With a global alarm ringing because of an unprecedented outbreak of monkeypox, we should also consider a different but closely related viral threat.

A mouse study points to a possible mechanism by which the smallpox vaccine helped eradicate the disease in the 1980s.

Researchers continue to debate whether US President Abraham Lincoln was coming down with smallpox as he delivered his famous Gettysburg Address, and if he had been immunized.

A patient caught the rare disease in Nigeria before flying through two US airports, exposing more than 200 people from 27 states.

As a deadly smallpox outbreak ravaged Boston, one of the city’s leaders advocated for a preventive measure he’d learned about from Onesimus, an enslaved man.

J. Michael Lane was the director of the CDC’s successful program to eradicate smallpox.

Lymph from cattle proved more effective at inducing immunity to smallpox than the older, person-to-person method.

A review of a 2014 incident in which mystery vials of smallpox were found at the NIH reveals security weaknesses, but also concludes the response was appropriate. 

A high-security tuberculosis lab at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may return to transferring hazardous materials.

Following recent high-profile safety lapses in government labs, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has placed a moratorium on movement of biological materials from BSL-3 and BSL-4 facilities.

Employees packing up an old storage unit run by the US Food and Drug Administration uncovered 16 forgotten vials of smallpox.

Scientists urge the World Health Organization to delay destroying the last remaining laboratory stocks of live variola virus because there’s more research to be done.

A genetically engineered smallpox vaccine improved the survival of liver cancer patients participating in a phase II clinical trial.

The story of the US government’s efforts to stamp out smallpox in the early 20th century offers insights into the science and practice of mass vaccination.

In Chapter 5, "The Stable and the Laboratory," author Michael Willrich explores the burgeoning vaccine manufacture industry that ramped up to combat smallpox epidemics in turn-of-the-twentieth-century American cities.

The World Health Organization is remaining mum on the issue of maintaining laboratory stocks of the smallpox virus, which the US government wants to preserve for the next five years.

Cases of monkeypox, a disease caused by a DNA virus closely related to smallpox and cowpox, have increased dramatically in rural villages in the heart of the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to researchers working in the war-ravaged African country.