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Kōrero: Epidemics

Child with smallpox, 1904

A young girl with spots all over her body sits on a nurse’s knee.

Smallpox was a highly infectious and deadly disease. Sufferers were often thickly covered with large, prominent, fluid-filled spots all over their body and sometimes internally. This girl, who had not been vaccinated, is infected with smallpox. If she survived, she was probably badly scarred for the rest of her life. Presumably the nurse on whose knee she is sitting has been vaccinated.

Te whakamahi i tēnei tūemi

Te Ara - The Encyclopedia of New Zealand

Reference: Appendices to the Journals of the House of Representatives, H-31, 1904, p. XVI

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Ngā whakaahua me ngā rauemi katoa o tēnei kōrero

Me pēnei te tohu i te whārang

Geoff Rice, Epidemics – The influenza era, 1890s to 1920s, Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/mi/photograph/27787/child-with-smallpox-1904 (accessed 4 June 2026).

He kōrero nā Geoff Rice, i tāngia i te 30 March 2011.

Comments

JC
27 May 2012
As the mortality rate was less than one in three, it should not be assumed that this girl died of smallpox. Her case appears to have been a relatively mild infection.