Yes Dan, I do know a bit about smallpox, not all that much though.
I still remember the smallpox inoculation, we got it at school when I was maybe eight years old. I got very sick, I remember my mother put me in my parents' bed so she could watch over me better. My mother was about to take me in to the hospital when finally my fever broke...strange how those memories stay with you over all the years of your life, all this would have been around 1952!
Then in history class we learned about Edward Jenner, and he noted how the milkmaids who got cowpox, they never came down with smallpox...