Impact of introduced disease into Tasmanian Aboriginal populations and its role in depopulation.

Western diseases, such as smallpox, measles, influenza and venereal disease, caused much havoc and death when introduced into the indigenous peoples of the new world, i.e. the peoples of the Pacific and the Americas. Similarly, the indigenous populations of mainland Australia suffered greatly from introduced disease when, for example, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, smallpox killed perhaps as much as half of the population.