Smallpox

Smallpox was introduced in the Americas in 1521, when it first struck the capital of the Aztec empire, Tenochtitlan. Transmitted directly from human-to-human, through contaminated exhaled air, or contact with the open sores or clothing of an infected victim, the disease wiped out entire populations, killing nine in every ten people. Those who cared for the victims of the disease soon developed its symptoms of a fever, severe rash, internal bleeding, and blindness. Since the caretakers of the ill contracted the disease as well, later dying, most natives were doomed to death, if not from the smallpox, from starvation.