Many things changed when we first started to live in settled communities and as those communities grew the more people realized how impactful it would be. Diseases can be as little as an irritation to dramatic as dying. There are many ways to catch a disease; animals, dirty environment, and unsafe practices can leave people or even whole societies ill very easily.
People had contact with people in their tribes or villages, they stayed with their families essentially their whole lives. There was no need for trade or to travel away from home since they farmed and had all the resources that the small society needed to thrive. If people did travel outside of the society they could have easily taken a disease home or left one with other people they encountered. These diseases lived on every species of animal, which jumped onto humans, and even the soil and water could carry a number of bacteria. Now none of them were exactly deadly but the symptoms might have been terrible enough the victims wished for the kindness of death. While traveling people may venture to different parts of the country they have never been before. One dilemma with this is that vertical zones are home to different species and diseases but they stay at their level in the forest. When the people cut trees for whatever purpose they are breaking the vertical zone and the species will come down to the forest floor along with the stowaway diseases. This happened in Central and South Africa; the monkeys in the canopies where being infected with yellow fever by mosquitos. The monkeys and mosquitoes stayed in their level and it only became a problem when, "the commercial demand for tropical timber ha[d] sent loggers into the forest, and when they fell a tree, ...
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...irt and refuse drew every germ-bearing scavenger that flew, crept, or crawled. Puddles, cisterns, and water vessels harbored mosquitoes carrying malaria, yellow fever, dengue, and encephalitis. Granaries and sewers stirred with rats that carried typhus, relapsing fever, hemorrhagic fevers, and perhaps bubonic plague. Householders caught toxoplasmosis parasites from pet cats. Leptospirosis infection from dogs gave humans a deadly form of meningitis" (Man and Microbes 52). Overcrowding is was a problem because people did not realize how dangerous being dirty is to one’s health.
Once people started living closer together on a large scale all of these new locations and people would make it difficult to escape new diseases. Disease, bacteria, viruses, and organisms that infect people and animals come from many different places but have the same effect—devastation.
The book, The Ghost Map, tells the story of the cholera outbreak that took place in England during the medieval era. During this time, London became popular, causing it to become one of the most populous urban cities in England. However, it suffered from overcrowding, a large lower class, and little health regulations. As a result, living conditions and water supply were not the cleanest, and many died from the disease cholera. Though this epidemic led to many deaths/illnesses during it’s time, it has proven to be helpful and important to public health today. Some public health advancements that have occurred as a result include healthier, cleaner, and longer lives lived.
Human mobility, in terms of European transcontinental exploration and colonization, began to truly flourish after the 1400s. This travel, inspired by financial motives and justified by religious goals, resulted in the European dominance and decimation of countless cultures in both the Americas and Eurasia. While at first glance it seems as though this dominance was achieved through mainly military means - European militias, like Spanish conquistadors, rolling over native tribes with their technologically advanced weapons - the reality is significantly more complex. The Europeans, most likely unknowingly, employed another, equally deadly weapon during their exploits. With their travel, they brought with them the infectious diseases of their homelands, exposing the defenseless natives to foreign malady that their bodies had no hope of developing immunities against. Because of the nature of disease and their limited knowledge about its modes of infection, the Europeans were able to dispense highly contagious and mortal illnesses while limiting their contraction of any native ones to the new territories. In short, they were able to kill without being killed. In this way, the travel of disease in conjunction with the travel of humans in a search for exotic commodities was able to limit or even halt the development of some cultures while allowing others to flourish at exponential rates.
The Columbian exchange was the widespread transfer of various products such as animals, plants, and culture between the Americas and Europe. Though most likely unintentional, the byproduct that had the largest impact from this exchange between the old and new world was communicable diseases. Europeans and other immigrants brought a host of diseases with them to America, which killed as much as ninety percent of the native population. Epidemics ravaged both native and nonnative populations of the new world destroying civilizations. The source of these epidemics were due to low resistance, poor sanitation, and inadequate medical knowledge- “more die of the practitioner than of the natural course of the disease (Duffy).” These diseases of the new world posed a serious
William H. McNeill makes a monumental contribution to the knowledge of humanity in his book Plagues and Peoples. He looks at the history of the world from an ecological point of view. From this viewpoint the history of human civilization is greatly impacted by changing patterns of epidemic infection. Plagues and Peoples suggests that "the time scale of world history...should [be] viewed [through] the "domestication" of epidemic disease that occurred between 1300 and 1700" (page 232). "Domestication" is perceived "as a fundamental breakthrough, directly resulting from the two great transportation revolutions of that age - one by land, initiated by the Mongols, and one by sea, initiated by Europeans" (page 232). This book illustrates how man's environment and its resident diseases have controlled human migration, as well as societal successes and failures. McNeill discusses the political, demographical, and psychological effects of disease on the human race. He informs his audience that epidemics are still a viable threat to society, and warns of potential future consequences.
The Spread of Disease In the New World The extraordinary good health of the natives prior to the coming of the Europeans would become a key ingredient in their disastrous undoing. The greatest cause of disease in America was epidemic diseases imported from Europe. Epidemic diseases killed with added virulence in the " virgin soil" populations of the Americas. The great plague that arose in the Old World never emerged on their own in the western hemisphere and did not spread across oceans until Columbus' discovery.
The rail market continued to grow and by the 1860’s all major cities within the United States were connected by rail. The main diseases that showed the most virulence during the time were cholera, yellow fever and consumption, now known as tuberculosis. The 9th census mortality data showed that 1 out 7 deaths from disease were caused by tuberculosis and 1 out of 24 disease deaths were resulting from cholera. . Until the 1870s the general consensus of the spread of disease through population was still the primitive idea that it came from the individual and not specifically the pathogen.... ... middle of paper ... ...
The filth of the cities promoted the spread of disease faster than doctors could discover a cure. This encouraged large outbreaks of many deadly diseases. And it is said that throughout this period there were people who went about the cities and towns with wagons calling "Bring out your dead!" in a fashion similar to that of the Medieval era during the bubonic plague (Which, by the way, was not yet a dead disease).
By the 1840’s high rates of disease were ascribed to the housing many of New York’s poverty-stricken immigrants lived in. Fear spread that while disease was rooted in the polluted living conditions of New York’s poorer communities, disease could easily spread to the more well off citizens too. Public health officials realized that the city’s soiled streets and polluted sewers were a health risk to all New Yorkers. In the mid-nineteenth century, New York possessed a primitive sewage system. Poorly planned sewers spanned the city, but most citizens’ homes did not connect to these pipes. Instead, most New Yorkers relied on outdoor outhouses and privies. Because of the high levels of unmanaged waste, epidemics of infectious diseases were commonplace in New York. The city battled outbreaks of smallpox, typhoid, malaria, yellow fever, cholera, and tuberculosis. In 1849, a rash of cholera struck the city, killing more than five thousand people. A wave of typhoid in the mid-1860’s resulted in a similar amount of deaths. Port cities and transportation hubs, like New York, were especially prone to outbursts of infectious diseases because of the high volume of travelers that passed through the city. Americans realized that they were contracting and dying from infectious diseases at an alarming rate, but weren’t entirely sure of why or how. (Web, par. 17,
Native Americans never came in contact with diseases that developed in the Old World because they were separated from Asia, Africa, and Europe when ocean levels rose following the end of the last Ice Age. Diseases like smallpox, measles, pneumonia, influenza, and malaria were unknown to the Native Americans until the Europeans brought these diseases over time to them. This triggered the largest population decline in all recorded history. Fifty percent of the Native American population had died of disease within twenty years. Soon after, Native Americans began to question their religion and doubted the ability of shamen to heal. This was the first step towards the destruction of Native cultures. The Native Americans had never experienced anything like these deadly diseases before and they came to believe that Europeans had the power to kill or give life.
With all of the passengers of one family packed into a wagon and the group sleeping near each other the diseases would spread quickly. Martha Freel went to Oregon in the 1850’s and wrote in a letter saying “you see we have lost 7 persons in a matter of a few short days, all died of Cholera”. Those “few short days” were only 13 days and they already lost 7 people. They would spared because everyone of a family was packed in one wagon, and at the in of the day they all sleep near each other. Then the diseases were not very easy to cure with their lack of medical advances. With the medical kits they did have didn’t consisted of a lot of medicine, but items that would make you think you’re feeling better called a placebo. They would consist of peppermint oils, rum, whisky, morphine and citric
Sanitary conditions in the West were practically non-existent. In the cities, horse manure covered the streets. Housewives emptied garbage, dishwater, and chamber pots into the middle of the city streets where free-roaming pigs devoured the waste. The pigs left their urine and feces on the streets. It was not easy to wash clothes. Many people had clothes splattered with manure, mud, sweat, and tobacco juice. Privies, or necessary houses were often to close to the homes with a very noticeable odor on hot and/or windy days. If a family had a kitchen, all the members washed at the sink each day, without soap, rubbing the dirt off with a coarse towel. Eventually, many cold bedrooms had a basin, ewer (pitcher), cup, and cupboard chamber pot. Bed bugs and fleas covered many of the travelers’ beds. “Isaac Weld saw filthy beds swarming with bugs.” These insects followed the travelers, crawling on their clothes and skin.
Considered one of the worst natural disasters in world history, the Black Death came through Europe in 1347 A.D. It ravaged cities and town, causing a death to the masses, and no one was considered safe. The Plague is any epidemic scourge or calamity for which remedies are difficult to find, and according to the encyclopedia, plague is a common term for a disease of rodents that occasionally cause severe human infection. Named for the black spots that appeared on the victims’ skin, the original disease originated from Oriental Rat Fleas and black rats. It first infected Mongol armies and traders in Asia, and then began moving west with them as they traveled. There was no natural immunity to the disease, and standards of public health and personal hygiene were nearly nonexistent. It is believed that if people had not fled to nearby cities in hopes of escaping the plague, it might not have ever spread like it did. In the end, it passed through Italy, France, England, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Poland, Finland, and even up to the island of Greenland. City dwellers were hit the hardest due to the fact of crowded streets and the lack of sanitation. Up until the mid-15th century, recurrent epidemics prevented the recovery of Europe’s population to pre-plague levels. The Black Death was an important turning point for the history of Europe. This time was “the beginning of the end of the medieval period and the start of a social transformation of the continent.” The social and economic impacts of the plague were so huge, economics, politics and the European society would never be the same again.
There were “regulations against people washing clothes in or near waters used for drink, or against washing the entrails of beasts after slaughter”(Rowse 156). “…it is evident from innumerable documents how frequently they were broken” (Rowse 156). As long as people lived in small groups, isolated from each other, there were not many incidents of widespread disease. But as civilization progressed, people began clustering into cities. As the cities grew and became crowded, they also became the nesting places of water-borne, insect-borne, and skin-to-skin infectious diseases.
Although populations in ancient societies suffered attacks, invasions, starvation, and persecution, there was a more efficient killer that exterminated countless people. The most dreaded killers in the ancient world were disease, infections and epidemics. In many major wars the main peril was not gunfire, nor assault, but the easily communicable diseases that rapidly wiped out whole divisions of closely quartered soldiers. Until the time of Hippocrates, in the struggle between life and death, it was, more often than not, death that prevailed when a malady was involved. In the modern world, although illness is still a concern, advances in thought and technique have led to the highest birth rates in recorded history. No longer is a fever a cause for distress; a quick trip to the store and a few days of rest is the current cure. An infection considered easily treatable today could have meant disablement, even death to an ancient Greek citizen.
This book follows an esteemed doctor and a local clergyman who, together, are the heart of an investigation to solve the mystery of the cholera epidemic. In 1854 London was ravaged by a terrible outbreak of cholera, where within the span of mere weeks over five hundred people in the Soho district died. London, at the time, was a city of around two and a half million people, all crammed into a small area with no system for sewage removal. With overflowing cesspools, improper drainage of all the human and animal waste, and no system for guaranteed clean water, the people of London were in a bad state. They were essentially dumping all of their feces into their drinking water supply, a perfect environment for cholera to thrive.