Doctors generally consider smallpox to be the worst human disease. It is thought to have killed more people than any other infectious pathogen, including the Black Death of the Middle Ages. Epidemiologists think that smallpox killed roughly one billion people during its last hundred years of activity onearth.

Richard Preston
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It’s true that smallpox was one of the most terrible diseases in human history, but it is not the worst. That honor would have to go to the Black Death. The Black Death was a plague that swept across Europe in the mid-1300s. It was responsible for killing about 75 percent of Europe’s population during its course. When the Black Death finally ended, about 25 years later, it had killed an estimated 75 to 80 percent of all Europeans.

Source: The Demon In The Freezer

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