1476 in C. L. Kingsford Stonor Lett. & Papers (1919) II. 10 The eyre of poxe is ffull contagious.

?1545 J. Bale 2nd Pt. Image Both Churches ii. sig. Qvii^v Here were moche to be spoken of..Saynt Iob for the poxe, Saynt Fyacre for the ague.

1650 S. Dillingham in H. Cary Memorials Great Civil War (1842) II. 248 My lord's sizer and Mr. Adam's are sick of the pox; it is thought past the worst.

1684 tr. T. Bonet Guide Pract. Physician x. 356 Treacle is the best Alexiterick against the Pox.

a1824 Ld. Byron Don Juan i. cxxix, in Wks. (1835) XV. 162 The Doctor paid off an old pox, By borrowing a new one from an ox.

1958 I. Blasingame Dakota Cowboy xv. 212 The doctor..said I would be over the pox enough not to give it to anyone as soon as I felt the fever leave and I was hungry.

1970 Times 21 Nov. 4/5 ‘We are very afraid that cholera or the pox or dysentery or typhoid will come,’ said a district official in Bhola town.

2004 W. L. Larimore Bryson City Seasons xi. 104 The girls had the classic chicken pox lesions... The older lesions were a bit bigger, the newer ones very small. This was classic for the pox.

1503 in N. H. Nicolas Privy Purse Expenses Elizabeth of York (1830) 105 A surgeon whiche heled him of the Frenche pox.

1529 in Ld. Herbert Henry VIII (1649) 267 The foule, and contagious Disease of the Great Pox.

1601 H. Clapham Ælohim-triune xi A third diuell whispers in the eares of some, And straight they slide to house of brothelrie: The pox, the vengeance, burning intrailes come Crying a loud.

1680 J. Bunyan Life & Death Mr. Badman 105 There often follows this foul sin, the Foul Disease, now called by us the Pox. A disease so nauseous and stinking, so infectious to the whole body (and so intailed to this sin) that hardly are any common with unclean Women, but they have more or less a touch of it to their shame.

1700 T. Brown Amusem. Serious & Comical x. 107 The Attorney picks your Pocket, and gives you Law for't; the Whore picks your Purse, and gives you the Pox for't it; and the Poet picks your Pocket, and gives you nothing for it.

1764 C. Churchill Duellist iii. 44 In turn to give a Pox, or take it.

1856 R. W. Emerson Eng. Traits i. 19 He [sc. Coleridge] said..There were only three things which the government had brought into that garden of delights [sc. Sicily], namely, itch, pox, and famine.

1922 J. Joyce Ulysses ii. xv. [Circe] 489 Mary Shortall that was in the lock with the pox.

1946 M. Mezzrow & B. Wolfe Really Blues 79 The cash customers were hotter than a pussy with the pox.

1976 J. O'Connor Eleventh Commandment viii. 101 Wally..strangled a prostitute for giving him a dose of the pox.

1992 Evening Standard 28 Sept. 24/2 I remember a girl at art school who was terrified to have sex in case she got the pox.

1530 J. Rastell Thyrde Dialoge in New Bk. Purgatory sig. f4 As yf thou haue a swyne which is infected with pox or other syknes.

1545 Bibliotheca Eliotæ Mentigo, the scabbe whiche is amonge shepe called the poxe.

1601 Brechin Test. I. in Dict. Older Sc. Tongue f. 215 ^v Ten ȝowes havand thair lambes deid in the pox.

1607 E. Topsell Hist. Foure-footed Beastes 614 The holy fire which the Sheapheards call the Pox, or the Blisters, or Saint Anthonies fire.

1862 Times 9 Aug. 11/3 On examining the sheep, he found them suffering in almost every stage of the disease. Some in which the pox had first shown itself exhibited a staggering gait, with slight fever, and swelled eyelids.

1906 Times 21 Sept. 2/4 Is it really not possible to say whether the lymph supplied by the National Vaccine Establishment was derived originally from the smallpox of man, the pox of the horse, or from an eruption on the teats of a cow?

1936 A. K. Nyabongo Afr. answers Back 245 You will see that this cow is getting over the pox.

1897 T. C. Allbutt et al. Syst. Med. II. 942 This eruption which is called by the [antimony] workmen the ‘pox’, occurs where the skin perspires most freely.

1897 T. C. Allbutt et al. Syst. Med. II. 944 For the skin-eruption or ‘pox’ as it is called..sponging with a solution of bicarbonate or biborate of soda..is generally sufficient to give relief.

1931 C. H. Andrewes in Lancet 9 May 1046/2 Cow-pox differs from the other poxes in having but little tendency to produce a generalised rash.

1948 Bergey's Man. Determinative Bacteriol. (ed. 6) 1229 Viruses of the typical pox-disease group.

1957 Virology 4 310 Causes mousepox or ectomelia, a natural pox disease of mice.

1973 Times 10 July 2/5 [He] asked if it could be smallpox and..felt reassured that it was not and that it was a lesser form of pox.

2003 Compar. Immunol., Microbiol. & Infectious Dis. 26 427 The enormous risk posed by animal poxes was documented in 1990 by the death of an 18-year-old patient with severe immune deficiency.

a1592 R. Greene Frier Bacon (1594) sig. B3^v A poxe of all coniuring Friers.

1598 W. Shakespeare Love's Labour's Lost v. ii. 46 A Poxe of that iest, and I beshrow all Shrowes.

a1616 W. Shakespeare All's Well that ends Well (1623) iv. iii. 277 A pox on him, he's a Cat still. View more context for this quotation

1695 W. Congreve Love for Love v. i. 81 O Pox, how shall I get rid of this foolish Girl?

1702 Clarendon's Hist. Rebellion I. iv. 295 Some said, ‘a Pox take the House of Commons, let them be Hanged’.

1710 S. Centlivre Bickerstaff's Burying i. i. 7 What a-pox, she wont die for the Man she hates.

1749 H. Fielding Tom Jones III. vii. vi. 39 Formalities! with a Pox!..Pooh, all Stuff and Nonsense! View more context for this quotation

1760 J. Mair Tyro's Dict. 415 Væ! Vah! wo! pox on't.

1795 ‘P. Pindar’ Pindariana 154 A p-x on all sorrow.

1859 H. E. Taliaferro Fisher's River 70 Pox take the luck!

1922 J. Joyce Ulysses ii. xiv. [Oxen of the Sun] 380 But they can go hang..for me with their bully beef, a pox on it.

1963 Sunday Times 8 Sept. 29/3 Cool Shakespeare thrives in the sixth and phrases like ‘Pox on't!’ and ‘Fie!’ are in present usage.

1994 N.Y. Times 5 Apr. c6/4 A pox on those services that suggest otherwise in their advertisements.

1963 Times 4 Feb. 14/3 [This] is vital if the staggering potential of modern industry is to become the joy and not the pox of our society.

1968 E. K. Gann Song of Sirens (2000) i. 52 As soon as he realizes that whatever he wants is not to be had,..he loses the pox of desire and its inevitable scabs of greed.

1984 Times 3 Sept. 11/5 I have decided to join Philip Howard in seeking to avoid ‘the pox of this little word’.

1992 R. W. Love Hist. U.S. Navy, 1942–1991 II. xxiv. 498 This squeamishness was no vaccine for the pox of Vietnamese imperialism.

1476 in C. L. Kingsford Stonor Lett. & Papers (1919) II. 10 My brother and yowris is sore seke of the poxes.

1562 W. Bullein Bulwarke of Defence f. 69 It [sc. sulphur] also helpeth Leprous, Scabbes, and Poxes.

1603 T. Lodge Treat. Plague i. sig. B2 In that Iland which is called Hispaniola, and other places of India, there raigne certaine pustules or broad seabs, (not much vnlike the French poxes) wherewith almost all the inhabitants of the country are infected.

1676 T. D'Urfey Siege of Memphis f. 74 If not, then I instead of praise will curse, And wish with a full heart, but empty Purse, That you may meet fresh rancour in your doxes, And what I think can hardly be, more Poxes.

1930 Lancet 5 Apr. 774/1 If the vaccine lymph or material from the poxes of small-pox is inoculated on the mucous membrane.

1996 Jrnl. Ethnopharmacol. 53 98/2 They included plants used to treat..skin problems such as rashes, blemishes, boils and poxes.

1623 J. Hart tr. P. van Foreest Arraignm. Vrines iii. 46 Small wheales like the small poxe.

1652 Edwards' Treat. conc. Plague 53 in A. M. Rich Closet When the Pox lye hidden within and not appearing outwardly, or if after they are come forth they doe suddenly strike in again and vanish away..all these are ill signs.

c1672 A. Wood Life (1891) I. 45 This yeare he had the small pox so much that he was for a time blinded with them.

1715 A. Pitcairne Method of curing Small-pox in G. Sewell & J. T. Desaguliers tr. A. Pitcairne Wks. 272 If the Pox run together in the Face..use the Infusion of the Purles, and the Syrup of white Poppies oftner than in other Cases.

a1732 T. Boston Memoirs (1776) xi. 357 Jane was taken ill of the small pox... Her pox were many, and of a dangerous kind.

1994 D. W. Talmage in A. Szentivanyi & H. Friedman Immunologic Revol. ii. 18 It was also know that small pox could be transmitted by taking pus from the pox of a small pox patient and scratching it into the skin of someone who had never had the disease.