One Big Sore: Confluent Smallpox

Pocks so Thick They Ran Together

When the pustules congealed into one massive sore, sufferers were said to have confluent smallpox. Sometimes it made skin slough off in sheets.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was said to be “exceedingly full” with pocks, which probably meant that this was what she experienced.
 

Confluent smallpox was rarer and more dangerous than the usual discrete form of the disease.

• Victims were said to look unnaturally old or young.
• Some looked as if they’d been wrapped in a tight gray caul or film.

All About Smallpox: Next

A third – hemorrhagic — variant was even worse…
 

Photo by J. B. Byles, in Thomas Francis Ricketts, The Diagnosis of Smallpox (London, 1908)