How old mankind is, so much it is accompanied by epidemics and pandemics of deadly diseases (a pandemic is a massive epidemic when almost the entire population of a country or continent falls ill). Plague, cholera, Ebola, the Spanish flu - at various times throughout the land, the rider of Pestilence mowed down millions of inhabitants, regardless of gender, age and healthy lifestyle.
The 20th century has made a revolution - the invention of antibiotics forced almost all terrible infections to recede, and some of them remained only in medical textbooks. But, as you can see, a holy place is never empty - in place of rabies, typhoid and smallpox, immunodeficiency virus and cancer took over promptly, as on duty.
Plague Barrack
The causative agent of the plague is a bacterium, a close relative of another one and a half thousand enterobacteria, peacefully living in the digestive tract of almost every person. But only Yersinia pestis, the plague stick, bears the proud title of the blackest of all queens. Ten thousand years ago, when, according to the estimates of the romantic Plato, Atlantis was sinking (historians believe that it was more likely at this time that the ancestors domesticated the dog), the plague bacillus was also a harmless bacterium that caused mild stomach upset.
But natural selection demanded to be an excellent student or to die, and Yersinia pestis became Darth Vader of Enterobacteriaceae. Stealing a couple of genes from neighbors helped her switch to the dark side of power - now she knew how to penetrate the lungs, and the replacement of one inconspicuous amino acid brought the plague rod into mass murderers. Now it decomposed protein molecules in the lungs (in the "pulmonary" variant, the sick person spits blood and coughs pink foam) and was worn throughout the body, shamelessly and boldly multiplying in every corner.
[result] One hundred million deaths during the Justinian plague in the 6th century (almost every second died in Constantinople), sixty million in the medieval years of the Black Death, and under ten million during the last major Asian epidemic in the late 19th century.
The reduction in the number of sick and dead does not mean that the plague has fizzled out, but that it has become more and more fashionable to wash. And medicine has ceased to consider mass prayer, bloodletting, and frogs to be a panacea for everything. Even more benefit was brought by the city sewage system and the cessation of the extermination of the "devilish" black cats: fleas - carriers of infection felt most at ease on rats.
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[how to escape] Now the plague is normally treated with antibiotics and anti-plague serum, invented in the thirties by the Russian doctor Magdalena Pokrovskaya, the wife of bacteriologist Ioffe. But the most stringent measures are taken - if a doctor detects a plague infection, he immediately prohibits entry and exit from the hospital, stops admission and puts on the staff in anti-plague suits (according to the regulations, they are in stock at any medical institution).
On the territory of Russia, the plague has not been recorded since 1979, but occasionally there are isolated terrible moments near the borders - in Mongolia, China and Kazakhstan, already in the 21st century, it happened that several dozen people fell ill.
[don't go there, go here] Regions from which plague can theoretically be brought, the so-called plague-endemic - Vietnam, Burma, Bolivia, Ecuador, Karakalpakia.
Cholera is clear
Cholera Vibrio is a Vibrio cholerae stick with a long tail and flagella, which enable it to crawl somewhere rather quickly (for bacteria). It is not harmful in itself - cholera is caused by the toxins that it secretes while hanging out in the intestines and multiplying.
By means of several chemical reactions, proteins arrange a real detective - one joins the other, spies inside the cell, sprinkles the secret ingredient into ordinary intestinal reactions, and watches with infernal laughter what happened. It turns out very bad for the body - terrible diarrhea, vomiting, severe dehydration, pressure dropping to critical numbers and death in the absence of adequate medical care.
The route of infection is fecal-oral. It is enough to drink some water from the Ganges or a similar source where they wash, wash, defecate, meditate and give birth in about the same place.
[result] Cholera epidemics were very frequent and every time they mowed down a decent number of people, the score went to tens and hundreds of thousands. The Russian pandemic killed over a million people during the Crimean War. In the 19th century, cholera was the most deadly disease, and the most difficult thing to explain was that it was not the intrigues of insidious poisoners (Poles, Jews, doctors and other traditionally guilty of national troubles), but the result of crowding and filth. The pioneers of the fight against cholera, who wiped their hands with bleach, were mistaken for poisoners - "cholera" and were beaten with mortal combat.
[how to escape] Antibiotics, vaccine, restoration of the body's water-salt balance - rehydration. The vaccine cannot be injected for the rest of your life, it lasts on average for several months, so it makes sense to do an anti-cholera vaccine before traveling to alluring suspicious countries.
[don't go there, go here] In Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America, cholera is occasionally recorded at any time of the year (in northern countries, cholera is usually invigorated during the warm season). For 2010, WHO showed statistics of about two million and a half million cases of infection per year - of which a little more than one hundred thousand deaths. That is, we, in general, have learned how to treat cholera, but we still cannot expel it from the world.
Pockmarked and smallpox
"Love and smallpox will bypass only a few" - such an eerie proverb was common in all strata of society until recently. Unlike sudden epidemics, which usually came from foreign distant lands, smallpox was local to everyone. It was a phenomenon completely out of the ordinary, everyday. Sad, but familiar - like death in childbirth, scarlet fever or syphilis.
The smallpox virus has some affinity with human erythrocytes and for this good neighborly reason was practically ineradicable. From chills, back pain and vomiting to blistering smallpox, delirium and seizures: this picture was familiar to almost everyone. The young Russian Emperor Peter II and the King of France Louis XV died of smallpox, Queen Elizabeth I, the composer Glinka, Maxim Gorky and Joseph Stalin survived smallpox and survived at different times.
[result] The survivors remained marked, pockmarked for life - perhaps it was the prevalence of smallpox that at one time led to the fashion for a face thickly smeared with whitewash. It is known that in police circulars as a special sign they could indicate: "Does not have signs of smallpox."
[how to escape] Smallpox vaccinations were invented back in the 10th century, but they did not receive mass distribution due to a severe reaction to the vaccine - the death rate of smallpox vaccination almost did not reduce. The real vaccination began when the English doctor Edward Jenner figured out to vaccinate people with vaccinia, similar in manifestations to natural, but much easier. In addition, after a mild form of cowpox, there were no terrible empty spots on the skin.
Jenner's discovery was adopted by all fairly progressive countries. By 1936, smallpox had been eradicated in the USSR. The last case of smallpox infection on Earth was recorded in 1977 in Somalia. In 1980, the WHO officially announced that smallpox remained on earth only in laboratory tubes. We defeated her.
[don't go there, go here] It is advisable not to break unfamiliar test tubes at the State Research Center for Virology and Biotechnology "Vector" in the Koltsovo science city of the Novosibirsk region and, if possible, not to touch unfamiliar interesting objects at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States. Smallpox now lives only there.
HIV
Scientists know quite precisely when and where the modern human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) appeared - this is the 1920s, Africa, south of the Sahara Desert. This is sometimes the case in the history of mankind: a chain of unsuccessful coincidences leads to a rapid mutation of the virus and it becomes deadly. Perhaps the virus was accidentally helped by enthusiastic missionaries who, after World War II, massively inject antibiotics into Africans with non-sterile syringes.
Oksana Viktorova / Collage / Ridus.
The first cases appeared in the early eighties. A few years later, French and American scientists simultaneously discovered a new virus, leading to the actual death of immunity. When ordinary bacteria and fungi are not held back by the special forces of lymphocytes, even a completely household thrush turns into the Hulk, not to mention inflammation and tumors. The terminal stage of HIV, when it is almost impossible to save a sick person, is called AIDS and lasts less than a year.
[result] Mass hysteria about the "plague of the 20th century", assumptions about God's wrath, a terrible fear of infection from someone who is standing nearby and whistling. In general, the psychology of the crowd has not changed much since the time of the Justinian plague - I still want to believe that a bell, a secret potion from the ears of an owl and the cry "Stop the bastard!" everyone will be rescued immediately. In fact, science will save us - thanks to scientists, they have not yet defeated HIV, but they are already close to it. The experiments on mice have already been successful.
[how to be saved] Long live progress! In 2016, a person with HIV + needs to take medications regularly. People can live 70-80 years on good antiretroviral therapy. This is not yet a victory - the virus is tricky and the therapy has to be changed, there are strong side effects, but in general, the life of a person with HIV is now almost normal. You can live without therapy for a maximum of ten years, and very bad years.
[don't go there, go here] In Swaziland, Lesotho and Botswana, more than 20% of the adult population is infected, that is, one in five. In Russia - 1%. In the States - 0.6%. The average European figure is 0.2%.
HIV is not spread through dishes, shaking hands or kissing. You can sneeze, hug, and even have sex while wearing a condom. The hottest ways of infection are the transfusion of untested donated blood and unprotected anal sex with a partner of any gender. The immunodeficiency virus lives in biological fluids - blood, semen, vaginal secretions, pre-seminal fluid, and breast milk. Saliva and sweat do not have the desired concentration.