Chickenpox, also known as varicella, is a very contagious disease caused by the varicella-zoster virus. It is spread easily through the air by infected people when they sneeze or cough.
The disease also spreads through contact with an infected person's chickenpox blisters. People who have never had chickenpox can get infected just by being in a room with someone who has the disease.
There was also some confusion about the name chicken pox. Some said that this disease was named this way because the blisters that you have on your skin when suffering from chicken pox actually look like the person was peaked by chickens.
However, there is another theory on the name chicken pox that seems more plausible. Because the disease does not pose any grave danger on the patient, it can be described as a smaller version of another disease called the pox. So the smaller version is the "chicken " version, thus the name chicken pox.
Giovanni Filippo (1510-1580) of Palermo gave the first description Chicken Pox. In 1600s, English Physician named Richard Morton mistook this disease with small pox he thought it was a milder form of smallpox.
In 1767, William Heberden, a physician, also from England, demonstrated that small pox was different from chicken pox. In modern times, the scientists who first described the chickenpox were E.Paschen, 1919; EE Tyzzer, 1906; von Bokay 1909.
Chickenpox
