| Abstract: | Smallpox is considered by various authorities to have been known to the inhabitants of the Nile basin and neighbouring countries for around a millennium and a half. The disease has been a constant threat to the Sudan. Recurrent epidemics have varied in their distribution and severity, but their repercussions on the population and the economy would perhaps only be overshadowed by the devastating effects of cholera, drought and famine. Of all the serious diseases which haunted the land, smallpox was unique in lending itself to traditional control efforts, and was perhaps the first to be subdued by modern medical techniques. More than one method of traditional variolation were practised by the people of the Sudan, among other native cures for the disease, long before the Turks introduced modern-style Jennerian vaccination into the country after 1820. By piecing together the scraps of evidence from historical records some pre-nineteenth century outbreaks of smallpox are documented. It was not until the Anglo-Egyptian administration that the incidence of the disease was brought down to insignificant proportions. Ref. |
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