When some states introduced mandatory smallpox vaccinations during the epidemic of 1898-1903, Americans resisted by the thousands. The ensuing battles produced medical conventions and case law that altered the balance between government authority and medical practice, in favor of federal control.

Historical records show that smallpox was a human scourge for thousands of years. The virus produces high fever, severe back pain and scarring eruptions of flat red spots on the skin that turn into pustules and then into scabs - a two-week process during which the disease is highly contagious.

How did we cure polio, smallpox and send a man to the moon? How did we decode the human genome in just 13 years? Collaboration. Focus on a specific goal, and teamwork.

You don't have to vaccinate every man, woman and child in the country if you have a couple of cases of smallpox cropping up.

Smallpox, which spreads by respiration and kills roughly one in three of those infected, took hundreds of millions of lives during a recorded history dating to Pharaonic Egypt. The last case was in 1978, and the disease was declared eradicated on May 8, 1980.

Smallpox was the worst disease in history. It killed more people than all the wars in history.

I was nauseous and tingly all over. I was either in love or I had smallpox.

Measles and TB evolved from diseases of our cattle, influenza from a disease of pigs, and smallpox possibly from a disease of camels. The Americas had very few native domesticated animal species from which humans could acquire such diseases.

In the 19th century, smallpox was widely considered a disease of filth, which meant that it was largely understood to be a disease of the poor. According to filth theory, any number of contagious diseases were caused by bad air that had been made foul by excrement or rot.

I think when smallpox was eliminated, the whole world got pretty excited about that because it's just such a dramatic success.

There are cases where government-to-government aid actually has worked. Look at the eradication of smallpox and the near eradication of polio. But these are really top down solutions that require government-to-government support and aid.

In 1967, the world health community launched a global effort to eradicate smallpox. It took a coordinated, worldwide effort, required the commitment of every government, and cost $130 million dollars. By 1977, smallpox had disappeared.

Oh, if I had been loved at the age of seventeen, what an idiot I would be today. Happiness is like smallpox: if you catch it too soon, it can completely ruin your constitution.

The U.S. government has known since the early 1990s about Soviet-era smallpox weapons, and collected circumstantial evidence of programs elsewhere.

Nobody spends any money on smallpox unless they worry about a bio-terrorist recreating it.

For long-duration exploration missions, NASA is looking for folks with a lot of operational, hands-on experience, people who have been in field-type situations such as military deployments. In my case, I worked in the Congo and in Biosafety Level 4 labs on smallpox.