Catherine then sought to have inoculations throughout her empire stating: "My objective was, through my example, to save from death the multitude of my subjects who, not knowing the value of this technique, and frightened of it, were left in danger." By 1800, approximately 2 million inoculations were administered in the Russian Empire.In China, the Qing dynasty had extensive protocols to protect Manchus from Pekings endemic smallpox. U.S. Presidents George Washington, Andrew Jackson, and Abraham Lincoln all contracted and recovered from the disease. Washington became infected with smallpox on a visit to Barbados in 1751. Jackson developed the illness after being taken prisoner by the British during the American Revolution, and though he recovered, his brother Robert did not. Lincoln contracted the disease during his presidency, possibly from his son Tad, and was quarantined shortly after giving the Gettysburg address in 1863.Famous theologian Jonathan Edwards died of smallpox in 1758 following an inoculation.Soviet leader Joseph Stalin fell ill with smallpox at the age of seven. His face was badly scarred by the disease. He later had photographs retouched to make his pockmarks less apparent.Hungarian poet Ferenc Kölcsey, who wrote the Hungarian national anthem, lost his right eye to smallpox. Tradition and religion
In the face of the devastation of smallpox, various smallpox gods and goddesses have been worshipped throughout parts of the Old World, for example in China and India. In China, the smallpox goddess was referred to as Tou-Shen Niang-Niang (Chinese: 痘疹娘娘).
On 24 June 1763, William Trent, a local trader and commander of the Fort Pitt militia, wrote, "Out of our regard for them, we gave them two Blankets and an Handkerchief out of the Small Pox Hospital. I hope it will have the desired effect." The effectiveness of this effort to broadcast the disease is unknown. There are also accounts that smallpox was used as a weapon during the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783).According to a theory put forward in Journal of Australian Studies (JAS) by independent researcher Christopher Warren, Royal Marines used smallpox in 1789 against indigenous tribes in New South Wales. This theory was also considered earlier in Bulletin of the History of Medicine and by David Day. However it is disputed by some medical academics, including Professor Jack Carmody, who in 2010 claimed that the rapid spread of the outbreak in question was more likely indicative of chickenpox—a more infectious disease which, at the time, was often confused, even by surgeons, with smallpox, and may have been comparably deadly to Aborigines and other peoples without natural immunity to it. Carmody noted that in the 8-month voyage of the First Fleet and the following 14 months there were no reports of smallpox amongst the colonists and that, since smallpox has an incubation period of 10–12 days, it is unlikely it was present in the First Fleet; however, Warren argued in the JAS article that the likely source was bottles of smallpox virus possessed by First Fleet surgeons.