The herpes virus

In Romeo and Juliet (I.iv), Shakespeare gives a possible description of herpes simplex:

“O’er ladies’ lips, who straight on kisses dream;Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues.”

William Heberden distinguished chickenpox from smallpox in 1767 in a report to the Royal College of Physicians. In 1875 Steiner transmitted varicella to children by inoculating fluid from the vesicles of chickenpox patients, thus establishing its infectious nature.

James Von Bokay in 1892¹ first questioned:

“whether or not the unknown infectious material of chickenpox could under certain circumstances manifest itself instead as a zoster eruption.”

In 1904 Ernest Tyzzer studied epidemics in a Philippines prison; he concluded that smallpox and chickenpox were different illnesses and proved that they could be separated by microscopy of skin biopsies (where he saw large multinucleated cells in …