Monthly Archives: March 2020

Artifact #7

Tuberculosis gets its name from the “tubercles” that from on the lymph nodes in humans and animals. In March of 1882, Dr. Robert Koch announced that he had finally isolated the bacteria that caused tuberculosis, otherwise known as TB. Before Dr. Koch discovered the bacteria, it was thought that TB was hereditary, and that the person who died from TB would come back as a vampire. At the time, TB killed one out of every seven people in the United States and Europe. TB has been around for an estimated three million years, and throughout the ages, the disease has been nicknamed many times over. In ancient Rome it was called tabes, in the 1700s “the white plague”, and in the 1800s “the consumption,” just to name a few. TB has been traced in humans remains that dated back to 9,000 years ago, and written records to over 3,000 years ago. In the Europe, for a 200-year span, it was estimated that TB was accounted for 25% of the of all deaths. TB is spread through the air and cannot be spread through food or water. A form of TB, called Bovine Tuberculosis can spread among mammals and also be passed to humans either via infected droplets from coughing or ingesting infected milk from a cow. This disease can still be found mainly in Africa, but also in parts of Asia and the Americas. According to unitednationfoundation.org, TB is right the now the world’s leading infectious disease, and kills someone every 18 seconds, with ten million people a year contracting the disease. In the 1940s, doctors first came up with a microbial treatment for TB, and though this helped cure some cases, it also led to drug resistant TB. In the 1960s, better and more effective medications were made, and this led to a decrease in TB infection rates, which led to health agencies not making the disease as much as a priority. Fast forward 30 years to the 90s, more medications and poor usage, caused for painful side and permanent side effects. Between 2005 and 2015 an estimated 49 million people were successfully treated for TB, but at the same time, a global spread of mutli-drug resistant TB was seen. Recently, another form of TB has been observed, known as XDR TB, or extensively-drug resistant TB. This left for fewer options for treating TB, and those that were available were expensive. This new strain also gave patients more complications and a higher rate of death. The average cost to treat a drug susceptible TB, is around $17,000 while the XDR TB can cost $554,000. The XDR TB has a mortality rate of 9%, with a large number of patients that experience side effects. Since 1993 until 2018, in the U.S., the number of cases has gone down from 25,000 cases in one year to around 15,000 in 2018. Of those cases reported in 2018, 70% of those were said to foreign born people. The deaths contributing to TB have also gone down during that time as well. The number of drug resistant cases have remained consistent though over the last 20 years.

Works cited

https://www.cdc.gov/tb/worldtbday/history.htm

https://www.oie.int/fileadmin/Home/eng/Media_Center/docs/pdf/Disease_cards/BOVINE-TB-EN.pdf

https://unfoundation.org/blog/post/tuberculosis-then-now/

https://www.cdc.gov/nchhstp/newsroom/2014/world-tb-day.html

https://www.cdc.gov/tb/publications/factsheets/statistics/tbtrends.htm

Artifact #6

In 1845, what was known as the Potato Blight spread across Ireland. This ruined all the potato crop in the area, which killed many people due to the fact that they had nothing else to eat. Due to many people dying, there had to be another name for that, which was called the Great Irish Famine and lasted for about five years. Many people depended on the potato in Ireland because the plant is easy to grow, especially in poor soils. So, more and more people started to grow potatoes, which would mean that the food would be a staple in many people’s meals. According to medicalnewstoday.com, the potato can help with your blood pressure, bone health, inflammation, heart health, and more. So, I would assume that not only did the farmers like the plant because it was easy to grow, but also because they felt like they were the healthiest that they had ever been. There are two reasons why the blight occurred. One was because in 1845, Ireland experienced unusually cool, moist weather. Also, because a type of algae, called Phytophthora,infectans came over to Ireland from North America. The name comes from the Greek word meaning destruction, due to all the damage the algae can do to other plants. This alga grew like a tumor on the nodes, killing most of the crop that year. The next couple of years resulted in poor crop yields as well. An estimated one million people died to starvation, typhus, and other infectious disease. This caused the Irish government to import more food from Europe and North America. This caused for the landowners to pay for the food that was incoming. And since there was little to sell, many farmers then became tenant farmers or laborers to the bigger landowners. Britain tried to help by funding soup kitchens, and public works jobs, but this just made the Irish people resent Britain more because of their reliance on the poorly nutritional imported meals.  While another two million were estimated to have emigrated from Ireland. This decline continued for decades afterwards, and by the early 20^th century, Ireland’s population was half of what it had been in the 1840s. Due to so many people either dying or leaving, This lead to more grazing land for sheep and cattle, which led to more animal food export to Britain.

Works Cited:

http://www.askaboutireland.ie/learning-zone/primary-students/3rd-+-4th-class/history/the-history-of-food-and-f/early-irish-diet/the-potato-in-ireland/

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/280579#10_possible_health_benefits

https://www.britannica.com/event/Great-Famine-Irish-history

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytophthora

Artifact #5

Syphilis is seen, stereotypically to be spread by woman to man. And because of this, early depictions or posters, warning of the dangers of syphilis, show a woman, or feminine symbols telling males to be careful. That a beautiful woman might have the nasty disease. One of the nicknames for syphilis is the “The Great Imitator,” because the symptoms of the disease were symptoms for many other ailments. This is one of the reasons why it showed the woman looking healthy, because they may carry the disease without showing any signs of it, and if they do show signs, they could be mild, and you may not know. While it was thought that if a guy had the disease, the signs would be prevalent. Congenital syphilis can also happen though, and another reason why women were thought to be the blame for the spread. For if a woman has the untreated disease and becomes pregnant, the child could also contract syphilis. This is caused numerous deformities, such as hearing and vision problems, anemia, and paralyzed limbs to name a few. Before syphilis was the term commonly used by everyone, countries which were not on friendly terms with other nations, would name the disease after that nation. Such as Russia naming it the “Polish disease” or Italy naming it the “French disease” when French soldiers besieging the town of Naples, Italy contracted the disease. It was thought that the sailors and travelers from the other nations would come into town and get the disease from the prostitutes in that town. This would have probably caused xenophobia of the opposing nations, making the citizens see that other country’s people being unclean and unwanted. In the Tuskegee Syphilis study, the experiment was first brought up, because people thought the black men could not contract the disease, and when researchers found out that they in fact could, they pushed to get the experiment to be extended from its original eight-month trial. This experiment also went against Nuremberg Code of ethics, which was made after what the world uncovered what the Nazis had been doing during the war to their prisoners of war. These men were also never told that they were being injected with syphilis and were told that they had “bad blood” and these doctors from the government had come down to treat them. At no point were they given any sort of treatment or go to another clinic to get test or treated. The people conducting the experiment also were able to get these men prevented from being drafted. Because if they did get drafted, then they would have gotten treated for the disease. As part of the experiment, a painful spinal tap without any sort of numbing medication was done on the men. From the experiment, 28 men died due to having the disease. 40 of the men’s wives also contracted syphilis and 19 of the children born during the time of the experiment, were born with congenital syphilis. Because of this experiment, emotional and physical pain was inflicted on the men. The experimenters, sent to the men, when the men were thinking about backing out or stopping, a letter titled “Last Chance for a Special Free Treatment.” Like most men, especially those in a poor rural town in Alabama, trusted the government, and allowed the doctors to do whatever, in hopes that they would be cured of their bad blood. The study ended in 1972, but because of the study, many long-term effects came because of this. There became a general distrust in the government and health care officials, mainly in black men, where a survey in 1999 showed that 32% of black women did not trust healthcare officials, compared to 4% in white women. Even though 80% of women thought that going to a healthcare professional benefited them. In the end, there was much more that was lost to the experiment than any knowledge could have ever been gained form the experiment.

Works Cited

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syphilis

https://www.marchofdimes.org/complications/congenital-syphilis.aspx#

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_syphilis_experiment

https://daily.jstor.org/the-lasting-fallout-of-the-tuskegee-syphilis-study/

Artifact #4 (prompt #2)

Smallpox can first be seen on mummies from Egypt in dating back to the 3^rd century, and there have been descriptions of the disease dating back to the 4^th century, found in China. Over the two millennia since having been aware of the disease, smallpox has claimed over 300 million lives, until its eradication in 1980. Some of the early cures that people tried to get rid of the disease was; bloodletting, red therapy, leeches, laxatives, cold therapy, and heat therapy. Later, people started to use variolation, otherwise known as inoculation, to try and become immune to the disease. This would involve taking fluid or powder from the scab from someone who had smallpox, then putting that into a superficial wound into someone who had not contracted the disease yet. People would not develop as severe symptoms as if they had contracted the disease naturally and after a couple of weeks, the symptoms would subside. This technique was first used in the Middle East and China. Another early method was insufflation, which was the same as variolation in principle. The crust of the scab would be scraped off of someone who had smallpox, to which someone else would inhale the powder. The person would get sick, but with less severe symptoms. In 1796, Edward Jenner tested his theory on the eight-year-old next-door neighbor. There was a wife’s tale that milk maids who contracted cowpox at some point in their lives, a disease that is much milder than smallpox. After years of research, Jenner tested his theory by taking fluid from a cowpox sore and rubbing it on a superficial wound on the boy. The child became ill with cowpox, but then quickly recovered. Jenner then put the deadly smallpox on the superficial cut, and after a period of time, the boy showed no effects. From this the world had its first vaccination, vacca coming from the Latin word meaning cow, due to the cowpox being the reason for smallpox immunity. At first, he was met with much opposition and ridiculed greatly for his findings. This was due to the fact that he had no true explanation as to how his vaccine worked, as well as some thought it was nasty that you would use a diseased animal to inoculate yourself. It was more after his death did people start to widely accept his vaccination method and it became commonplace while banning the variolation method. Some of the pros to compulsory, or mandatory, vaccinations are that it protects many people from the disease, extreme reactions are rare, it saves children’s lives, and they protect future generations. Some of the cons are that it infringes upon our rights, like religious freedom, and that the government should not be telling us what to do. Also, it has the potential to be fatal or you having a more adverse reaction to the vaccine. In 1979, the last person who naturally contracted variola major was treated in Bangladesh. And in 1977 the last person who naturally contracted variola minor was treated in Somalia. Both of these accomplishments took a huge effort and a lot of manpower. This was because these areas were poor and did not have a good enough infrastructure to track everyone down who had the disease or who may have the disease and then give those people the vaccination. Due to the vigilant efforts of thousands of people, they were able to track everyone down who had the disease and cure them of it, eventually eradicating it from the world.

Works cited

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox_vaccine

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/jenner-tests-smallpox-vaccine

http://broughttolife.sciencemuseum.org.uk/broughttolife/people/edwardjenner

https://vaccines.procon.org/

Artifact #3

The plague which will be mentioned in this artifact will be the one also known as the Black Death, which occurred in the mid-1300s and spread all across Europe and Asia. The disease spread very quickly and killed millions of people. There are a few reasons as to why the disease spread so quickly. One of the reasons was because trade between Europe and Asia happened often, and the Silk Road was a main route between the two continents. Which meant many different people of different nations would come in contact with each other quite often. Another reason was due to the lack of technology and belief in technology, did people not understand that there were microscopic organisms that were being transferred, or that they needed to wash their hands more often, or not to touch people that died from the disease without protective wear. Because the disease could be spread from person to person through respiratory droplets, and that animals could also contract the disease then spread it, this made the disease easier to spread. Also if someone was in the respiratory stage of the plague, unless they were given antibiotics, which they did not have at the time, they would most likely die in the next day or two. People called Flagellants started to whip and flog themselves just as Jesus had received before they died. They were Christian fanatics and started to attack Jews, thinking they were the cause of the disease. It was thought that the plague was a biblical one and God was punishing them for the sins that htye committed. The Church asked for them to stop what they were doing, which eventually got the Flagellants killed, but the common people liked them more often than not because they seemed to actually trying to stop the plague, while the church did nothing. The rich left the cities and went up into the hills, where they waited it out until the madness had stopped, saving many of them while half their town or more died in their absence. New laws on how the dead must be buried and how they were buried were put in place due to have how many people were dying a day. And because of the high mortality rate, cities started dumping bodies into the river and water systems because they had nowhere else to bury the dead. The word “quarantine” became used, which came from the Italian word forty, which is how long people would be left in isolation in an attempt to stop the further spread of disease. A short-term societal effect was depression, people drank in the streets, some neglected their appearance, and some neglected their livestock. The art style of death macabre came about, depicting skeletons and death in many paintings. Some positives did occur, people who were peasants, were now able to hold their own land or top pay for their work. Also, the self-standard or living, before cities were overpopulated and malnutrition due to not enough food for everyone, was not a problem anymore. In the 21^st century, there has been an epidemic in Madagascar. In most parts of the world, people are able to know if an area of animals has the plague and then quarantines that area and makes sure people do not touch the animals there. But because Madagascar is encroaching more closer on urban settings, as well as poor living conditions, it makes it hard to keep people apart. The conditions in Madagascar are perfect for rats and fleas to thrive in.

Works cited

https://www.history.com/topics/middle-ages/black-death

In class movie

https://www.brighthubeducation.com/history-homework-help/88775-social-effects-of-the-black-death/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/21st_century_Madagascar_plague_outbreaks