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.
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J. Pearce (2005) studied this question.
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