet fever, measles, chicken pox etc., that were included in the smallpox epidemics will never be known. Dr. Russell T. Trall, the eminent Natural Hygienist, considered smallpox "as essentially . . . not a dangerous disease." He cared for large numbers of patients afflicted with smallpox and never lost a case. Under conventional medical treatment, patients were drugged heroically, bled profusely, were smothered in blankets, wallowed in dirty linen, were allowed no water, fresh air and stuffed with milk, brandy or wine. Antimony and Mercury were medicated in large doses. Physicians kept their patients bundled up warm in bed, with the room heated and doors and windows carefully closed, so that not a breath of fresh air could get in, and given freely large doses of drugs to induce sweating (Sudorifics), plus wine and aromatized liquors. Fever patients were put into vaporbath chambers in order to sweat the impurities out of the system. Given no water when they cried for it and when gasping for air were carried to a dry-hot room and after a while were returned to the steam torture. Many must have died of Heat Stroke!
How did smallpox originate? It appeared only with the collapse of the Greek and Roman Civilization with its high standards of health. Neither Greece nor Rome suffered from smallpox while a disease resembling it decimated populations in Africa and Asia. The sanitary and hygienic systems of the great pagan civilizations—public baths, gymnasia, solaria, athletic stadiums, municipal water supply, drainage, toilet facilities, well-aired, sunny, spacious and clean living quarters, garbage disposal, simple, natural and unspoiled foods—prevented the appearance of infectious diseases and fevers. The sanitary conditions in the towns and cities of Europe in which smallpox raged were most frightful. According to Montgomery’s English History, the streets of London and other cities were rarely more than twelve to fifteen feet wide were neither paved nor lighted. Pools of stagnant water accumulated everywhere, heaps of garbage abounded and were only removed when it began to obstruct the traffic. There was no sewage and dead dogs, cats, rubbish, rotten vegetable and fruit refuse, human and animal excreta, and slops from the kitchen were all thrown into the streets. Surrounded by high walls, cities could not expand and people were forced to live in a slum-like manner. Holes served as windows, with little or no ventilation, whole families slept in one room often in one bed, and hundreds of persons lived in one building crowded in from the sub-celler to the attic. They rarely ever washed, had no bath tubs, no underwear and wore the same clothes day and night. They lived in utmost poverty, slaved long hours, even the children worked, drank heavily of alcohol, ate like hogs of spoiled, unnatural food and suffered from malnutrition.