George Washington and SmallpoxA Revolutionary Hero and Public Health

Benjamin A. Drew, BS1

JAMA Dermatol. Published online March 04, 2015.

http://archderm.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleID=2169316

George Washington is familiar as America’s Revolutionary War general and inaugural president. But less known is that Washington, while audaciously battling the British Army, simultaneously waged a behind-the-scenes public health campaign against a serious, sinister, and pathological threat to American military readiness: smallpox.

Washington himself had contracted smallpox as a 19-year-old traveling abroad in 1751. The disease nearly took his life, but he survived with pockmark scars and life-long immunity.