Emergence and History: Variola Stories.

In his travels, Brilliant met Neem Karoli Baba, a holy man who prophesized that Brilliant was destined to lead the final eradication of smallpox, God's gift to mankind. The boy had suffered a typically mild episode of cowpox; later that year, Jenner infected him with infectious matter from smallpox pustules, and indeed, Phipps failed to contract smallpox altogether. In his interviews, Brilliant described his participation in the WHO's smallpox eradication campaign as the "serendipitous" fulfillment of this prophecy. As a symptomatically visual disease, smallpox epidemics date to ancient times: we find notations in histories of the Athenian plague and in research on Egyptian mummies. [Extracted from the article]