Epidemic Research Paper
Through the year our world has been plagued with wars, disease, and natural disasters. Many people would consider these to be misfortunes of life. However, this may be the reason some of us are thriving today. According to Thomas Malthus in his Essay on Principles, he hypothesized that the world needs diseases, wars, and natural disasters to keep the population from getting too big, choking everyone from food, water, and space to live. Some of the most notable diseases that did this were the Black Plague and Epidemic Typhus. These diseases now can be treated with antibiotics, but earlier, they wiped out entire towns. These diseases spread quickly because of the world’s over population, and by the time they…show more content… “Some scholars have even suggested that the collapse of the Roman Empire may be linked to the spread of plague by Roman soldiers returning home from battle in the Persian Gulf in 165 AD” (CDC Plague). However, that outbreak was small in comparison to the Great Plague. The Great Plague started in China and has the merchants traveled through Europe they spread it there as well (CDC). The disease spread through rodents that had fleas infected by the bacteria Yersina pestis. When the flea bit a human, it would inject a small amount of the bacteria into the person (Access Science Plague). Several days after the person had been infected, swelling would occur in the lymph nodes followed by the bacteria spreading to the organs. The infected person would develop fever, and chills. Later on skin may become necrotic, appearing black, this is where the term the black plague, and black death came from. After this, death would most likely occurhowever the older the person is then the more likely they are to survive. In 10-20% of people a secondary infection would occur, Plague Pneumonia. This would spread by coughing. It would cause the lungs to slowly liquefy. The disease was very contagious; this is how it was so easy for the plague to wipe out entire towns. In the Middle Ages the Bubonic Plague killed 60% of people in Europe. This effected…show more content… It was a bacterium. Its first outbreak was in 430 BC (The Historical Impact of Epidemic Typhus). This makes it one of the oldest diseases ever recorded. The bacterium is very small, only visible under a light microscope (Access Science Rickettsioses). Rickettsia Prowazkei discovered that the bacteria, it is gram negative, meaning that its cell wall has a lack of peptogylican, this make epidemic Typhus very complex and hard to treat and prevent with antibiotics and vaccines. “Most rickettsial diseases are maintained in nature as diseases of nonhuman vertebrate animals and their parasites.” (Access Science Rickettsioses) Typhus has an incubation period of 5 to 14 days. Followed by fevers, chills, and a rash starting at the chest and spreading to the hands and feet. The person would most likely die 12 days later from rapid lysis of the cells, meaning the cells would burst inside a person. Epidemic Typhus is offend referred to as Camp Fever, because Epidemic typhus normally spread through people living close together, like an army bases. In the Spanish army, 17,000 out of 25,000 died of Epidemic typhus and the ones who survived spread it to the poorest, and most crowded parts of Europe. Epidemic typhus ravaged through Europe from the 15th to the 20th
