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Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82

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If we think that America has never known an infectious epidemic other than the Great Influenza after World War I, we'd be wise to consider the smallpox pandemic that swept the length & breadth of the North American continent just as the Revolutionary fever did.

Pox American: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82 is a fascinating way to learn about the early years of our nation when cultures collided on this continent. Each chapter starts with a story of one man - a ship's captain exploring the Straits of Juan de Fuca or a New England volunteer in the Continental Army or a missionary riding the dusty Southwest trails. From these individual's stories we can see scope of the virus' reach. With pictographs, maps, charts & photographs, this author brings this contagion close to home!

Sometimes the dread disease was an invisible passenger upon an unsuspecting carrier that would arrive in a tribe of otherwise healthy people & within weeks, the entire community would be dead. Sometimes it was intentionally sent forth by our wily forefathers to do their deadly work.

Smallpox haunted our ancestors from coast to coast; from Russian promyshlenniki (hunters & traders) who first explored & then enslaved the residents of Alaska to America's breadbasket, where entire native communities of farmers & hunter-gatherers were wiped out in weeks to Hudson Bay, New Orleans, The South as well as Mexico City.

Elizabeth Fenn writes: "The pestilence can teach us the ways in which other upheavels - native warfare, missionization, the fur trade, and the acquisition of horses and guns...reshaped human life on the North American continent. The movement of the virus from one human being to another shows us how people actually lived in the late eighteenth century. For despite the political, social, and racial boundaries of the day, people rubbed elbows."

I cannot do justice to the scope & breadth of this author's research. Pox Americana is a compelling read, a dread-filled chronicle of another aspect of our story & Professor Elizabeth Fenn has written a rich & interesting story with a huge Notes Section, as befits a teacher of history!

I first read of the devastation that smallpox wrought on the Continental Army while reading David McCullough's terrific biography, "John Adams" and was lucky enough to have seen, subsequently, "Pox Americana" author Elizabeth Fenn delve more deeply into the topic on cable TV's C-Span "Booknotes." Professor Fenn has written a well-researched book on smallpox....one that is not only informative, but generally easily readable.

This is really two books. The first half covers the trail of Variola (smallpox) transmission throughout the course of the American Revolution and in this first half, Ms. Fenn writes with a prose that captures the reader with graphic details of the harshness of the disease itself, the suffering of those who were unlucky enough to have caught it, and the fear that became a constant in the lives of not only those who fought militarily but those in the civilian ranks as well. She gives us facts about how the smallpox incubates, how long it takes to run its course and how it was so easily transmittable. The reader can almost hear the agony of those inflicted and see the smallpox spread over their bodies. Ms. Fenn points to a tie-in (also in the McCullough book) that it is very likely that the British had tried to use the transmission of smallpox from their more disease-tolerant armies to the weaker American ones as an example of the first "germ warfare" thrust upon our newly independent country. The fact that George Washington had the timely sense (and good fortune) to inoculate his army during the winter of 1777, thus proving it to be a turning point in the war, is a remarkable story in itself....not one I'm sure that most students learn in school!

The narrative in the second half of "Pox Americana" is weaker. Ms. Fenn, while continuing to do a superb in-depth job at following the disease around North America (mostly through Indian tribes), loses her descriptive appeal. The book now becomes more of an encyclopedia of numbers of deaths, which tribe could have passed it to which other one, and so on. At points we are inundated by the vast numbers of tribes and without the help of some elementary-looking maps, the reader can quite easily get lost. Still, the author has put forth her research at a compelling depth. I wonder now that Ms. Fenn has written this book, is there another book in her future which keeps the more fascinating Revolutionary War aspect and includes all different types of diseases that may have hit the colonists? She would be just the one to write it.

Pox is a truly scholarly work based on primary historical documents. It is obvious that it was a true labor of love by Prof. Fenn.

The epidemic that Fenn studied is a particularly valuable in understanding a little known area of the American Revolutionary War (though her scope covers the entire North American Continet).

Many know that the British had released smallpox on French alligned tribes seiging Ft. Pitt during the French Indian War. Less known was the great concern that General George Washington had about smallpox during the American Revolution. Elsewhere, it has been described that the main reason the seige of Boston lasted as long as it did was due to smallpox, and that the Continental Army was the first army in world history to require compulsory immunization - force-wide.

Prof. Fenn paints an even darker picture. It could be said that the events with smallpox during the Revolutionary War was America's first biological emergency. She clearly documents cases that appear to be obvious attempts by the British to infect COntinental Forces with smallpox at Boston, and later in Virginia. The Virginia case is most appauling as the British turned freed slaves (loyalists) into their delivery vehicle.

The failure to innoculate forces was cited as the main reason the Continental Army failed to take Canada. The army literally melted away, with replacements being taken down as soon as they arrived.

Eventually, 1777, the Continental Army required that all new recruits go through innoculation stations before joining the army.

The remainder of the book (2/3rds) describes the impact of smallpox on other communities in North America. The impact on the tribes around Vancouver at the time clearly documents how devistating disease can be to a civilization.

Pox Americana tells the story of the great smallpox epidemic of the 1770s and 1780s in North America. The epidemic affected the American Revolution because colonial soldiers who had not been previously exposed to smallpox contracted it in huge numbers, particularly in the New England and Southern colonies where inoculation had not been a widespread practice. As a result of the disease British troops, most of whom had already been through the disease or been inoculated for it, found another advantage over the Americans in the early stages of the war. Fenn goes into somewhat harrowing detail as she describes the sufferings of those who contracted the disease and those who went through the inoculation process, which must have been almost as awful as the disease itself.

Although the British had an advantage over the colonial soldiers in that most of them were already immune to smallpox, the King's forces still suffered from the epidemic due to the inroads the disease made among the slaves who flocked to join the British armies, particularly in the Southern colonies. In the African American population the smallpox germ found another previously unexposed host, and the results were once more incredibly deadly. Fenn documents several cases where the British and later the Americans themselves practiced a primitive type of biological war by releasing contagious people into unexposed populations and by allowing items used by sufferers to be distributed to healthy people

In the Native American territories west of the thirteen colonies smallpox also spread like wildfire. Fenn does a good job of tracing possible routes the disease followed as it spread from settlement to settlement along trade routes and shipping lanes, decimating the Indians, who again had no previous exposure and thus no defenses.

Pox Americana is valuable because it reminds us of our vulnerability to diseases which spread silently from victim to victim, and helps us realize that one of the deadliest weapons of war is not man made (though it is often deliberately helped along its way)

This is an excellent work. It bogs down a bit in the second half but only for 30 or so pages as the author gets into the detail of some purported statistical analysis, information that could have been handled as an appendix. But overall it is a wow!

Starting with the impact of smallpox on the American Revolution, 1775 - 1782, Elizabeth Fenn continues her study with concurrent analyses of Mexico, where Church burial records provide a very solid underpinning for the magnitude of the epidemic, the Canadian interior, the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. The devastation was appalling. Twenty years later George Vancouver would report extended villages in Puget Sound without a soul. Lewis and Clark would report similar Native American villages in the interior that had been deserted for an extended period of time.

Fenn's effort was no simple task. The unexpected bonus is that for the first time I began to understand the magnitude of trading patterns that had been established by Native Americans on the North American Continent, before the arrival of Europeans.

This is a wonderful book, very enlightening and very well worth your time.

Pox Americana by Elizabeth Fenn is a great piece of work! Smallpox was one of those virtually forgotten diseases. Elizabeth's book brings together the most comprehensive and yet an easy reading reference on the disease. The information is presented in a logical and systematic way allowing for a smooth flow and easy reading. The book demonstrates how such diseases are not just military factors but are wars in themselves! Elizabeth shows clearly how the disease has shaped our nation. This is rather timely considering the dire need for such a reference under the prevailing threats of bio-terrorism. It is a book that should provide all the information that you need to understand the threats from smallpox. I particularly liked the thorough examination of the historical facts which eases viewing our present situation in an historical context. The other book that really compares with it is "Bugs in Armor: a tale of malaria and soldiering" by Robert Bwire.

Elizabeth A. Fenn's Pox Americana (The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82) is an interesting book that traces the course of this horrendous pox as it veers bloodily throughout the continent of North America. It is very well researched and assembled with great skill. The writing lacks a little narrative punch to carry it over to great pop history but it has all the details in the writing for the history fan to enjoy following this story. The most interesting (and important) aspect of the pox story is the tale beyond the Revolutionary War in the rest of the continent, particulary the southwest, north (in Canada) and the Pacific Northwest (where the pox made first contact in many areas, ahead of Europeans). This part of the story is effectively illuminated by the author. An important book beyond its current terrorism inspired significance.

Germ warfare isn't a new idea to us. This book, while clearly stating the impact of smallpox during American's war for independence, also gives us a deeper understanding of how the rest of the continent was made available for conquest. The organizational style was overwhelming at times. I occasionally needed to refer back to earlier sections of the book to clarify dates and places. The title is intriguing and prompted many conversations.

More scholarly than "entertaining" in tone, this book traces smallpox epidemics and their influence upon the progress of war, settlement, and "who wins" in the race for political and social primacy. If you've an interest in colonial history (particularly the war for independence in the southern colonies), you'll find that this book explains just how significantly smallpox affected the war's progress (something only tangentially mentioned in other histories I've read) as well as the role it played in the rise and fall of various Indian tribes. I particularly appreciate the author's restraint in making sweeping or hysterical value judgements about the actions of various individuals or nations -- she documents what is, and is not, known and permits the reader to make those judgements for himself.

With Pox Americana, Fenn crafts a sprawling narrative detailing the overlooked smallpox epidemic of 1775-1782 in the Americas and the tumultuous times of revolution that surrounded it. While the global devastation caused by smallpox over the past few centuries has been well documented, Fenn's book offers an uneven but often compelling perspective on the events that shaped America's birth, deftly elucidating the undeniable influence of smallpox on the course of the American Revolution.

Pox Americana begins with an account of the American army and George Washington's struggle to fight off both smallpox and the British; the narrative is especially gripping here, as it provides a detailed glimpse into how prominently smallpox factored into both side's war strategies. Fenn then traces smallpox's journey through North America by detailing the lives of the various peoples who inhabited America and the constant struggle to coexist with the lethal contagion and carry on with their lives. With the myriad stories of the colonists waging war to the Native Americans running the fur trade, Fenn raises many themes that still resonate today, particularly the use of biological warfare and how the American way of life facilitates the transmission of disease.

The scope of Pox Americana is breathtaking. Fenn clearly poured over many, many sources to craft her portrait of an infant America irrevocably shaped by the smallpox epidemic. The research pays off; the role of smallpox in George Washington's decision-making process and the tragedy that befell countless Native Americans makes for compelling history reading. Yet Fenn's narrative is not without its share of flaws. While it may be a function of the historical events themselves, Pox Americana is a very top-heavy narrative; it starts out strong in its depiction of the American Revolution but loses steam throughout the second half of the book, when the revolution is no longer the focus. During this second half the narrative becomes bogged down in repetitive and overlong accounts of Native Americans and settlers dealing with smallpox during the fur trade. Unfortunately, the book never really recovers, losing momentum long before the epilogue rolls around.

Yet Pox Americana's shortcomings never quite derail the experience. Despite the uneven structure and pacing of the narrative, the sheer amount of quality historical content makes Pox Americana a unique and worthwhile read for anyone remotely interested in learning how one disease helped define the course of a burgeoning country.