In the first month of the sixth year of Shunzhi (1649), just after the fifth Spring Festival of the Manchu Qing Dynasty entering Beijing, a smallpox epidemic broke out in the capital, and the inside and outside of the Forbidden City were suddenly chaotic.
On the thirtieth day of the first month, the regent Dolgun ordered that all residents of Beijing who had not had acne, as well as those who did not have a Beijing household registration (whether or not they had acne or not), should be "brought out twenty miles away by agreement" in accordance with the imperial court's pox avoidance system.
For a time, both inside and outside the imperial city, whether it was the imperial ministers or ordinary people, they all hid everywhere. Even the Shunzhi Emperor ran to the Nanyuan outside the city early to avoid pox.
Despite the layers of fortification, the smallpox virus is still invincible. On the eighteenth day of the third month of the lunar calendar, Duo Duo, the Prince of Yu, the uncle of the Shunzhi Emperor, died after suffering from the smallpox virus for dozens of days.
This outstanding general, who was later praised by the Qianlong Emperor as "the most accomplished of the founding kings", was only 36 years old when he died, and he was in his prime, not only in good health, but also had the best medical conditions, but also could not escape the clutches of the smallpox virus, how terrible the smallpox virus was! So much so that those Eight Banners generals who have experienced hundreds of battles have all "talked about acne discoloration."
In fact, thirty or forty years before Duoduo's death, the Manchu ancestors outside Guanwai did not know what smallpox was.
Because the Manchus who lived in the northeast had never suffered from this disease at all. Due to the sparse population and cold weather in the northeast region, smallpox virus was difficult to survive and spread, until the end of the Ming Dynasty, the Central Plains still circulated the saying that "the Northern Yu (including the Ethnic minorities including the Mongols and Manchus) do not get pox".
The virus of smallpox first spread in North Africa, and around 250 BC, the smallpox virus was introduced to China. After more than a thousand years of smallpox, although the Han people in the Central Plains have accumulated considerable experience, they still have a mortality rate of up to 30% or 40%.
In the last years of the Ming Dynasty, a large number of farmers in Guannei migrated to Liaodong, bringing with them advanced farming techniques in the Central Plains and also bringing the highly contagious smallpox virus.
The Manchus, who have just been exposed to the smallpox virus, have no resistance to the virus at all, and their mortality rate often reaches a staggering 89 out of 10, which can be described as a "catastrophe".
In order to prevent smallpox, the Manchus developed a strict "pox avoidance system", one is to escape, the other is to isolate.
Before the Manchu Qing Entering customs, in order to avoid contracting smallpox, Huang Taiji always tried his best to select Baylor who had already had acne to command the troops, and at the same time, he also tried to avoid sending troops between April and August when the smallpox epidemic was prone to outbreak.
After the Manchu Qing Dynasty entered the customs, the first emperor Shunzhi Emperor guarded against smallpox, but still did not escape the clutches of smallpox, and in the eighteenth year of Shunzhi (1661), the young Shunzhi Emperor also died of smallpox at the age of 24.
One emperor died of smallpox, while another was lucky enough to take the throne.
When Shunzhi chose his successor before his death, he originally preferred his second son Fuquan (the emperor's eldest son died early), but Empress Xiaozhuang insisted on establishing the emperor's third son, Xuan Ye.
Is it Li Fuquan or Li Xuanye? The ailing Shunzhi Emperor decided to send someone to consult john Tang, a German missionary he had always respected.
As a result, Tang Ruowang urged Xuan Ye to be crown prince, for a simple reason, but at that time there was no refute - Xuan Ye had already had smallpox!
Xuan Ye dealt with smallpox at the age of two, but under the careful care of his nursing mother Sun Shi, Xuan Ye finally survived, although smallpox left many pockmarks on his face, but because he had a lifelong immunity to the most terrible disease at that time. The occurrence of pox turned out to be a favorable factor for Xuan Ye to inherit the throne.
Therefore, the Shunzhi Emperor left his order, and Xuan Ye, who was less than eight years old, inherited the throne, and Xuan Ye was also the Kangxi Emperor.
The consideration of Shunzhi Lichu was actually in common with the concepts of the people at that time. At that time, there was a folk saying: "Only half of the children are born, and smallpox is complete." It can be seen how serious the harm of smallpox was at that time.
The Shunzhi Emperor had eight sons and six daughters, and as many as four sons and five daughters died before the age of eight because of smallpox, and the mortality rate of the crown prince was so high, not to mention the ordinary people.
At that time, although the Qing Dynasty had already sat on the Jiangshan, the humid and hot environment in the south was a hotbed of smallpox virus, and the Han people regarded it as a miasma land, where did the Manchu Eight Banners, who feared the pox like a tiger, dare to rule?
When Kangxi grew up, he clearly realized that smallpox had become a serious threat to Qing rule and had to find a way to crack it.
Kangxi then set up a special pox clinic under the Tai Hospital, and recruited famous doctors to set up a special "Cha Pox Zhangjing" in Beijing to be responsible for the anti-acne affairs of the Eight Banners.
Kangxi also specially built the most famous pox shelter in history, the Chengde Mountain Resort, as a special shelter for the young sons of the royal family.
In the seventeenth year of the Kangxi Dynasty (1678), Wu Sangui launched the San Fan Rebellion and declared himself emperor in Hengzhou after several years of conquest. At this time, it just so happened that the crown prince was suffering from acne, and the imperial doctors of the Tai Hospital were helpless. A chancellor recommended to the Kangxi Emperor a Qipin County Order, Fu Weige.
Fu Weige used very special means to cure many patients with smallpox in the local area, and the Kangxi Emperor urgently ordered Fu Weige to be brought in to treat the prince. Sure enough, as the minister said, Fu Weige quickly cured the prince's illness.
Fu Weige was promoted by Kangxi to the rank of Wuchang Tongju for his merits in curing the crown prince. This Fu Weige became a key figure in the history of smallpox prevention.
Because, Fu Weige knew the art of pox, an advanced smallpox treatment method at that time.
This kind of pox method originated from the folk called "blowing nose seed pox method", the earliest originated in the Ming Dynasty Longqing period (1567-1572), there are generally two ways, one called dry seedling method, one called water seedling method.
The so-called dry seedling method is to take the smallpox patient's acne scab and grind it into a fine powder, add ice chips, camphor and blow it into the nose of the pox seeder.
The so-called water seedling method is to dilute the patient's acne scab with human milk or water and implant it in the nose of the person who has planted acne.
These two pox methods will cause the pox person to slightly infect with smallpox symptoms, and then smallpox, and then through careful care, generally can survive the smallpox period.
Although this "pox method" did not guarantee 100% success, and could even lead to the death of patients, the Kangxi Emperor still ordered Fu Weige to start a pox experiment among the princes. Since then, the Manchu Qing emperor's pox prevention system has been formally established.
As a result of the pox, 17 of the 20 princes born after the 20th year of the Kangxi Dynasty (1681) grew up healthy, while only 7 of the previous 15 princes grew up to adulthood.
With the success of pox in the palace, the Kangxi Emperor began to promote smallpox prevention on a large scale, extending it from the palace to the Eight Banners and the Han Manchu people, to the northern steppes such as Mobei and Monan.
For more than 100 years, there was little news of smallpox in the palace, and the Manchus avoided smallpox again.
Because of the success of the "war pox", Kangxi had no distractions, and he successively pacified San Francisco, took Taiwan, resisted Tsarist Russia, and pacified Kaldan, stabilizing the Qing Dynasty's rule in the Central Plains in one fell swoop and creating the heyday of the Qing Dynasty.
This article is referenced from: Looking at History? China's Transformation through Details