The Pandemics Most devastating diseases include plagues, pests, viruses such as influenza or cholera. Exterminators who did not make a geographical, social, gender or racial distinction, affecting billions of people throughout history.
A pandemic is a large-scale epidemic, affecting a significant number of people, having a higher incidence than normally expected.
Pandemics are often associated with a large number of deaths due to the lack of treatment or preparation of people to cure or isolate the disease.
In the Ancient World there were already diseases that spread epidemic or pandemic causing great mortality. These epidemics were called pests or plagues.
For example, you can remember the 7 plagues of Egypt, which according to the Bible, caused diseases and a high mortality. In ancient times the only way to deal with pandemics was to isolate the sick.
Thus, in the medieval era quarantine was created. Specifically, the rule of forty days in the Republic of Ragusa was created as a measure to combat the Black Death.
Ranking of the deadliest pandemics in history
1- Plague of Athens
"The Plague of Athens"by Michael Sweerts
Thucydides In his work"The Peloponnesian War"tells the story of one of the deadliest plagues of antiquity that spread in 428 BC. In Athens.
According to the historian, the disease came from Ethiopia and was reproduced in the great agglomerations in the cities due to the heat and the wars. The description of Tucídices is detailed:
"At the beginning of the summer, the Peloponnesians and their allies invaded the territory of Attica. (...). A few days later, the Athenians came upon a terrible epidemic."
According to Tucidides, 4,400 hoplites and 3,000 cavalrymen died, representing an important part of the Greek army. The Greek statesman Pericles Also died because of this disease.
2- The plague of Galen
"Angel of death hitting a door during the plague of Rome"engraving of Levasseur
The Antonine Pest or Plague of Galen was an epidemic of smallpox or measles, which struck Rome between AD 165-180. It was taken to the Empire by troops returning from military campaigns in the Near East.
According to ancient sources, this epidemic first appeared when the Romans besieged Seleucia in the winter of 165-66. Amian Marcellin Reports in his chronicles that the plague later spread to Gaul and the legions along the Rhine.
It is also considered that this epidemic could have claimed the life of the Roman emperor Lucio Vero And his corregente Marco Aurelio Antonino . The epidemic resumed nine years later and caused approximately 2000 deaths each day in Rome, where a quarter of the population was infected. Galen mentions in his description symptoms like fever, diarrhea and inflammation of the pharynx.
3- The yellow pestilence
"Yellow Fever Episode"by Juan Manuel Blanes
England in the years 550 and 664 d.C. Suffered from the"Pestis flava"or"Pestilencia amarilla", which specialists considered was an epidemic of hepatitis.
In the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle There is a detailed description of the disease and its consequences. This disease came by boat and spread quickly because in England, being an island, it was believed that the population would be more defended against epidemics.
The ships and sailors who came to English ports were exposed to all sorts of diseases and played the role of agents of disease. Although descriptions and historical chronicles are not clinically detailed, clinicians are almost certain that it was an epidemic caused by bacillus Yersinia Pestis .
4- The Black Death
Illustration of"Chronicles of Gilles Li Muisis"
One of the most deadly epidemics in history, the Asian and European peoples struck between 1347 and 1350. Based on the symptoms of the sick, scientists have determined that the pandemic was of bubonic plague.
Although it was also accompanied by septicemic plague, which affected the blood, and pneumonic, which pinched the lungs. Sometimes the patient recovered from the septicemia plague, but the others were almost always mortal.
Some consider that the plague was brought from Asia by the crew of a Genoese vessel, which was infected in Kaffa (Crimea). From Italy, the plague passed to Provence, the Languedoc, the Crown of Aragon, Castile, France and the center of Europe.
Between 1349 and 1350, the disease reached England, northern Europe and Scandinavia. It has been shown that the disease also affected Asian countries. For example, in China and India the mortality was 60-90%, and the rates of pneumonic plague were practically 100%.
Chroniclers of the Asian nations of the time say that half of the population was lost, sometimes even more than half.
5- The dance epidemic
Engraving by Hendrik Hondius.
The dance plague was a case of choreomania or collective hysteria that occurred in Strasbourg, France in 1518. People began to dance without stopping for days and after a month or less began to suffer from problems of bones and muscles, Epileptic seizures, heart attacks, strokes, and exhaustion.
There is no scientific explanation for this phenomenon that although it was not a pandemic, remained in history as an unresolved mystery.
It is considered that the first one who began to dance was a woman of name Frau Troffea. This strange case is described in the book A time to dance, the extraordinary story of the dancing plague of 1518 By John Waller.
6- Cholera in London
Asian cholera invaded Europe in 1830, but the cause of cholera was safely determined only in 1854 by Dr. John Snow. In several European cities the virus had already caused many deaths by that time.
When the pandemic, which killed more than 30,000 people, began in London, John Snow suspected it was caused by contaminated water, but needed conclusive evidence.
Throughout the city of people died by the plague without apparent connection between them. In 1854, thanks to a new outbreak of the epidemic, Dr. Snow demonstrated what was causing the disease.
Shortly before the epidemic, one of the water providers transferred the intake to another water point and none of the residents who took it became ill.
This allowed Dr. Snow to do a test of control. In the end he determined that the common denominator among all the deaths was the well of Broad Street.
It was determined that the well was contaminated, so it was closed and the mayor of the city decided to build an aqueduct to avoid problems of this type in the future. Anyway, cholera hit all European cities and control of the disease was difficult.
7- The outbreak in Spain
The cholera pandemic of 1854 that entered Spain through Galicia. Image via Taringa
The first outbreak of cholera in Spain caused 102,500 deaths and occurred in 1843. The second in 1854 produced 200,000 deaths.
In order to prevent the spread of the disease during the second outbreak, a sanitation squad was set up in the villages to run the streets to eliminate the corpses, but families hid the corpses to make sure they did not bury someone alive. This situation caused the virus to spread even more.
8- Smallpox"colonial"
The natural immunity of the indigenous people of Latin America was not prepared for smallpox, which allowed the disease to spread among the Indians quickly with disastrous consequences.
In a few weeks thousands lost their lives because of smallpox. For example, Cuitlahuac , The penultimate Aztec emperor, died of this disease. Recent estimates by scientists postulate that the first twenty-five years after the Conquest were enough to die more than a third of the indigenous population due to smallpox.
Natural devastation contributed in a radical way to the colonial regime and explains in part why such powerful empires as the Aztec and the Inca fell before Spanish power without major opposition in a few years.
9- Cholera in the New World
In America, the first outbreak in Cartagena de Indias in 1849 ended the lives of hundreds of innocents. The disease began in the port with the death of some fishermen, soon spread by the public market, where the people fell to die.
The plague spread throughout the city and authorities decided to dig an enormous common grave for all the victims in the Cemetery of Manga.
10- Cholera in Asia and Africa
In the twentieth century, the disease spread throughout Asia, except in 1947, the year of a serious epidemic in Egypt. From 1961 the disease moved from Indonesia to almost all of Asia, then to Europe and Africa, and from North Africa to the Iberian Peninsula.
In 1977 and 1978 there were outbreaks in Japan, and for the first time cholera struck the southern Pacific. The disease continues in Frica, where 13 countries continue to report sporadic cases of the disease. In Asia, 11 countries have reported cases of cholera.
11- The greatest pandemics of cholera
Six major cholera pandemics are recorded in history. The first spread through the Indian subcontinent, beginning in Bengal and reaching China and the regions around the Caspian Sea.
This pandemic dates from 1816-1826. The second pandemic (1829-1851) affected Europe, and then arrived in North America in 1834. The third pandemic spread in the territory of Russia from 1852 to 1860 and resulted in more than one million deaths.
The fourth pandemic spread throughout Europe and Africa in the years 1863-1875. The fifth, from 1899 to 1923, severely affected Russia, while in Europe it did not make big strides thanks to the progress of public health systems.
The last, called"The Tor", began in Indonesia in 1961 and spread to the USSR in 1966. The two world wars aggravated the situation of the sick and produced more deaths.
12- The Italian plague
The Italian plague was a series of outbreaks of bubonic plague from 1629 to 1631 in the north and center of the country.
It is called"The Great Plague of Milan", since in this city was where it gained more life. It is estimated that more than 280,000 people died in Lombardy and Veneto.
In 1629, the pandemic affected Milan. The administration took measures such as a quarantine and limited access of inhabitants of other regions the area, in addition to trade restriction.
Unfortunately the plague claimed the lives of about 60,000 people with a total population of 130,000. This was because during the carnival the measures were relaxed and a new outbreak of the virus arose.
Also affected was Venice, which lost 60,000 inhabitants. It should be noted that important historians and scholars of the time consider that this epidemic is one of the causes of the fall of the influence of Italian cities in Europe and the Mediterranean Sea.
13- The plague of Seville
The greatest health crisis facing the city of Seville has been the plague epidemic of 1649. This epidemic not only resulted in great bankruptcy of the population, but at least 60,000 people died, representing 46% of the total population .
The plague of 1649 is one of the sequels of the epidemic of plague bubonic, initiated in Andalusia, that attacked Valencia strongly in 1647 and soon spread by Aragon and Murcia.
According to sources of the time, 1647 was a rainy year, in which there were floods of entire neighborhoods of the city. The floods were so large that you could sail on ships in the avenues of the city.
Many people lost their crops and then died not only of the epidemic, but of starvation.
14- The Great Plague of Vienna
This epidemic attacked the Austrian city of Vienna and took place in 1679 in the imperial residence city of the Habsburg Austrians. According to current studies, the description of the disease is the same as bubonic plague.
This disease was carried by rodents and black rats. The number of fatalities of the disease amounts to 76,000 inhabitants. At that time the city of Vienna, on the banks of the Danube, was an important commercial and fishing port with a large traffic of goods and travelers from all corners of the world.
As a result, Vienna suffered episodic plague outbreaks on a regular basis. It was enough that the disease was detected in any neighboring country.
At that time the cities did not have sewage, drainage services and garbage collection system. Because of this, heaps of garbage were stinking in the streets. In addition, the warehouses, which contained the products, sometimes for months were filled with rats. Health conditions were so unhealthy and dirty for the time, that the plague called him"Death of Vienna"in other parts of Europe.
The nuns of the Brotherhood of the Holy Trinity founded special hospitals for children and adults during the epidemic. The hospital offered simple medicines, but generally an important improvement over the other sanitary and medical measures that existed in the city.
The corpses were buried in mass graves, which could be kept open until they filled up, allowing rodents to spread the disease.
15- The flu
The Russian flu was a flu pandemic that spread from Russia between 1889 and 1890, with recurrences from 1891 to 1894. Around 1,000,000 people were killed by the flu. It is believed that this pandemic was caused by the virus Influenzavirus A subtype H2N2.
The pandemic began in St. Petersburg in 1889, spread throughout Europe in only 4 months and reached the United States.
16- The influenza A (H1N1)
It was a pandemic that emerged as a variant of Influenzavirus A in 2009. According to a genetic analysis of the strain of the disease, its genetic material contained one avian strain, two porcine strains and one human. The origin of the disease is a variant of the H1N1 strain with diverse genetic material that underwent a mutation and jumped between species.
17- The Spanish flu
The Spanish flu had unusual gravity all over the world. Other flu epidemics mainly affect children and the elderly, but in this case many victims were young, adults and animals, including dogs and cats.
It is considered the most devastating pandemic in human history, since in a year it killed 20 to 40 million people. These figures include high infant mortality and are considered an example in case of crisis.
In the United States, for the first time in Fort Riley, a case of this disease was known in 1918. According to investigations the disease arose in Haskell County.
At one time, this virus suffered one or a group of mutations that transformed it into lethal, being the first case of the mutation confirmed in 1918 in Brest.
The so-called Spanish flu is named after the fact that in Europe the subject was censored in most countries, whereas Spain was not so involved in the war, so it did not censor the truth about the virus.
18- The Asian flu
It was an influenza pandemic that developed from the Influenza A virus H2N2, which appeared in Beijing in 1957.
The virus started in China, then switched to Singapore and Hong Kong. It should be noted that in less than 29 months all were infected. Two factors are considered to have helped its spread: international transports and flights and genetic mutation.
19- The Plague of Justinian
The chronicler Procopio Described in his History of the Persian Wars (542 AD) the plague of Justinian, which originated in Egypt, then spread to Palestine and then to the Byzantine Empire.
It is considered that this plague arrived by sea thanks to the merchants who moved from one town to another. The first symptoms were a sudden fever of little intensity, then there were swellings in the armpits, behind the ears and thighs.
In the end most of them were in deep coma and a few in a delirious state. Some died quickly, as they committed suicide and others died of vomiting blood or a black pustules that came out in the bubas.
According to the chronicles, between 5,000 and 10,000 people died each day. In total, more than 600,000 people, a third of the population, died. The population is considered to be reduced by 50%.
20- Syphilis
Early reports of syphilis date back to the Renaissance. There are numerous bibliographical references on the properties of mercury, which has been used as a specific treatment for the first time in 1499 against syphilis by Dr. Francisco Villalobos.
The organism that causes syphilis is Treponema pallidum , An elongated, fine, small bacterium; Is pathogen exclusive to man. Thanks to the Napoleonic wars this pandemic was further distributed throughout Europe.
21- The Hong Kong Flu
The third pandemic of the twentieth century. It began in 1968 and consisted of a new variation of the hemagglutinin of the virus Influenza. The variant of the disease was formed by an antigenic variant that occurred in Jong Kong.
22- Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)
Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is atypical pneumonia. This disease first appeared in 2002 in Canton, China and spread rapidly through Hong Kong and Vietnam.
23- Avian influenza
In February 2006, the H5N1 strain was detected in Africa, specifically in Nigeria. According to the National Veterinary Institute of Nigeria, up to 40% of barns with birds may be infected.
In July 2004, a new outbreak of the disease was confirmed, due to which most countries prohibited all imports. The European Union canceled any product in the region entering its geographical areas.
These countries decided to sacrifice poultry to avoid the problem. For example, in 2005 in Vietnam, they led to the slaughter of almost 1.2 million poultry. Up to 140 million birds are believed to have died or been killed by the epidemic.