The History of Pandemics
Right from the start of 2020, the coronavirus pandemic filtered into our society and started a worldwide alarm. This of course is a normal reaction to any pandemic or scourge that affects society, but this doesn’t have to be our default reaction. What I mean is, there’s something familiar about all this, isn’t there?
As a history fanatic and researcher, I‘ve read all about the history of pandemics. Even my friend brought to my attention that every century there is a global disease that makes its mark on our history. This makes me think that maybe, we‘re not so alone in this after all. Maybe this isn‘t a freak-of-nature event but rather, something that is embedded into human existence.
Pandemics form and shape our society as much as the prosperous times do. There‘s something oh so comforting about looking back and history and seeing we‘ve made it through all this before, and we will again.
1347 The Black Death
The bubonic plague has been there all throughout our history, even dating back to Troy and the Byzantine Empire where it was named the Plague of Justinian. The black death usually reappears throughout history every couple of hundred years. Nowadays we have antibiotics for bacterial infections, but for most of human history, there was no cure.
In 1347 the Black Death wiped out roughly 60% of Europe‘s population — and this isn‘t counting all the other parts of the world that were affected like Asia, and later on the Americas. Of course, if you count the subsequent plague epidemics after the famous one recorded from the 14th-century, then you would have quite an extensive death toll owing to the black death.
Historians and medical historians still don‘t know what the bacteria was from the 14th-century. It‘s uncertain whether the strain we have today is the same, or whether this strain was more deadly. In the medieval period, the plague was such an infectious disease that caused symptoms and death quickly. The number of cases speaks for itself. One thing is for sure that this plague was a game-changer. Although it decimated the population, it actually gave rise to the middle class and negotiated better wages for serfs.
Smallpox
Throughout human history, smallpox was a big problem. The likelihood of catching it was extremely high and left you disfigured. People would even go so far as to not want to associate with you if you had pox scars. In the Franco-Prussian war alone the outbreak caused 500,000 soldiers to lose their lives.
Of course, this virus comes with a success story! The high prevalence and fatality rate of the disease came with an amazing invention — the vaccine. Edward Jenner was inspired to create a vaccine when he noticed his milkmaid was unable to contract the disease since she already had cowpox. This meant that he could use the cowpox to create a vaccine where people would have an immunity to the disease. This led to the virus itself being eradicated from our species, which is pretty amazing.
1852 Cholera
Cholera is a disease that still affects many people today and something that medicine does not yet have a cure for. This mysterious disease is waterborne and for that reason, areas with poor sanitation still suffer from it.
The most famous outbreak in the west was in London in 1852, where all over London, people began to suddenly die without explanation. John Snow, a young physician, was able to pin-point Broad Street, SoHo as the source through meticulous interviews with the people affected and some detective work. He realised that a cesspit near a young mother‘s house had actually been leaking into the well connected to the Broad Street pump, causing contamination.
Cholera doesn‘t affect us today in the developed world due to healthy water practices, but we still are susceptible to it. We managed to save ourselves thanks to the knowledge of investigative practices and good hygiene. The good news is this isn‘t a contagious disease, but it is still a very real threat if we consume contaminated water.
1918 Spanish Influenza
Lastly, the pandemic in our most recent history is the 1918 pandemic from just over 100 years ago -- the Spanish flu. This was the influenza virus that was so deadly and contagious that it still puts fear into people to this day. This influenza pandemic is comparable to the coronavirus but only by a fraction. The Spanish flu was far more deadly, causing 50 million deaths worldwide.
The Spanish flu baffles historians to this day since it created a global pandemic in an age where air travel was not common. It appeared on the front line of WWI and came back to haunt the civilians just a few years later.
Although there are so many unknowns surrounding the flu pandemic in the early 20th-century, we can still learn about how to react better to these pandemic outbreaks. We now know that having a robust, strong public healthcare system is our best chance of surviving. Unfortunately at the time in 1918, nonsuch existed. In our world today, we could learn from this folly of the past by making our public health care stronger and more widely accessible.
It’s time to heed the lessons of the past
For a pandemic to be suppressed, everyone needs the same quality and access to healthcare, since we all have the potential to carry the disease. We like to think we‘re a far cry from classist attitudes, but are we really?
I think our surprise and panic in the face of the coronavirus pandemic we face today is due to a lack of knowledge about the other infectious diseases we’ve experienced in the past. Dying from smallpox, the plague, and other diseases used to be incredibly likely and common. It didn‘t mean our ancestors were worried and panicked all the time, but they accepted death as a part of life.
In our modern-day world, we have to realise the preciousness of life, and that even today many people around the globe face potentially fatal diseases. We can‘t take our health, and lack of impending diseases, for granted.
One way we can move toward a better future is to realise that we need to be prepared. A global pandemic is still a likely situation we may find ourselves in every 50 to 100 years. After all, if we look at the past from the Byzantine Empire to the 20th-century, we can see that deadly pandemics do happen.
We have to make sure we are all properly prepared for a pandemic in the future. As a society, it‘s time we stepped up to take care of one another, and of ourselves. It‘s important to look back at history and learn from the past. We‘ve done it all before and so it‘s up to us to head that advice, or not.
