6 worst epidemics in history

Studying history, we almost do not pay attention to pandemic, and some of them took more lives and influenced the story more than the longest and destructive war. According to some data, no less people died in a year and a half than for the entire second world war, and numerous plague outbreaks prepared the consciousness of people to overthrow absolutism and the transition from the Middle Ages to a new time. Pandemic lessons cost mankind too expensive, and, alas, even now, in the era of developed medicine, we continue to pay on these accounts.

Children's writer Elizabeth Nikolaevna Vodovozova was born in 1844 - 2 years before the third cholera pandemic (the longest of all) appeared in Russia. The epidemic ended only at the beginning of the 1860s, in the early 1860s, during this time more than a million lives in Russia and one and a half million in Europe and America. Elizabeth Nikolaevna recalls that in just a month cholera took 7 members of her family. She later explained such a high mortality in the fact that households did not comply with the simplest prophylaxis rules: a lot of time was spent with patients, they didn't hurt the dead for a long time, they did not follow the children.

But it is not necessary to accuse the family of the writer in Levolynly: despite the fact that the cholera who came from India has already been familiar to Europeans, they did not know anything about the causative agents of the disease and the penetration paths. It is now known that a cholera stick, living in dirty water, provokes dehydration, because of which the patient dies in a few days after the manifestation of the first symptoms. In the middle of the XIX century, no one suspected that the source of the disease is wastewater, and they need to treat people from dehydration, and not from fever - at best, the sick warmed with blankets and drips or rubbed all sorts of spices, and in the worst - they were allowed They pierced opiates and even mercury. The cause of the disease was considered the stench in the air (which, however, brought some benefits - residents removed garbage from the streets and installed the sewage to get rid of the destructive smell).

The English doctor John Snow drew on the water. In 1854, more than 600 residents of the London District of Socho died from cholera. Snow drew attention to the fact that all the diseases drank water from the same column. Soho lived in the worst antisanitarian conditions: the area was not connected to the urban water supply system, so drinking water was mixed here with infected uncleanness. Moreover, the contents of overcrowded cesspool fell into the Thames, which is why the cholera wand was carried out in other districts of London.

For a modern person, it is obvious that the most terrible epidemics in the history of mankind were provoked precisely by such cases of scinting antisanitarian, but residents of the XIX century were in no hurry to believe the overwhelming Snow - the version was too popular that the infected air is to blame. But in the end, the doctor persuaded the inhabitants of SHO to break the handle of the ill-fated column, and the epidemic managed to stop. Slowly, but the ideas of John Snow took the government of different countries, and the water supply systems finally settled in the cities. However, in the history of Europe, another 4 cholera epidemics happened in the history of Europe.

Valentin Kataev in the story "Sir Henry and Damn" described one terrible disease, which many Russian soldiers were hurt at the beginning of the 20th century. The patient rushed into the heat, he was tormented by hallucinations, as if rats were swinging in his ear, which were continuously singing and screamed. The light of the ordinary light bulb seemed to be almost unbearably bright, there was some suffocating smell around the room, and rats in the ears became more and more. Such terrible torments did not seem something unusual ordinary Russian people - typhoid appeared in each village and every shelf. Doctors hoped only for good luck, because it was nothing to treat tiff until the middle of the 20th century.

The rapid tyif became a real scourge for Russian soldiers during the First World and Civil Wars. According to official data, in 1917-1921. 3-5 million fighters were killed, but some researchers who analyzed and losses in the civilian population estimate the disaster scale of 15-25 million lives. A rapted typhus is passed to a person through a wrapping company - it was this fact that became a fatal for Russian peasants. The fact is that the lice then were quite condescendingly, as something normal and not to be destroyed. They were in residents of peaceful villages and, of course, divorced in large quantities in the conditions of military antisanitarian, when soldiers massively lived in places that are not suitable for housing. It is not known what losses would suffocate the Red Army during the Second World War, if in 1942, Professor Alexey Vasilyevich Pshenichnov did not make a vaccine against Tifa.

When Spanish Conquistor Hernan Cortez landed on the shores of modern Mexico in 1519, there were about 22 million people there. In 80 years, the local population barely consisted of a million. The mass death of residents is not connected with special atrocities of the Spaniards, but with the bacterium they brought with them. But only 4 centuries later, scientists found out which disease was twisted almost all the indigenous mexicans. In the XVI century, he was called Kokolitsky.

It is quite difficult to describe the symptoms of mysterious disease, since it took a wide variety of forms. Someone died from the strongest intestinal infection, someone especially suffered by fever syndromes, while others chopped up in the blood accumulated in the lungs (although the lungs and spleen were out of order from almost everyone). The disease lasted 3-4 days, mortality reached 90%, but only among the local population. Spaniards If they picked up Kolitztley, then in very light, unmerety form. Therefore, scientists and came to the conclusion that the dangerous bacterium brought with them the Europeans who probably have long developed immunity to her.

At first, it was believed that Kokolitili is typhoid typhoid, although some symptoms contradicted this conclusion. Then scientists suspected hemorrhagic fever, Kor and OSP, but without DNA analysis, all these theories remained very controversial. Studies conducted in our age have established that the Mexicans of the colonization period were carriers of Salmonella Enterica bacteria, which causes an intestinal infection Parathine C. In DNA of people living in Mexico before the arrival of the Spaniards, there are no bacteria, but the Europeans have a parathy in the XI century . Over the past centuries, their organisms managed to get used to pathogenic bacteria, and here, unprepared by Mexicans, it almost completely destroyed.

Spanish flu

According to official data, the First World War carried about 20 million lives, but another 50-100 million people who died due to the Pandemic of Spanish flu should be added here. The deadly virus, the originating (according to some data) in China, could well die there and die, but the war spoke him around the world. As a result, in 18 months, Spanish had a third population of the Earth, about 5% of people on the planet died, choking in their own blood. Many of them were young and healthy, possessed excellent immunity - and literally burned over three days. The story did not know more dangerous epidemics.

The "Light Plague" appeared in China's provinces in 1911, but then the disease did not have the opportunity to get further, and she gradually descended. The new wave fell for 1917 - World War made her global epidemic. China sent volunteers to the West, who sharply needed working hands. The Chinese government has made a decision on quarantine too late, therefore, along with working hands, sick lungs arrived. And then - a famous scenario: in the morning in the American military unit, the symptoms were manifested with one person, in the evening of the patients were already about hundreds, and a week later, the state would hardly be found in the USA. Together with the English troops, standing in America, the deadly flu came to Europe, where he got to France first, and then to Spain. If Spain was only the 4th in the chain of the disease, then why did the flu called "Spanish"? The fact is that before May 1918, no one informed the public about the Terrible epidemic: all the "infected" countries participated in the war, because they were afraid to declare the population about the new attack. And Spain held neutrality. About 8 million people are ill, including the king, that is, 40% of the population. In the interests of the nation (and all mankind) was to know the truth.

The Spaniard killed almost lightning: on the first day the patient did not feel anything other than fatigue and headaches, and the next one was already continuously coughed. Patients died, as a rule, on the third day in terrible torment. Before the appearance of the first antiviral drugs, people were absolutely helpless: they strongly limited contacts with others, they tried anywhere once again not to leave, wearing dressings, ate vegetables, and even made voodoo dolls - nothing helped. But in China by the spring of 1918, the disease went to the decline - immunity against Spaniard reached the inhabitants. Probably the same thing happened in Europe in 1919. The world got rid of the flu epidemic - but only for 40 years.

Plague

"In the morning of the sixteenth of April, Dr. Bernard Ree, coming out of the apartment, stumbled on the landing about the dead rat" - so in the novel of the "Plague" Alber Cammy describes the beginning of a big catastrophe. The great French writer was not in vain that chose this deadly disease: with V c. BC e. And before the XIX century. n. e. There are more than 80 plague epidemics. This means that the disease was more or less with humanity, then subsided, then attacking with a new force. The most ferocious in history are three pandemics: Justinian Plague in the V century, the famous "black death" in the XIV century and the third pandemic at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries.

Emperor Justinian Great could stay in the memory of descendants as a ruler who revived the Roman Empire, revising the Roman law and the transition from antiquity to the Middle Ages, but fate ordered otherwise. In the tenth year of the reign of the emperor, the Sun in the literal sense of the word sweetened. The ashes of eruption of three large volcanoes in the tropics polluted the atmosphere, blocking the path to the sunshine. Just a few years later, in the 40s. VI century, the epidemic came to the Byzantium equal to which the world has never seen. For 200 years of plague (which at times the entire civilized world covered, and all other years existed as a local epidemic) more than 100 million people were killed in the world. Residents died from choking and from ulcers, from fever and from madness, from intestinal disorders, and even from invisible infections that killed out with sight of absolutely healthy citizens. Historians noted that the patients did not produce immunity to the plague: survived the plague once or even two could die, infected again. And after 200 years, the disease suddenly disappeared. Scientists are still guessing what happened: who retreated finally the ice age took the plague with him or did people still work out the immune system?

In the XIV century, the cooling returned to Europe - and with him and the plague. The full antisanitary of the epidemic was facilitated by the full antisanitarian in the cities, on the streets of which the streams were treated with streams. Made their own fear and hunger. Medieval medicine, of course, could not fight the disease - the doctors were given to patients herbal infusions, burned herbs, rubbed ointments, but everything was in vain. A good care turned out to be a good care - in very rare cases, patients were recovered, simply because they were properly fed and kept in warm and comfort.

The only way prevention was the limitation of contacts between people, but, of course, the inhabitants covered by a panic, fell into all sorts of extremes. Someone began to actively pour sins, fast and challenge. Others, on the contrary, in front of an imminent death decided to have fun. Residents greedily grabbed for any opportunity to escape: they bought pendants from scammers, ointment and pagan spells, and then immediately burned the witches and arranged Jewish pogroms in favor of the Lord, but by the end of the 50s. The disease gradually disappeared itself, having taken with him about a quarter of the population of the globe.

The third, the last one, the pandemic was far from so destructive as the first two, but still killed almost 20 million people. The plague appeared in the middle of the XIX century in the Chinese provinces - and did not leave their limits almost until the end of the century. 6 million Europeans destroyed trade relations with India and China: at first the disease was slowly clogged to the local ports, and then put on the ships to the shopping centers of the old world. Surprisingly, there was a plague and stayed, this time does not make it possible to deep into the continent, and by the 30s of the 20th century almost sued. It was during the time of the third pandemic, the doctors determined that rats were carriers of the disease. In 1947, Soviet scientists were first used in the treatment of Streptomycin plague. The disease that destroyed the population of the Earth 2 thousand years was defeated.

AIDS

Young, slim, very attractive blonde Gaethhan Duga worked as a flight attendant of Canadian air grains. It is unlikely that he was going to once go down in history - and still got, although by mistake. Gaerthan since 19 years old led a very active sex life - according to him, he slept with 2500 thousand men across North America - this was the reason for him, unfortunately, sad glory. In 1987, 3 years after death, journalists called the young Canadian "zero patient" AIDS - that is, the man from which the global epidemic began. The results of the study were based on the scheme in which the Digo was marked by the "0" sign, and the rays of infection in all of the states of America were dismissed. In fact, the "0" sign in the diagram indicated not a digit, but the letter: O - Out of California. In the early 80s, except for a dug, scientists investigated several more men with symptoms of strange disease - all of them, except for the imaginary "zero patient", were Californians. The real number of Gaetan Duga is only 57. And HIV in America appeared in the 60-70s.

HIV handed over to a person from monkeys about the 20s. The XX century - probably during the cutting of the carcass of the murdered animal, and in the blood of man he was first discovered in the late 50s. In just two dozen years, the virus caused an AIDS epidemic - illness destroying human immunity. For 35 years, AIDS activity killed about 35 million people - and as long as the number of infected does not fall. With timely treatment, the patient can continue normal life with HIV several decades, but it is impossible to completely get rid of the virus. The first symptoms of the disease are the incessant fever, long intestinal disorders, permanent cough (in the running stage - with blood). The disease, in the 1980s, considered by the scourge of homosexuals and drug addicts, now has no orientation - to grab HIV and after a few years it can get a breath of AIDS. That is why it is so important to comply with the simplest rules for the prevention: avoid unprotected sex contacts, check the sterility of syringes, surgical and cosmetic tools and regularly pass tests. Drugs from AIDS does not exist. Showing negligence once, you can suffer from the very remaining life from the manifestations of the virus and sit on antiretroviral therapy, which has its own side effects and is definitely not cheap. Read more about the disease you can read.