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Smallpox
11 min read
Also known as: variola · smallpox · human pox · Variola vera · pox disease · true smallpox · Variola major · Variola minor · pox infection · smallpox epidemic · black pox
Your Body Is Speaking
Smallpox is today — and this can be said without pathos — a disease of collective memory. Since 1980 it has been declared eradicated worldwide. No child fears it anymore. No doctor sees it anymore. And yet it has not simply disappeared. It lives on: in old faces that still bear faint scars. In family stories of grandparents who lost siblings. In museums, in paintings, in language. "Pockmarked", "marked", "scarred by life" — these are words that come from a time when the body carried the traces of a storm that never quite left.
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