Smallpox in the Americas after Columbus

• cattle, horses, camels all have pox viruses; llama, the major American pack animal, does not; Americans had not seen the virus

• Americans also had less genetic diversity than Europeans

• in initial epidemics, Americans lived in cities—Incans, Aztecs

• Americans may have been selected for T_H2 bias by parasites—flukes, tapeworm, nematodes

• epidemics

  • Aztec 1520

  • Inca 1524, 25, 33, 35, 58, 65

  • New England 1616, 33; however, these people didn’t live in big cities

  • Siberians: 1768

  • Mexico: 1779

  • Guatemala: 1780

  • Columbia: 1781

  • Ecuador: 1783

• Lord Jeffrey Amherst proposed in writing to Colonel Henry Bouquet to send smallpox-infected blankets to the Indians to reduce their numbers during the French and Indian War in the 1760s

• this was done more than once by other Europeans, generally successfully

• in 1781, Comanche, Lakota, Shoshoe were greatly reduced in number

Category: Pathology Notes