By Simoni Shah
“In order to move forward,
we must look back”
From the Bubonic Plague in 1342 to COVID 19 in 2020, the threat remains the same: a contagious disease that had the potential to wipe out a significant population of the Earth as we know it. In the world’s history, millions of people have died over time due to pandemics and epidemics alike. In this article, the stories of the past will be reopened for your eyes but why look at history when it is happening right around us?
As David Heymann, Executive Director for Communicable Diseases at the World Health Organization (WHO) said, “the past provides a prologue for any discussion of emerging infectious disease, whether the discussion concerns the biological origins of a potential pandemic or its social repercussions”. Without history, we will not be able to learn from the mistakes our ancestors had made. Without history, we won’t know how to do better next time. A branch of science that focuses on this field particularly is called Epidemiology. It is the study and analysis of the patterns and determinants of health and disease in defined populations. It is an evidence-based practice by identifying the risk factors for diseases and potential pandemics.
There is a single word that can serve as a fitting point for our brief journey through time and more specifically, the history of pandemics - that word is the plague. It is used as a general term for any epidemic disease causing a high rate of mortality or more commonly used as a metaphor for any sudden outbreak of devastating evil.
The first-ever recorded pandemic occurred in 430-26BC and it was called ‘The Plague of Athens”. It originated in Ethiopia, and from there, it spread throughout Greece and Egypt. Symptoms included fever, coughing up blood and chronic vomiting. The victims would generally die on the seventh or eight days of contracting the disease. Survivors might suffer from partial paralysis or blindness for the rest of their lives. Health care workers usually contracted the disease and died with their patients. Because of the war between Sparta and Athens, the disease spread quickly, killing thousands with them (25% of the population). A majority of them died because of living in overcrowded cities and by not following the necessary hygiene. To this day, the cause of the Athenian Plague is unknown. Followed by the Athenian plague were the Antonine Plague (165-180 AD) and the Justinian Plague (mid-sixth century AD). Like the past pandemics, the diseases were spread quickly through trade routes. The Justinian plague worsened until trade halted and people died of the disease as well as starvation.
It is believed that the Justinian plague was the first outbreak of the bacteria that later then potentially mutated and turned into the Bubonic Plague/The Black Death of 1334. In the paranoia, superstition reigned the unhygienic and overcrowded cities of the world. People started believing in ridiculous things such as wearing perfume to become immune and many corpses had to be piled on top of each other and buried in a pit. The bubonic plague at least killed 125 million people of the world’s population. Some people even started to call it, “The Triumph of Death”. Interestingly, in regard to current news, the word ‘quarantine’ was invented during the Black Death. It required travellers to spend 30 days on an island before they could enter the cities. However, this was rarely effective compared to the millions dying every day.
The world’s first-ever eradicated disease was smallpox. Followed by the smallpox pandemic (1798) was cholera (an acute diarrheal disease) pandemic of 1817. An estimated 300 million people died of smallpox in the 21st century alone and 1.3 million have died from the world’s longest pandemic, cholera. In 1918, the first true global pandemic and the first one that occurred in modern medicine with specialities epidemiology happened - The Spanish Flu. It was also the last true global pandemic with devastating consequences before COVID 19. The origin of the Spanish Flu remains unknown to this day, but a possible origin may be China, France or Austria. This is because the outbreak occurred during WW1, where troops were travelling everywhere to fight.
In recent years, there was an outbreak of both SARS and MERS in 2009 and 2012 which led to at least 800 deaths in total. The first cases of SARS occurred in Guangdong, China which then spread to the rest of the world. However, there are still no treatments or vaccines for both the diseases and the health care workers had to mainly rely on the patient’s immune system to fight the disease.
Common features throughout the pandemics include there being no cure/vaccines, many deaths and trading to stop which led to a decrease in staple food which in turn resulted in starvation. Tens of thousands have died but it will pale in comparison to what might be coming in the future. This is why, through understanding the past, we have to be prepared for the future. For years now, scientists have been dreading the ‘Disease X’. It is not, as of yet, an actual disease but a speculated source of the next pandemic that could have devastating effects on humanity. To ensure that this must not happen, we need to be prepared.
References:
Disease X & Spanish Flu - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7123574/
Smallpox - https://www.history.com/news/the-rise-and-fall-of-smallpox
Justinian Plague & Black Death - https://www.history.com/news/pandemics-end-plague-cholera-black-death-smallpox
Disease and History by Frederick C. Cartwright, published by Sutton Publishing, 2014.
Encyclopaedia of Pestilence, Pandemics and Plagues by ED, Joseph P. Byrne, published by Greenwood Press, 2008.
SARS - https://www.history.com/topics/middle-ages/pandemics-timeline
Quote of David Heymann - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK54171/
Image 2: https://www.pinterest.com/nanasneedlework/spanish-flu-1918/
Edited by: Noelle Darts and Ashna Chaturvedi
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