#smallpox virus

“Showing upon the face and cheeks a form of the disease commonly known as ‘black smallpox.’ (...) The swelling and disfigurement of the face present a most striking appearance.”

“Showing a few thick crusts remaining upon the face with numerous dull red spots from which the crusts have fallen.”

“Figs. 1 and 3 show the dried pustules remaining in the thickened skin of palm and sole after the crusts have fallen elsewhere. Fig. 2 shows the superficial desquamation which follows the falling of the crusts, producing rings of partly detached epidermis.“

“Showing numerous incipient papules upon the face. Those upon the forehead were the first to appear and are most prominent. the cheeks present a characteristic leathery appearance.”

“This shows the earliest eruption upon back and buttocks. The photograph was taken about seven hours after its first appearance. The patient was sent to Riverside Hospital where she developed hemorrhagic smallpox, and died on the fourth day.”

Images of Hopewell Smallpox Hospital on Porter’s Island, Ottawa. The building opened in in 1913 and had room for 82 patients at its height. Before the hospital was built, Porter’s Island had housed isolation cases during outbreaks in tent hospitals. These conditions discouraged infected individuals from willingly going there without force. 

Negative views of isolation on the island also influenced public resistance against the building of a hospital. Until an outbreak of smallpox in 1911, Ottawa citizens instead saw it more fitting that it be used as a public park.

Interestingly, the building’s architect, Frank C. Sullivan, worked on it in close collaboration with Frank Lloyd Wright. 

“A case of moderate severity, with well-developed vesicles and characteristic grouping of lesions upon the face.”