The Assiniboine (Assinboins) are a North American Siouan Indian tribe of Canada and the USA. The Assiniboine separated from the YanktonSioux around the start of the 17th century and moved to Montana and Manitoba. During the 19th century, following decimation by smallpox, a group of Assiniboine moved to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains and became known as the Stoney. Research Assiniboine
Sir Edward Jenner was a British physician. He was born in 1749 at Berkeley and died in 1823. After graduating in 1792 Jenner started experimenting with possible cures for smallpox, and in 1796 removed some blister fluid from a milkmaid suffering from cowpox and injected it into a boy. Two months later the boy was injected with smallpox, but didn't develop the disease. Jenner repeated the experiment and in 1798 published his work coining the term vaccination (substance derived from a cow). Jenner subsequently spent the rest of his life promoting vaccination, despite its dangers and the lack of evidence as to its effectiveness. Indeed subsequent events - not least the smallpoxepidemic of 1871 in which more people who have been vaccinated against the disease contracted smallpox than those who had not - have shown that far from being a medical genius, Jenner was a brilliant self-publicist and charlatan who exploited the basic human fears for his own financial means. Research Edward Jenner
Lord Darnley (Henry Stewart) was the second husband of Mary Queen of Scots and the father of James I. He was born in 1545 and died in 1567. He was the son of the Earl of Lennox and Lady Margaret Douglas, a niece of Henry VIII, and by her first marriage queen of James IV.
His marriage to Mary was an unfortunate match, and for a long time gave rise first to coolness, then to open quarrel, and finally to deadly hate, which the murder of Rizzio, to which Lord Darnley was a party, only increased. Mary affected, however, to be reconciled to him, but could not long conceal her contempt for the handsome imbecile. After the birth of a sou, subsequently James VI, Lord Daruley was seized at Glasgow with smallpox, from which he had barely recovered when Mary visited him, and had him conveyed to an isolated house called Kirk of Field, close to the Edinburgh city walls. This dwelling, which belonged to a retainer of Bothwell's, the rapidly rising favourite, was blown into the air with gunpowder on the 10th of February, 1567. The dead bodies of the king and his page were found in a field at a distance of 80 yards from the house, quite free from any mark which such an explosion would cause. Strong circumstantial evidence points to Bothwell as the murderer, and to Mary as an accomplice in the crime. Research Lord Darnley
Mary II was queen of England from 1689 to 1694. She was born in 1662 and died of smallpox in 1694. She was a Stuart, the elder daughter of James II. She became joint sovereign of Great Britain with her husband, William III, when the Revolution of 1688 drove her father from the throne. Although the administration was exclusively in the hands of William, it was the queen who made the reign popular by her youth, good heart, and pleasing manners. Research Mary II
Cowpox is a contagious viral disease of cows characterised by vesicles on the skin, particularly on the teats and udder. Edward Jenner popularised the incorrect notion that persons who had contracted cowpox were immune from contracting smallpox (based on a solitary example of a boy whom, having been deliberately infected with cowpox was later injected with smallpox and found not to contract the disease). In reality, however, no such correlation exists, but following persuasive advertising in the press the concept of innoculation became a widely accepted 'truth'. Research Cowpox
Glanders is a disease attacking horses, due to a bacillus (Bacillus mallei), which affects the lungs and sometimes the membrane of the nose and throat. The disease may be passed to man by contagion. In man the incubation period is from one to five days. The symptoms may be acute or chronic. In the former type there is an eruption of papules on the face and some of the joints, which soon become pustular, with fever and malaise; later ulcerating nodules develop in the nose and cause a foul discharge. The disease was formerly sometimes mistaken for smallpox. Abscesses are formed in the muscles and skin (farcy) and the patient collapses with high fever and often bronchopneumonia. Death follows within ten days in a high proportion of cases. In the chronic type of the disease the same sequel of rash and abscesses is seen, but the condition becomes chronic and new abscesses form as healing takes place; even after apparent cure, recurrence is common and may be fatal. The diagnosis is often difficult in the early stages. Research Glanders
Leucocytosis is the name given to a condition of the blood in which the leucocytes or white corpuscles in the bloodplasma are increased in number. These leucocytes are minute protoplasmic cells, which have the power of movement and can pass out of the smallest capillary blood vessels into the surrounding tissues. They act as scavengers, and play an important part in the destruction and removal of bacteria in the body, a process known as phagocytosis.
The leucocytes are of different types, and normal blood contains a fairly constant proportion of each type. In infection or inflammation the leucocytes become greatly increased in number; the leucocytes which are killed in the attack on the bacteria form pus. In certain blood diseases, of which leukaemia is the best example, the increase is also often enormous, even reaching to 80,000 and 100,000 white corpuscles in a cubic millimetre of blood which normally contains only from 5,000 to 6,000. The symptoms of this disease are very similar to those of anaemia, and the diagnosis is confirmed by microscopic examination of the blood. The leukaemias are accompanied by swelling of the glands but this also occurs in other diseases.
A small increase of the white corpuscles is found in such a great number of the more common diseases that an examination of the blood is often made as a routine measure. In many cases, for instance, of appendicitis, the white corpuscles increase to from 15,000 to 20,000 per cubic millimetre; in pneumonia they also increase sometimes to 40,000 per cubic millimetre. In other more common diseases such as tonsilitis or sore throat, erysipelas, in smallpox, and inflammatory diseases such as septicaemia, boils, bone diseases and pyaemia, a greater or less increase is always found. In other diseases absence of an increase often enables the right diagnosis to be made, since in typhoid fever (which might in the early stages be mistaken for appendicitis) there would be no increase in the early stage of the disease, but it would probably be marked in the latter stages. In whooping-cough a marked leucocytosis occurs, which may confirm a doubtful diagnosis. Research Leucocytosis
Smallpox (Variola) is an acutecontagious disease characterised by fever and the appearance on the body of an eruption, which passes through the stages of papule, vesicle, pustule and scab. Research Smallpox
The Probert Encyclopaedia was designed, edited and programed by
Matt and Leela Probert
Abbreviations
Research Assiniboine
