Smallpox denaturalized, demonized, and eradicable

Several campaigns, images and publications helped in eradicating smallpox in Nigeria. The first image comes from the January 1968 installment of Your Health, a magazine published by the Nigerian Federal Ministry of Health and included a three-page set of images called 'A Modern Vaccine in the Making' that illustrates the production of freeze-dried smallpox vaccine. Some posters sought to reach and persuade a broad audience by using striking imagery in the fight against smallpox. In one such poster, used in Yoruba-speaking parts of western Africa, the text urges viewers to join the war on smallpox while the images oversimplify the use of sophisticated technology and further denaturalize the vaccination process. Instructing everyone to 'go and get vaccinated immediately,' the poster depicts a physician delivering smallpox vaccine with a Ped-O-Jet, a vaccination gun first developed by the US Army. Another poster from the campaign transforms the cooperative use of denaturalized vaccine into a violent war against the demon of smallpox. In this poster, smallpox has not just been denaturalized, but demonized, turned into an otherworldly monster that must be destroyed. The artist has chosen elements of the actual experience of smallpox and transformed the disease into a spectral threat.