Smallpox is a disease that most people are unfamiliar with nowadays, and because of the development of medical equipment and early vaccination, it has become a rare occurrence. However, in fact, during the Ming and Qing Dynasties, smallpox caused a large number of deaths due to the ravages of smallpox, and even had a serious impact on the governance of the early Qing Dynasty. So how did the Qing Dynasty, which had no vaccine, fight against smallpox?
For those who suffered from smallpox, having smallpox was equivalent to having to wait for death, because smallpox at that time was almost a terminal disease. People were very intimidated and scared. When there was an epidemic, people would only avoid it negatively. Smallpox can never be prevented, but unfortunately most of the people who avoided the disease were not spared. And smallpox is mostly found in infants and young children, resulting in a large number of deaths in infants and young children.
After Kangxi succeeded to the throne, some of the traditional cures in the south gradually spread to the north. For that period, there were generally two methods to fight against smallpox, namely: the dry seedling method and the water seedling method. The dry vaccine method is to take the smallpox scabs from the person suffering from smallpox, and then research into fine powder, plus camphor ice tablets, etc. Blow into the nose of the person suffering from smallpox; water vaccine method is to add the smallpox scabs to the person suffering from smallpox, human milk or water, and then after dipping cotton swabs into it, stuffed into the person suffering from smallpox in the nose, and then take good care of it, until the disease disappears. In addition to the above vaccine method, Kang Xi had also adopted some traditional methods to curb the occurrence of smallpox.
During the Qing Dynasty, even though the rulers had been fighting against smallpox, they were never 100 percent sure of eradicating it. It was only in the mid-to-late 20th century that smallpox was effectively contained and eradicated, and it was only because of the containment and eradication of smallpox that we now have a better life with very little smallpox.