Smallpox is something that has been forgotten. Dr Grumble's
students puzzle over smallpox vaccination scars that are an
incidental finding in many patients over a certain age.
Amazingly, Dr Grumble is yet to find a new student who can even
guess what causes these scars. Dr Grumble is not an expert on
smallpox but it is one of the first diseases that he learned
about. He remembers well the fearfulness, almost terror,
smallpox caused in 1962 when he was a young child in South
Wales. Dr Grumble can remember his father telling him that a
South Wales obstetrician had contracted smallpox after attending
a post mortem on a pregnant patient who had died unexpectedly.
It turned out that she had had smallpox. Smallpox, you see, does
not necessarily present with all those ghastly pustules you see
in the pictures of old. As far as Dr Grumble can recall, the
disease had been spread around by the index case, a recent
immigrant from Pakistan, who had visited various prostitutes.
This made any idea of contact tracing awkward