Epidemics and Pandemics in Weird History

Ebola - photo Wikipedia

The Plague of Athens (430 B.C.) occurred during the Peloponnesian War. It killed an alleged 100,000 people in 3 years which was about 25% of the Athenian population of the day. The symptoms included high fever, diarrhea, and a pustular rash. The Athenian general Thucydides wrote that the population was so panicked that they were sure nobody would survive. “People did not know what would happen to them so they became indifferent to every rule of religion or law.”*

The Antonine Plague or the Plague of Galen (165-180 A.D.) was either the measles or smallpox and killed 60 million people. One of the casualties was Lucius Aurelius Verus, a Roman Emperor, who had an adoptive brother, Marcus Aurelius.

The Plague of Cyprian 249-262 A.D. was potentially a type of flu, smallpox, or perhaps Ebola, expressing itself with vomiting, blood shot-eyes, blindness, bleeding, lack of hearing, coordination.  It killed 5,000 people a day in Rome. It was named after Cyprian, the bishop of Carthage, who recorded the event.

The Plague of Justinian affected the Byzantine Empire in 541 A.D. It is possibly the first recorded pandemic, during which 10,000 people a day died, and 100 million people around the world perished. According to historians, it may have originated in China, spread through trading routes, and lasted 225 years before it finally disappeared.

Smallpox, caused by the variola virus, was first identified in the riddled with pox marks mummy of the pharaoh Ramses the fifth.

Malaria is the most persistent of pandemics. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), “ An estimated 20 per cent of the world's population — mostly those living in the world's poorest countries — is at risk of contracting malaria. Malaria causes more than three hundred million acute illnesses and kills at least one million people every year.” https://www.who.int/medicentre/

The Black Death or bubonic plague is the most infamous pandemic in human history recognized by high fever and oozing sores called buboes. It was a recurring threat for more than a century when a high percentage (30-60%) of the world’s population was wiped out.

The Cocolitztli epidemic of 1545-1548 in Mexico killed an alleged 5-15 million people. The symptoms included high fever and bleeding. It was possibly a salmonella outbreak.

The Moscow Plague killed one third of Moscow’s population in 1770. This late bubonic plague caused widespread rioting and food shortages.

The Spanish flu was the pandemic of 1918 which infected one third of the world’s population. It is estimated that 20-50 million died in two years. This flu was caused by a H1N1 viral strain. Kansas had the first case on a military base. Because Spain covered the pandemic cases in its country, as opposed to other countries that censored their cases of the flu, the pandemic was named Spanish but it is unclear where it originated.

The 100-Year Third Pandemic was the bubonic plague of 1855-1955 which is believed to have originated in China. Historians wrote that Paul-Louis Simond discovered in 1898 that brown rats were the source of disease and that discovery led to the creation of a vaccine.

“Paul-Louis Simond (30 July 1858 – 3 March 1947) was a French physician, chief medical officer and biologist whose major contribution to science was his demonstration that the intermediates in the transmission of bubonic plague from rats to humans are the fleas Xenopsylla cheopis that dwell on infected rats.”

The Swine flu of 2009-2010 was an H1N1 viral strain that killed 200,000 people, most of whom were not associated with farming or pigs.

The Ebola epidemic of 2014 in West Africa lasted two years and devastated countries like Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea. There were 28,616 cases recorded and over 11,000 people died. Caves were searched to look for diseased bats thought to be the carriers of the virus. Monkeys and chimpanzees were also considered as the viral source.

Of the 75 million people affected by HIV/AIDS, a disease believed to have originated in 1920 in Africa, 32 million people died. The disease attacks the immune system and is spread through intimate contact.

*See Weird History video for further details