The Story Behind a Scar: A Forgotten Mark of a Vanished Disease
When I was a child, I remember being oddly curious about a small, circular scar on my mother’s upper arm.
It sat just below her shoulder—a ring of tiny indentations surrounding a deeper mark. At the time, I couldn’t explain why it fascinated me, but the image stuck.
As I grew older, like many childhood curiosities, it faded into the background. The scar never disappeared, of course, but I stopped thinking about it.
Maybe I had asked about it once and forgotten the explanation, or maybe I never asked at all.
Years later, on a summer afternoon, I was helping an elderly woman off a train when I noticed something startling: she had the exact same scar in the exact same place.
It was like déjà vu. That moment reawakened my old curiosity, but with the train ready to depart, I didn’t have time to ask her about it. So I called my mother.
She wasn’t surprised by my renewed interest.
In fact, she reminded me that she had explained the scar’s origin before—more than once, apparently—but I had never retained the information. The answer was simple: it was the result of a smallpox vaccination.
Smallpox, once one of the most feared viral diseases in human history, caused severe rashes, high fevers, and, in many cases, death.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it killed about 3 out of every 10 people who contracted it. Survivors were often left with permanent scars.
Fortunately, a successful global vaccination effort led to smallpox being eradicated in many parts of the world.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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