physiologicdeadspace: Wax model of smallpox lesions on the face of 15 year old boy, made by William
physiologicdeadspace: Wax model of smallpox lesions on the face of 15 year old boy, made by William Gottheil, 1917. The worldwide death toll from smallpox has been estimated to be between 300 to 500 million. The last death from smallpox occurred in 1978, when medical photographer Janet Parker contracted smallpox in the building where she worked. She worked for Birmingham University Medical School, one floor above the medical microbiology department of where research into smallpox was ongoing. It was found that a phone booth she had used to order photography equipment shared a ventilation system with the laboratory where smallpox was being stored, and this was how she contracted the infection. Parker’s 71-year old father died of a heart attack on the 7th of September after he visited his daughter, who would have been in an advanced stage of the illness and covered in horrific sores and scars. Parker herself died only a few days later on the 11th of September, 1978.The head of the medical microbiology department, Henry Bedson, died by suicide on the 6th of September, as a result of the guilt he felt over Parker’s illness. He had also been the person to conduct the diagnostic tests on the fluid taken from Parker’s skin lesions, confirming the pox diagnosis. His suicide note read:I am sorry to have misplaced the trust which so many of my friends and colleagues have placed in me and my work. -- source link
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