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If you were, for whatever macabre reason, seeking the most catastrophic moment in the history of humankind, you might well settle on this: [qh]
如果你正在寻找人类历史上最灾难性的时刻，无论出于何种骇人的原因，你很可能会选择这样一个时刻：[qh]
About 10,000 years ago, as people first began to domesticate animals and farm the land in Mesopotamia, India, and northern Africa, a peculiar virus leaped across the species barrier.[qh]
大约一万年前，当人们在美索不达米亚、印度和北非开始驯养动物、耕种土地时，一种特殊的病毒跨越了物种壁垒。[qh]
Little is known about its early years. [qh]
人们对这种病毒早期的情况知之甚少。[qh]
But the virus spread and, whether sooner or later, became virulent.[qh]
但这种病毒后来传开了，而且早晚都会夺去性命。[qh]
It ransacked internal organs before traveling through the blood to the skin, where it erupted in pus-filled lesions.[qh]
这种病毒先洗劫内脏，然后通过血液传播到皮肤，最后皮肤表面会突然冒出满是脓液的病变。[qh]
Many of those who survived it were left marked, disfigured, even blind.[qh]
许多从中幸存下来的人留了疤痕，容貌尽毁，甚至失明。[qh]
As civilizations bloomed across the planet, the virus stalked them like a curse. [qh]
当各种文明在地球上蓬勃发展时，这种病毒就像一个诅咒一样尾随着他们。[qh]
Some speculate that it swept through ancient Egypt, where its scars appear to mar the mummified body of Pharaoh Ramses V.[qh]
一些人推测，这种病毒曾在古埃及肆虐，病毒留下的伤疤似乎损毁了法老拉美西斯五世的木乃伊。[qh]
By the fourth century A.D., it had gained a foothold in China.[qh]
到了公元4世纪，这种病毒在中国站稳了脚跟。[qh]
Christian soldiers spread it through Europe during the 11th- and 12th-century Crusades.[qh]
在11世纪和12世纪十字军东征期间，基督教士兵将其传播到了欧洲。[qh]
In the early 1500s, Spanish and Portuguese conquistadors conveyed it west across the Atlantic, where it ravaged native communities and contributed to the downfall of the Aztec, Mayan, and Inca empires.[qh]
在16世纪早期，西班牙和葡萄牙征服者横跨大西洋将病毒向西传播，这种病毒在西边的土著群落肆虐，并导致阿兹特克、玛雅和印加帝国的衰落。[qh]
By the end of the 1500s, the disease caused by the virus had become one of the most feared in the world. [qh]
到16世纪末，由这种病毒引起的疾病已经发展为世界上最可怕的疾病之一。[qh]
About a third of those who contracted it were dead within weeks. [qh]
大约三分之一的感染者会在几周内丧命。[qh]
The Chinese called it tianhua, or “heaven’s flowers.” [qh]
中国人称这种病毒为“天花”，意为“天上之花”。[qh]
Throughout Europe, it was known as variola, meaning “spotted.”[qh]
整个欧洲将其称为“痘斑”，意为 “斑点”。[qh]
In England, where doctors used the term pox to describe pestilent bumps on the skin, syphilis had already claimed the name “the great pox.” [qh]
英国医生用“痘疱”一词来形容皮肤上的致命肿块，而梅毒就被称为“大痘疱”。[qh]
And so this disease took on a diminutive moniker that belied the scale of its wretchedness: smallpox.[qh]
因此，这种疾病有了一个与其悲惨程度不符的小小绰号：小痘疱。[qh]
Over time, different communities experimented with different cures. [qh]
随着时间的推移，不同的群落尝试了不同的治疗方法。[qh]
Many noticed that survivors earned lifetime immunity from the disease. [qh]
许多人注意到，幸存者获得了对这种疾病的终身免疫力。[qh]
This discovery was passed down through the generations in Africa and Asia, where local cultures developed a practice that became known as inoculation—from the Latin inoculare, meaning “to graft.”[qh]
非洲和亚洲将这一发现代代相传，当地文化发展出了一种被称为人痘接种(inoculation源于拉丁语inocare, 意为“嫁接”)的疗法。[qh]
In most cases, people would stick a sharp instrument into a smallpox-infected pustule to collect just a little material from the disease. [qh]
在大多数情况下，人们会将尖锐的器械刺入天花感染者的脓疱中，收集一些天花物质。[qh]
Then they would stick the same blade, wet with infection, into the skin of a healthy individual.[qh]
然后，他们用同一沾有感染病毒的刀刃，刺入一个健康人的皮肤上。[qh]
Inoculation often worked—pustules would form at the injection site, and a low-grade version of the disease would typically follow. [qh]
人痘接种法通常有疗效——身体注射部位会先形成脓疱，随后这种疾病的低级版本会找上门。[qh]
But the intervention was terribly flawed; it killed about one in every 50 patients.[qh]
但这种干预疗法存在严重缺陷; 每50名患者中就会有1名患者丧命。[qh]
