Where is the plague, smallpox, cholera, typhus, leprosy now? Interesting facts about the most famous epidemics in the world Interesting facts about the plague.

The plague - a terrible disease that was popularly called the "black death" - in the Middle Ages became a real pandemic that swept not only Europe, but also parts of Asia and Africa, resulting in the death of a huge number of people (about 60 million people). In some countries, this terrible disease wiped out about half of the population, and the population was restored to its previous level for more than one century. In our review, little-known and shocking facts about this terrible disease.

We’ll clarify right away that there are very few written sources about the times when the Black Death raged on our planet. Therefore, there are a huge number of myths and rumors around the plague, sometimes greatly exaggerated.

The Catholic Church has been one of the most powerful organizations in the world for quite some time, so it's no surprise that there are many conspiracy theories about it and that the church has been the scapegoat in many situations.

It is believed that the allegedly outdated and unscientific thinking and actions of the church contributed to the active spread of the disease and, in general, led to an increase in the number of deaths. At the moment, the main theory is that the plague was spread by fleas carried mainly by rats.

Because of Catholic superstition, cats were initially blamed for spreading the plague. This led to their mass extermination, which in turn caused a rapid reproduction of rats. They caused the plague to spread.

But skeptics believe that rats could not contribute to such an active spread of the disease.

2. Overpopulation, sewage, flies ...

Some people do not like to remember this completely unromantic part of medieval history. Researchers believe that one of the main causes of the plague pandemic was the fact that people did not pay any attention to hygiene.

And it’s not even that people didn’t wash, but that there was no modern infrastructure, in particular sewage, permanent garbage collection, refrigeration equipment, etc. An example is Bristol, the second largest city in the UK when the plague broke out in Europe. The city was overcrowded and there were open ditches everywhere with human waste and other sewage that overwhelmed them. Meat and fish were left directly in the open air, and flies sat in food. no one cared about the purity of the water. In these conditions lived not only the poor, but also the rich.

It is believed that the cause of the plague outbreak was not rats, but the “plague bacillus” bacterium that appeared in Asia, which appeared due to climate change in this region. In addition, there were excellent conditions for the spread of pathogenic bacteria, and for the reproduction of fleas. And this fact just confirms the theory of involvement in the spread of rat disease.

After the plague pandemic that killed millions of people, there were several more outbreaks of this disease at different times. Perhaps only those who lived far from large cities and observed the rules of hygiene managed to escape. And scientists are sure that someone has developed immunity.

Approximately the same situation is happening today with AIDS. Scientists have discovered that there are people who are immune to this disease. Some researchers believe that this mutation probably occurred due to the struggle of the human body with the plague epidemic in Europe. Understanding the mechanism of this rare mutation can certainly help in the treatment or prevention of HIV.

In the West, the nursery rhyme "Circle around Rosie" is popular. While it may just be an innocent song for the kids who love it, some adults are convinced that the origin of the song is very dark. They believe that Circle Around Rosie is actually about the Black Death in Europe. The song mentions bags with bouquets of flowers, and during the rampant plague, bags with strong-smelling herbs were worn by the sick to hide the unpleasant smell emanating from them.

Ash, which is also referred to in the song, is a pretty obvious reference to dead people being burned. However, there is no evidence that the poem has anything to do with the plague. There are several varieties of it, the earliest of which appeared in the 1800s. And that was hundreds of years after the plague.

Although the Black Death was an incredible tragedy in the history of mankind and led to millions of deaths, this event, oddly enough, has positive moments for society.

The fact is that in those years Europe suffered from overpopulation and, as a result, from unemployment. After millions of people became victims of the plague, these problems resolved themselves. In addition, wages have increased. Masters have become worth their weight in gold. Thus, some scholars argue that the plague was one of the factors contributing to the advent of the Renaissance.

Some people believe that the plague has sunk into oblivion. But there are places on Earth where this disease continues to kill people. The plague bacillus has not disappeared anywhere and still appears today, even in North America, a continent where the plague was not known in the Middle Ages.

People are still dying from the plague, especially in poor countries. Non-observance of hygiene rules and lack of medicines lead to the fact that the disease can kill a person in just a few days.

8. "Bad Air"

The scientific theory of miasms regarding diseases is quite old. Given that science was in its infancy at the time of the plague outbreak in Europe, many experts at the time believed that the disease spread through "bad air". Given the smells of sewage flowing in rivers through the streets, the stench of decaying bodies that had not had time to bury, it is not surprising that fetid air was considered responsible for the spread of the disease.

This miasma theory led desperate people at that time to start clearing dirt from the streets to avoid bad air and help prevent disease. Although these were actually good measures, they had nothing to do with the epidemic.

9. The concept of "quarantine"

The idea of ​​quarantine didn't come with the Black Death; The practice of separating sick and healthy people has existed for a long time. In many cultures around the world, people have long understood that placing healthy people next to sick people often causes the healthy to get sick. In fact, even the Bible suggests keeping people with leprosy away from healthy people so that they don't become infected.

However, the actual term "quarantine" is much newer, and actually refers indirectly to the plague. During repeated outbreaks of the Black Death across Europe in some countries, sick people were sent to live in the fields until they recovered or died. In others, they allocated a small area for sick people, or simply locked them at home.

The period of isolation usually lasted about 30 days. This may be excessive, but little was known about microbes at the time. In the end, for unknown reasons, the amount of time for isolation of patients was increased to 40 days.

10. Virus or bacteria

Most people believe that the Black Death was caused by a bacterium called the plague bacillus (Yersinia pestis), which infected people with bubonic plague. The disease was named so because of the terrible buboes that appeared on the body. However, some researchers have suggested that this bacterium may not actually be the culprit of a global pandemic that swept across three continents centuries ago.

There are different types of plague

We hear about the bubonic plague most often, but it's actually just one of the three types of plague. Bubonic plague is characterized by enlarged lymph nodes called "buboes", which give the disease its name. This type is spread only through flea bites and contact with insect-infected blood; bubonic plague cannot be passed from one person to another.

Similarly, septicemic plague only spreads through breaks in the skin and contact with blood. It worsens when bacteria multiply in the blood. Septicemic plague has many of the same symptoms as bubonic plague, including fever and chills, but it does not develop the telltale nodes of bubonic plague.

The third type is the only one that can be transmitted from person to person. Pneumonic plague is airborne and can pass from one person (or animal) to another through breathing in close proximity to someone. Different types of plague can mutate into others; pneumonic plague and septicemic plague often become complications of advanced bubonic plague.

Because the different types have similarly devastating effects, it was long believed that bubonic plague was the disease that swept across Europe during the plague epidemic. . A new study, supported by DNA evidence, suggests that the Black Death was not bubonic plague, but a more rapidly spreading pneumonic plague.

The plague originated in China

Researchers have successfully traced the presence of the bubonic plague to its origins in China, over 2,600 years ago.

Different strains of plague have different bacterial structures. Looking at the distribution of each strain, the researchers traced bubonic plague along the Silk Road, isolating 17 different bacterial strains. All of these mutations go back to a single type of bacteria that has only just begun to spread outside of China during the last 6 centuries, spread by rats on ships leaving Chinese ports.

In 1409 ships brought the plague to East Africa. It also spread east and west, through Europe and through Hawaii. It eventually made its way to the United States in the late 19th century after an epidemic covered the province of Yunnan.

Village that sacrificed itself

In 1665, a tailor from the village of Oiam in Derbyshire, England, ordered fabric from London. During the delivery, the village received much more than just cloth - they were infected with a plague that already reigned in the capital. People began to die, but they knew that the plague had not spread to nearby villages. So, led by the priest William Mompesson, the residents decided to isolate themselves, staying in the Plague City to prevent the spread of the disease.

The quarantine began in June 1666. From that moment on, no one could enter or leave the village. Neighboring cities left food in specially designated places far away from the settlement. Before the quarantine, 78 people died, and by the end of the plague, that number had risen to 256. Before the townspeople reopened their village to outsiders, they burned furniture and clothing, hoping to eradicate any trace of the disease that might still be dormant.

The sacrifice was successful. There was not a single case of plague in any of the neighboring villages. Mompesson lost his wife Katherine, but he himself survived.

Conspiracy theorists used the plague to persecute Jews

When the plague decimated Europe in the 14th century, Christians and Jews began to blame each other. An estimated 25 million people died in the first half of 1348, and rumors soon arose that the plague was a Jewish plot to destroy Christianity. The conspiracy supposedly started in Toledo, Spain and spread throughout Europe.

The Count of Savoy began to arrest and interrogate Jews, determined to find his version of the truth. His brutal torture led to many confessions, mostly people confessed to poisoning the city and the city's water supply. The Count sent these confessions to other cities as a warning, but the people there took them more seriously. Hundreds of Jewish settlements were burned to the ground and countless people were killed.

In Strasbourg, the nobility and city officials disagreed on whether to kill Jews. The nobles realized that such an approach could eliminate the threat of the plague, and along with their creditors. On Valentine's Day 1349, about 2,000 Jews were burned on a massive wooden platform in Strasbourg, their wealth confiscated and redistributed among the Christian nobles.

The plague came to Strasbourg anyway. She took 16,000 lives.

The plague didn't necessarily kill

Many of us imagine that the plague was an imminent death sentence. This belief arose from the massive, widespread devastation caused by the plague, not from its effects on individual patients. A lot of the stories are actually about people who were immune to the plague, but they are about people who contracted the disease but survived. Marshall Howe was one of those people.

Howe lived in the village of Iyam during the quarantine, and after recovering from the plague, he helped bury the dead. He was reportedly driving one person to the grave when the corpse suddenly spoke and asked for something to eat. It is assumed that the deceased eventually recovered. Another resident of Iyama, Margaret Blackwell, recovered from the plague after she became so thirsty that she drank a pot of lard.

Studies of the skeletal remains of victims of the Black Death have revealed several facts. Most of the dead were already suffering from some other disease, such as malnutrition, before contracting the plague. The plague actually killed previously healthy individuals, but it is now believed that many who were healthy had a chance of survival.

1) Most infections in the US are in the Western states

Plague affects between 1 and 17 Americans each year, and the most common type is bubonic plague. Since patients are started on antibiotics before the disease progresses, less than 20% of those infected become pneumonic plague. Where does this come from in the 21st century? The fact is that in rural areas there is a very high population of rats, and it is simply impossible to exterminate them, and they are the main carriers of the disease. Most of the cases are in northern New Mexico, northern Arizona, and southern Colorado, although cases have also been reported in California, Oregon, Washington, Utah, Nevada, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming.

2) The last plague in the United States was in Los Angeles

In 1924, 30 people fell ill with the plague. On October 30, 51-year-old Jesus Luyan felt unwell - a few days before that, he found a dead rat under the house and threw it out. The man became patient zero. For a long time, the disease was considered a severe form of pneumonia, until the epidemic reached a more severe level. Separate areas of Los Angeles were closed for quarantine. This and, to a greater extent, the deployment of a massive rodent eradication program helped stop the plague. All locations where infected animals have been found have also been marked, with some even found downtown and in Beverly Hills. The harbor was temporarily closed due to an infected rat found there.

3) Epidemics still occur in Madagascar

Most of the plague cases occur in Madagascar. Outbreaks of the disease are constantly occurring in the country: the last epidemic occurred in 2017 - from August to November, 2,348 cases were registered, of which 202 people died. This case was unique in that the plague reached the capital of Antananarivo, as well as other major cities, which increased the rate of spread of the disease. Usually, cases of infection appear in rural areas during the rainy season. This time, one man infected 31 people while traveling around the country. The Los Angeles Times reported that he likely thought he had malaria, which has similar symptoms, and therefore did not take any precautions.

4) The Plague Wand Was Almost Used as a Bioweapon During the Cold War

Both the US and the USSR were looking for ways to use the plague bacteria as a weapon, but the Soviet Union moved further in their developments - they created a way to spray the bacteria. This made it possible to infect the whole city. According to some estimates, 50 kilograms of plague bacillus sprayed over a city of 5 million people would probably infect 150,000 and kill 36,000 people. However, these estimates do not take into account additional factors that could cause the disease to spread further. The US has never developed a way to reproduce enough bacteria, but to this day there is a plan to counter such biological weapons.

5) The plague wand is incredibly tenacious

Despite all the horrors, a bacterium without a host can live no more than an hour. It is quite sensitive to sunlight, although it is resistant to various temperatures in which the wearer himself can survive. The main "success" of the plague bacillus is how well it survives inside fleas, which, in turn, on rodents. So, rats are the main carriers. Starting in the 1860s, severe pandemics occurred in China, which reached Hong Kong by 1894, and from there the plague spread via ships to port cities around the world. This is how the disease reached the western states. The disease was quickly eliminated from urban areas, but due to rats and squirrels, it was able to reach rural areas, where it lives to this day.

We cannot allow the mass destruction of all small mammals, so the plague will most likely be our neighbor for many decades to come.

Dance plague is an unusual phenomenon that was observed in different parts of Western Europe repeatedly from the 14th to the 17th centuries. The most notable incident associated with this plague occurred in the summer of 1518 in Strasbourg, France, where many people continued to dance until they dropped dead from exhaustion. We have collected interesting facts about this incredible phenomenon.

1. The case of Frau Troffea

A week before the 1518 Mary Magdalene Festival, Frau Troffea came out of her house and began to dance. She danced all day until late at night, until she collapsed to the ground in complete exhaustion. Although the woman slept for several hours, her muscles twitched in her sleep, as if she continued to dance. When the Frau woke up, she began her bizarre dance again.

On the third day of crazy dancing, her shoes were soaked with blood, she was in a stage of extreme exhaustion, but she could not stop. A few days later, Frau Troffea was taken to the temple to be healed of her illness. But it was too late.. she died. It would seem that everything was over, but the unexpected happened - another 30 people began to dance in a similar way. A month later there were already more than 400. People danced for days, forgetting about food and water, until they died.

2 Dance Plague: Cause Unknown

As more and more people took to the streets throughout August, their legs twitched in some kind of eerie dance, frightening the residents of the city. The dancers seemed to have gone crazy, and the audience vied with each other to put forward various theories as to what could be the cause - God or the devil. Hundreds of people danced in the streets, sweaty and with bloody feet. It is believed that more than 10 people died from the dance plague every day. To this day, no one knows what caused the dance plague in Strasbourg and other parts of Western Europe, but there are many opinions about what could have happened. Maybe it was mass hysteria, or maybe a real "plague" caused by a virus.

3. Opinion of Paracelsus

The physician and alchemist Paracelsus visited Strasbourg in 1526, just a few years after the dancing plague struck. He first wrote about Frau Troffea and was the first to use the term "choreomania" to describe dance sickness. Paracelsus had his own opinion about the causes of the dancing plague. It turned out that Frau Troffea's husband hated it when she danced. Paracelsus and some of the inhabitants of Strasbourg believed that she began her dance simply to annoy her husband.

Paracelsus stated that dancing sickness had three causes. First, she appeared for imaginary reasons. Secondly, people may have joined the dance because of sexual disorders. And finally, perhaps some people had physical reasons for dancing out of control. Ultimately, Paracelsus believed that unhappy wives were the main cause of the dancing plague.

4. Social stress

One of the most likely causes of dance plague was stress. The dancing plague appeared shortly after the terrible epidemic of the Black Death. It seemed that the victims had involuntary contractions of the legs, which is still observed in a small proportion of patients in psychiatric hospitals (albeit to a lesser extent) today. The stress could be spiritually caused when the person assumed that he or she should be punished by God for various sins. Also at that time there was a lot of tension between different classes of society. And, given the widespread poverty and hunger, it is quite possible that there were groups of people who simply “broke down” due to moral stress.

5 Tarantula Bites

France was not the only country affected by the dance plague. There were also outbreaks of dancing mania in Italy, but in this country it was called tarantism. People believed that the spontaneous dance was caused by tarantula bites. Those bitten allegedly began to twitch and dance. It has also been claimed that bite victims sought to submerge themselves in cold water and many of them died at sea. Although the bite of a tarantula is not poisonous to humans, the last known case of tarantula in Italy was recorded in 1959.

6. Bonding treatment

Various methods have been used to try and cure those affected by dance mania. One of the most common methods was tying up the dancers. Victims of the disease were wrapped in cloth, similar to how babies are swaddled. First, it prevented victims from dancing to the point of bleeding their legs. Some of the victims also claimed that having their bellies tied tightly helped them to get rid of their insanity. Some even asked to be punched in the stomach for relief.

7. Darkness and starvation

Maracells recommended his own cure for the dancing plague. He called the victims "whores and scoundrels" and believed that they should have been treated in the worst possible way. First, he insisted that the victims should be locked in a dark room (and the worse the room, the better). Secondly, the victims had to starve and eat only bread and water. It is not known whether this helped or not, but it is unlikely that such cruel treatment was worse than the exorcism practiced by the church in relation to the victims of dance mania.

8. Child dance plague

Records show that in 1237 a large number of children were affected by the dancing plague in Erfurt, Germany. About 100 children began to dance uncontrollably on the road from Erfurt to Arnstadt, and then collapsed from exhaustion. The children were found and returned to their parents. But it didn't end there. Some teenagers died shortly thereafter, and those who survived lived with a tremor that never went away until the end of their days. No one knows what caused this outbreak of the "plague".

9. Saint John's Dance

Dancing mania also hit Germany in the 1300s, just after the Black Death epidemic. Men and women took to the streets and danced convulsively, to the horror of everyone around them. They jumped about foaming at the mouth and seemed to be possessed. Mania spread from one person to another. Some of the victims were force-fed and their madness subsided for a short time... but then returned again. The victims claimed that during the dance fits they did not even see what was happening around them, did not hear anything, but were forced to move, scream and dance to the point of complete exhaustion.

10. Dance of St. Vitus

The St. Vitus dance is often compared to a dancing mania, but it was not a real dance. Although St. Vitus was the patron saint of dancers, this dance was a disease that caused the bodies of the victims to twitch or shake. Today this disease is known as chorea and is being treated. Previously, the sick were taken to the chapel of St. Vitus in the hope that they would be healed. Those who refused to visit the chapel were excommunicated from the church.

And for everyone who is interested in the Middle Ages, a story about.

The politicians who started the wars are not responsible for the most massive deaths in history. Pandemics of terrible diseases were the causes of the most massive deaths and suffering of people. How was it and where is the plague, smallpox, typhus, leprosy, cholera now?

Plague Historical Facts

The plague pandemic brought the most massive mortality in the middle of the 14th century, swept across Eurasia and claimed, according to the most conservative estimates of life historians, 60 million people. Considering that at that time the population of the earth was only 450 million, one can imagine the catastrophic scale of the "black death", as this disease was called. In Europe, the population decreased by about a third, and the lack of labor force was felt here for at least 100 years, the farms were abandoned, the economy was in a terrible state. In all subsequent centuries, large outbreaks of plague were also observed, the last of which was noted in 1910-1911 in the northeastern part of China.

Origin of the plague name

The name comes from Arabic. The Arabs called the plague "jumma", which means "ball", or "bean". The reason for this was the appearance of the inflamed lymph node of the plague patient - the bubo.

Methods of spread and symptoms of plague

There are three forms of plague: bubonic, pneumonic and septic. All of them are caused by one bacterium, Yersinia pestis, or, more simply, the plague bacillus. Its carriers are rodents with anti-plague immunity. And the fleas that bit these rats, also through a bite, pass it on to a person. The bacterium infects the flea's esophagus, as a result of which it is blocked, and the insect becomes forever hungry, bites everyone in a row and immediately infects through the resulting wound.

Plague Control Methods

In medieval times, plague-inflamed lymph nodes (buboes) were cut out or cauterized, opening them. The plague was considered a kind of poisoning, in which some poisonous miasma entered the human body, so the treatment consisted in taking the then known antidotes, for example, crushed jewelry. In our time, the plague is successfully overcome with the help of common antibiotics.

plague now

Every year, about 2.5 thousand people are infected with plague, but this is no longer in the form of a mass epidemic, but cases all over the world. But the plague bacillus is constantly evolving, and old medicines are not effective. Therefore, although everything, one might say, is under the control of doctors, the threat of a catastrophe still exists today. An example of this is the death of a person, registered in Madagascar in 2007, from a strain of the plague bacillus, in which 8 types of antibiotics did not help.

SMALLPOX

Historical facts about smallpox

During the Middle Ages, there were not so many women who did not have traces of smallpox lesions on their faces (pox), and the rest had to hide the scars under a thick layer of cosmetics. This influenced the fashion of excessive passion for cosmetics, which has survived to our time. According to philologists, all women now with letter combinations in the surnames “ripple” (Ryabko, Ryabinina, etc.), shadr and often generous (Shchedrins, Shadrins), Koryav (Koryavko, Koryaeva, Koryachko) flaunted pockmarked ancestors (rowan, generous, etc., depending on the dialect). Approximate statistics exist for the 17th-18th centuries and indicate that 10 million new smallpox patients appeared in Europe alone, and for 1.5 million of them this was fatal. It was through this infection that the white man colonized the Americas. For example, in the 16th century, the Spaniards brought smallpox to the territory of Mexico, because of which about 3 million of the local population died - the invaders had no one to fight with.

Origin of the name smallpox

"pox" and "rash" have the same root. In English, smallpox is called "small rash" (smallpox). And syphilis is called at the same time a great rash (great pox).

Methods of spread and symptoms of smallpox

After entering the human body, smallpox varionas (Variola major and Variola) lead to the appearance of vesicles-pustules on the skin, the places of formation of which are then scarred, if the person survived, of course. The disease spreads by airborne droplets, and the virus also remains active in scales from the skin of a sick person.

smallpox control methods

Hindus brought rich gifts to the goddess of smallpox Mariatela to appease her. The inhabitants of Japan, Europe and Africa believed in the smallpox demon's fear of red: the sick had to wear red clothes and be in a room with red walls. In the twentieth century, smallpox began to be treated with antiviral drugs.

Smallpox in our time

In 1979, WHO officially announced that smallpox had been completely eradicated thanks to the vaccination of the population. But in countries such as the United States and Russia, pathogens are still stored. This is done "for scientific research", and the question of the complete destruction of these stocks is constantly being postponed. It is possible that North Korea and Iran secretly store smallpox virions. Any international conflict can serve as a pretext for using these viruses as a weapon. So it's better to get vaccinated against smallpox.

CHOLERA

Historical facts about cholera

Until the end of the 18th century, this intestinal infection mostly bypassed Europe and raged in the Ganges delta. But then there were changes in the climate, the invasion of European colonialists in Asia, the transportation of goods and people improved, and this all changed the situation: in 1817-1961, six cholera pandemics occurred in Europe. The most massive (third) took the lives of 2.5 million people.

Origin of the name cholera

The word "cholera" comes from the Greek "bile" and "flow" (in reality, all the liquid from the inside flowed out of the patient). The second name of cholera because of the characteristic blue color of the skin of patients is “blue death”.

Methods of spread and symptoms of cholera

The vibrio of cholera is the bacterium Vibrio choleare, which lives in water bodies. When it enters the small intestine of a person, it releases an enterotoxin, which leads to profuse diarrhea, and then vomiting. In the case of a severe course of the disease, the body dehydrates so quickly that the sick person dies a few hours after the onset of the first symptoms.

Cholera Control Methods

Samovars or irons were applied to the feet of the sick for warming, infusions of chicory and malt were given to drink, and the body was rubbed with camphor oil. During the epidemic, it was believed that it was possible to scare away the disease with a belt made of red flannel or woolen. In our time, those with cholera are effectively treated with antibiotics, and for dehydration they are allowed to drink inside or special salt solutions are administered intravenously.

cholera now

WHO claims that the world is now in its seventh cholera pandemic, beginning in 1961. So far, mostly residents of poor countries are sick, primarily in South Asia and Africa, where 3-5 million people fall ill every year and 100-120 thousand of them do not survive. Also, according to experts, due to global negative changes in the environment, serious problems with clean water will soon arise in developed countries as well. In addition, global warming will affect the fact that in nature foci of cholera will appear in more northern regions of the planet. Unfortunately, there is no vaccine against cholera.

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Historical facts about typhus

Until the second half of the 19th century, this was the name of all diseases in which there was a strong fever and confusion in the mind. Among them, the most dangerous were typhus, typhoid and relapsing fever. Sypnoy, for example, in 1812 almost halved the 600,000-strong army of Napoleon, which invaded Russia, which was one of the reasons for his defeat. A century later, in 1917-1921, 3 million citizens of the Russian Empire died of typhus. Relapsing fever mainly brought grief to the inhabitants of Africa and Asia, in 1917-1918, only the inhabitants of India, about half a million died from it.

Origin of the name typhoid

The name of the disease comes from the Greek "typhos", which means "fog", "confused mind".

Methods of spread and symptoms of typhoid

With typhus, small pink rashes on the skin form on the skin. When recurrent after the first attack, the patient seems to get better for 4-8 days, but then the disease again knocks down. Typhoid fever is an intestinal infection that is accompanied by diarrhea.

The bacterium that causes typhus and relapsing fever is carried by lice, and for this reason, outbreaks of these infections flare up in crowded places during humanitarian disasters. When bitten by one of these creatures, it is important not to itch - it is through combed wounds that the infection enters the bloodstream. Typhoid fever is caused by the bacterium Salmonella typhi, which, if ingested with food and water, leads to damage to the intestines, liver and spleen.

Methods of fighting typhoid

During the Middle Ages, it was believed that the source of the infection was the stench that comes from the patient. Judges in Britain, who had to deal with criminals with typhus, wore boutonnieres of strong-smelling flowers as a means of protection, and also distributed them to those who came to court. The benefit of this was only aesthetic. Since XVII, attempts have been made to combat typhus with cinchona bark, imported from South America. So then treated all the diseases in which the temperature rose. These days, antibiotics are quite successful in dealing with typhoid.

Typhus in now

The WHO list of especially dangerous diseases relapsing and typhus left in 1970. This happened thanks to the active fight against pediculosis (lice), which was carried out throughout the planet. But typhoid fever continues to cause trouble to people. The most suitable conditions for the development of an epidemic are heat, insufficient drinking water and hygiene problems. Therefore, the main contenders for the outbreak of typhoid epidemics are Africa, South Asia and Latin America. According to experts of the Ministry of Health, 20 million people are infected with typhoid every year, and for 800 thousand of them it is fatal.

LEPROSY

Historical facts about leprosy

Also known as leprosy, it is a slow disease. It, unlike the plague, for example, did not spread in the form of pandemics, but quietly and gradually conquered space. At the beginning of the 13th century, there were 19,000 leper colonies in Europe (an institution for isolating lepers and fighting the disease) and the victims were millions. By the beginning of the 14th century, the death rate from leprosy had fallen sharply, but it was unlikely that they had learned how to treat the sick. Just the incubation period for this ailment is 2-20 years. Infections like plague and cholera raging in Europe killed many people even before he was classified as a leper. Thanks to the development of medicine and hygiene, there are now no more than 200 thousand lepers in the world. They mainly live in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Origin of the name leprosy

The name comes from the Greek word "leprosy", which means "a disease that makes the skin scaly". They called leprosy in Russia - from the word "exercise", i.e. lead to distortion, disfigurement. There are also a number of other names for this disease, for example, Phoenician disease, "lazy death", Hansen's disease, etc.

Ways of distribution and symptoms of leprosy

It is possible to become infected with leprosy only by contacting the skin of the carrier of the infection for a long time, as well as if its liquid secretions (saliva or from the nose) get inside. Then a rather long time passes (the recorded record is 40 years), after which Hansen's bacillus (Mucobacterium leprae) first disfigures a person, covering it with spots and growths on the skin, and then makes a disabled person rotting alive. Also, the peripheral nervous system is damaged and the sick person loses the ability to feel pain. You can take and cut off a part of your body, not understanding where it went.

Leprosy control methods

During the Middle Ages, lepers were declared dead during their lifetime and placed in leper colonies - a kind of concentration camps, where the sick were doomed to a slow death. They tried to treat the infected with solutions that included gold, bloodletting and baths with the blood of giant tortoises. Nowadays, this disease can be completely eliminated with the help of antibiotics.

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