Diseases have had an important role throughout history. Life would have been completely different without the role of diseases in society. It was interesting to learn about the evolution and discovery of different diseases. From what I have learned a large amount of the diseases we have today are due to anthropogenic causes. Humans have lived alongside diseases since the beginning of humanity and will probably be there till we go extinct. I think it is amazing how diseases effect people not just physically but mentally and culturally as well.
Before the population got so big during the hunter gatherer times, the people were not as exposed to the rotting meat and night soil because they were constantly moving. The tribes were also small and spread out so that did not have the opportunity to pass it around to other people through contact. The main thing they were infected with were the worms, lice, and fleas but they occasionally ran into some bad microbes when they were able to catch live meat. Then the population started expanding and they required more food in order to support the growing population. The increase of agriculture created more population density which in turn allowed for more reproduction which needs more food. This cycle cause the population of humans to grow tremendously and people started getting more densely packed. The new sedentary lifestyle they adopted kept them in close contact with animals and the major diseases came from evolving animal diseases. As the population kept growing they need more land and wood which lead to them clearing out forests which killed animals and allowed the spread of insects and rodents. The most common diseases today are all relatively recent due to the clearing out of forest. The consumption of bush meat is also a problem in poorer countries where they can’t find any other food sources. It is thought that bush meat has been the cause of Ebola and AIDS. Now in the modern era we can fly across the ocean with little effort allowing for easy transmission of a disease from one country to the other. As the population has been increasing our climate change potential has also been increasing due to the use of greenhouse gas emissions, cars and factories. The primary risk due to climate change is the heat waves, extreme weather, events, and temperature. The secondary risks affect the amount of food, water flow, infectious disease vectors, and immediate host ecology for zoonotic disease. The tertiary risks are the consequences after the resources are depleted.
The Black Plague was one of the diseases that decimated the human population. The Black Plague happened three times throughout history. The first one was known has the Justinian Plague that occurred in 542 AD, the second is the popular Black Death in Europe, and the third is the modern plague. The bacteria that cuases the black plague is Yersinia pestis which is found inside of the fleas on rats. The origins of the disease can be traced back to somewhere between India and China. The Black Plague spread two ways, through the blood or it can reach the lungs which makes the disease airborne. The Mongols are the ones who spread it around to different countries through their conquest. There was also a lot of trade that was going on during this time which allowed for the transmission of the disease from one city to another. Because the cities were so population dense it only took one infected person to spread it throughout the city and cause an endemic. People were dying in large numbers and people had no idea what the cause of the disease. This caused a panic and people turned to different things in order to find a reason. Some of the reasons were the planets lining up, God, or the Jews. Some people went through extreme measure of whipping themselves in an attempt to emulate Jesus. They also used methods such as quarantine which is a state of enforced isolations or cordon sanitaire which is a guarded line preventing anyone from leaving an area infected by the disease. People had to leave their families and the doctors stop seeing patients in fear of contracting the disease themselves. In todays society we have the modern version of the black plague. Most of the modern black plaque occurs in Madagascar today due to the poor hygiene and the piles of trash. They also have very hands on funeral rituals and up stealing the bodies after the hospital take them which causes more infections of the disease.
I learned from this class about the different diseases involved in the world throughout history. Diseases have developed and evolved to live in and adapt to our lifestyles. Everywhere you go there is some type of infectious bacteria or virus. People die every day from diseases and in a lot of cases those diseases could have been prevented. There are social and cultural issues that typically go along with diseases. In some cases like AIDS people were less caring and helpful because of the negative stereotype and discrimination of gay people. New emerging diseases continue to be discovered the more we cut down forests, eat tainted meat, and come into contact with wildlife.