From Mass Effect to Jade Empire: the best BioWare games, in our subjective opinion. The largest epidemics in the history of the USSR

When studying history, we pay almost no attention to pandemics, but some of them took more lives and influenced history more than the longest and most destructive wars. According to some reports, in a year and a half spanish flu no deaths less people, than during the entire Second World War, and numerous outbreaks of plague prepared the consciousness of people for the overthrow of absolutism and the transition from the Middle Ages to the Modern Age. The lessons of pandemics have cost humanity too much, and, alas, even now, in the era of advanced medicine, we continue to pay these bills.

Children's writer Elizaveta Nikolaevna Vodovozova was born in 1844 - 2 years before the third cholera pandemic (the deadliest of all) appeared in Russia. The epidemic ended only in the early 1860s, during which time it claimed more than a million lives in Russia and one and a half million in Europe and America. Elizaveta Nikolaevna recalls that in just a month, cholera took 7 members of her family. Later, she explained such a high mortality rate by the fact that household members did not follow the simplest rules of prevention: they spent a lot of time with the sick, did not bury the deceased for a long time, did not look after the children.

But one should not blame the writer’s family for frivolity: despite the fact that cholera, which came from India, was already familiar to Europeans, they knew nothing about the causative agents of the disease and the routes of penetration. It is now known that the cholera bacillus living in dirty water, provokes dehydration, which is why the patient dies a few days after the first symptoms appear. In the middle of the 19th century, no one suspected that the source of the disease were wastewater, and people need to be treated for dehydration, and not for fever - in the best case, the sick were warmed up with blankets and hot water bottles or rubbed with all sorts of spices, and in the worst case, they were bled, given opiates and even mercury. The cause of the disease was considered to be the stench in the air (which, however, brought some benefit - residents removed garbage from the streets and installed sewers to get rid of the destructive smell).

I noticed the water first English doctor Jon Snow. In 1854, cholera killed more than 600 residents of London's Soho district. Snow noticed that all the sick people drank water from the same water pump. Soho lived in the most terrible conditions of unsanitary conditions: the area was not connected to the city water supply system, so drinking water here was mixed with contaminated sewage. Moreover, the contents of overflowing cesspools ended up in the Thames, causing the cholera bacillus to spread to other areas of London.

For modern man it is obvious that the most terrible epidemics in the history of mankind were provoked by precisely such cases of flagrant unsanitary conditions, but the inhabitants of the 19th century were in no hurry to believe the insightful Snow - the version that contaminated air was to blame was too popular. But in the end, the doctor persuaded the residents of Soho to break the handle of the ill-fated column, and the epidemic was stopped. Slowly but surely, Jon Snow's ideas were adopted by governments different countries, and cities finally established water supply systems. However, before this, 4 more cholera epidemics occurred in the history of Europe.

Valentin Kataev in the story “Sir Henry and the Devil” described one terrible disease, which many Russian soldiers suffered from at the beginning of the 20th century. The patient tossed about in the heat, he was tormented by hallucinations, as if there were rats in his ear, which were constantly squeaking and scratching. The light of an ordinary light bulb seemed almost unbearably bright to the patient, some kind of suffocating smell spread throughout the room, and there were more and more rats in his ears. Such terrible torment did not seem anything unusual to ordinary Russian people - typhoid patients appeared in every village and every regiment. Doctors hoped only for luck, because there was nothing to treat typhus until the middle of the 20th century.

Typhus became a real scourge for Russian soldiers during the First World War and the Civil War. According to official data, in 1917-1921. 3-5 million fighters died, but some researchers who also analyzed civilian casualties estimate the scale of the disaster at 15-25 million lives. Typhus is transmitted to humans through body louse - it was this fact that became fatal for Russian peasants. The fact is that lice were then treated quite leniently, as something normal and not subject to destruction. Residents of peaceful villages had them and, of course, bred them in large quantities in conditions of military unsanitary conditions, when soldiers lived en masse in places unsuitable for habitation. It is unknown what losses the Red Army would have suffered during World War II if Professor Alexey Vasilyevich Pshenichnov had not produced a vaccine against typhus in 1942.

When the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés landed on the shores of modern Mexico in 1519, about 22 million people lived there. After 80 years, the local population barely numbered a million. The mass death of residents is not associated with special atrocities of the Spaniards, but with a bacterium that they unknowingly brought with them. But only 4 centuries later, scientists found out what disease wiped out almost all the indigenous Mexicans. In the 16th century it was called cocoliztli.

Describe symptoms mysterious disease quite complex, since it took a wide variety of forms. Some died from severe intestinal infections, some especially suffered from fever syndromes, and others choked on blood accumulated in the lungs (although the lungs and spleen failed in almost everyone). The disease lasted 3-4 days, mortality reached 90%, but only among the local population. If the Spaniards caught cocoliztli, it was in a very mild, non-lethal form. Therefore, scientists came to the conclusion that dangerous bacteria Europeans brought it with them, who probably long ago developed immunity to it.

At first it was believed that cocoliztli was typhoid fever, although some symptoms contradicted this conclusion. Then scientists suspected hemorrhagic fever, measles and smallpox, but without DNA analysis, all these theories remained highly controversial. Studies conducted already in our century have established that Mexicans during the colonization period were carriers of the bacterium Salmonella enterica, which causes intestinal infection paratyphoid C. There is no bacterium in the DNA of people who lived in Mexico before the arrival of the Spaniards, but Europeans suffered from paratyphoid back in the 11th century. Over the past centuries, their bodies have become accustomed to the pathogenic bacterium, but it almost completely destroyed the unprepared Mexicans.

Spanish flu

According to official data, the first World War claimed about 20 million lives, but another 50-100 million people died due to the Spanish flu pandemic. The deadly virus, which originated (according to some sources) in China, could well have died there, but the war spread it throughout the world. As a result, in 18 months, a third of the world’s population contracted the Spanish flu; about 5% of people on the planet died from choking in their own blood. Many of them were young and healthy, had excellent immunity - and literally burned out in three days. History has never known more dangerous epidemics.

“Pneumonic plague” appeared in the provinces of China back in 1911, but then the disease had no opportunity to spread further, and it gradually faded away. A new wave occurred in 1917 - the world war made it a global epidemic. China sent volunteers to the West, which was in dire need of workers. The Chinese government made the decision to quarantine too late, so sick lungs arrived along with the workers. And then there is the well-known scenario: in the morning in an American military unit, symptoms appeared in one person, by the evening there were already about a hundred patients, and a week later there would hardly be a state in the United States untouched by the virus. Together with the British troops stationed in America, the deadly flu came to Europe, where it reached first France and then Spain. If Spain was only 4th in the chain of the disease, then why was the flu called “Spanish”? The fact is that until May 1918, no one informed the public about the terrible epidemic: all the “infected” countries participated in the war, so they were afraid to announce to the population about a new scourge. And Spain remained neutral. About 8 million people fell ill here, including the king, that is, 40% of the population. It was in the interest of the nation (and all humanity) to know the truth.

The Spanish flu killed almost with lightning speed: on the first day the patient felt nothing but fatigue and headache, and the next day he was constantly coughing up blood. Patients died, as a rule, on the third day in terrible agony. Before the first antiviral drugs people were absolutely helpless: they limited their contacts with others in every possible way, tried not to travel anywhere, wore bandages, ate vegetables and even made voodoo dolls - nothing helped. But in China, by the spring of 1918, the disease began to decline - the residents again developed immunity against the Spanish flu. The same thing probably happened in Europe in 1919. The world was free of the flu epidemic - but only for 40 years.

Plague

“On the morning of the sixteenth of April, Dr. Bernard Rieux, leaving the apartment, tripped on the landing dead rat“- this is how the beginning of a great catastrophe is described in the novel “The Plague” by Albert Camus. It was not for nothing that the great French writer chose this fatal disease: from the 5th century. BC e. and until the 19th century. n. e. There are more than 80 plague epidemics. This means that the disease has been with humanity more or less always, now subsiding, now attacking with new strength. Three pandemics are considered the most ferocious in history: the Plague of Justinian in the 5th century, the famous “Black Death” in the 14th century, and the third pandemic at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries.

Emperor Justinian the Great could remain in the memory of posterity as the ruler who revived the Roman Empire, revised Roman law and made the transition from antiquity to the Middle Ages, but fate decreed otherwise. In the tenth year of the emperor's reign, the sun literally dimmed. Ash from the eruption of three large volcanoes in the tropics has polluted the atmosphere, blocking the way sun rays. Just a few years later, in the 40s. VI century, an epidemic came to Byzantium, the like of which the world had never seen. Over 200 years of the plague (which at times covered the entire civilized world, and all other years existed as a local epidemic), more than 100 million people died in the world. Residents died from suffocation and ulcers, from fever and from insanity, from intestinal disorders and even from invisible infections that killed outright seemingly healthy citizens. Historians noted that patients did not develop immunity to the plague: someone who survived the plague once or even twice could die after becoming infected again. And after 200 years the disease suddenly disappeared. Scientists are still wondering what happened: did the ice age finally recede take the plague with it, or did people eventually develop immunity?

In the 14th century, cold weather returned to Europe again - and with it the plague. The general nature of the epidemic was facilitated by complete unsanitary conditions in the cities, on the streets of which sewage flowed in streams. Wars and famine also contributed. Medieval medicine, of course, could not fight the disease - doctors gave patients herbal infusions, burned the buboes, rubbed in ointments, but all in vain. The best treatment turned out to be good care- very in rare cases the sick recovered simply because they were fed properly and kept warm and comfortable.

The only way to prevent it was to limit contacts between people, but, of course, panic-stricken residents went to all sorts of extremes. Some began to actively atone for sins, fast and self-flagellate. Others, on the contrary, before imminent death, decided to have a good time. Residents greedily grabbed at any opportunity to escape: they bought pendants, ointments and pagan spells from scammers, and then immediately burned witches and organized Jewish pogroms to please the Lord, but by the end of the 50s. The disease gradually disappeared on its own, taking with it about a quarter of the world's population.

The third and final pandemic was not nearly as destructive as the first two, but still killed almost 20 million people. The plague appeared in the mid-19th century in the Chinese provinces - and did not leave their borders almost until the end of the century. 6 million Europeans were destroyed by trade relations with India and China: first the disease slowly crept up to local ports, and then sailed on ships to shopping centers Old World. Surprisingly, the plague stopped there, this time without making its way into the interior of the continent, and by the 30s of the 20th century it had almost disappeared. It was during the third pandemic that doctors determined that rats were carriers of the disease. In 1947, Soviet scientists first used streptomycin in the treatment of plague. The disease that destroyed the world's population for 2 thousand years was defeated.

AIDS

Young, slender, very attractive blond Gaetan Dugas worked as a flight attendant for Canadian airlines. It is unlikely that he ever intended to end up in history - and yet he did, albeit by mistake. From the age of 19, Gaetan led a very active sex life- according to him, he slept with 2,500 thousand men throughout North America - this was the reason for his, unfortunately, sad fame. In 1987, 3 years after his death, journalists called the young Canadian “patient zero” of AIDS - that is, the person who started global epidemic. The results of the study were based on a scheme in which Dugas was marked with a “0” sign, and rays of infection spread from him to all states of America. In fact, the “0” sign in the diagram did not denote a number, but a letter: O – out of California. In the early 80s, in addition to Dugas, scientists studied several other men with symptoms strange illness- all of them, except for the imaginary “patient zero”, were Californians. Gaetan Dugas's real number is only 57. And HIV appeared in America back in the 60s and 70s.

HIV was transmitted to humans from monkeys around the 1920s. XX century - probably during the cutting of the carcass of a killed animal, and in human blood it was first discovered in the late 50s. Just two decades later, the virus became the cause of the AIDS epidemic, a disease that destroys the human immune system. Over 35 years of activity, AIDS has killed about 35 million people - and so far the number of people infected is not falling. At timely treatment the patient can continue normal life with HIV for several decades, but it is not yet possible to completely get rid of the virus. The first symptoms of the disease are persistent fever, prolonged intestinal disorders, constant cough (in advanced stage- with blood). The disease, which in the 80s was considered the scourge of homosexuals and drug addicts, now has no orientation - anyone can catch HIV and in a few years get AIDS. This is why it is so important to follow the simplest rules of prevention: avoid unprotected sexual intercourse, check the sterility of syringes, surgical and cosmetic instruments, and get tested regularly. There is no cure for AIDS. If you show carelessness once, you can suffer from the manifestations of the virus for the rest of your life and sit on antiretroviral therapy, which has its own side effects and is definitely not a cheap pleasure. You can read more about the disease.

Having observed a bewildering variety of deadly fevers over the centuries, medical scientists have tried to link typical patterns of infectious diseases to specific reasons in order to identify and classify diseases on this basis, and then develop specific methods counteract them. Considering the evolution of our knowledge about some of the main epidemic diseases, we can trace the formation of the modern understanding of the epidemic.

Plague. In the Middle Ages, plague epidemics were so devastating that the name of this specific disease in a figurative sense, it has become synonymous with all kinds of misfortunes. The successive plague pandemics of the 14th century. killed a quarter of the then population of Europe. The quarantine isolation of travelers and arriving ships was futile.

It is now known that plague is a disease of wild rodents, particularly rats, which is transmitted by Xenopsyllacheopis fleas. These fleas infect people living in close proximity to infected rats, the reservoir of infection. With bubonic plague, transmission of infection from person to person begins only with the development of an extremely contagious pulmonary form diseases.

At the end of the 17th century. the plague disappeared from Europe. The reasons for this are still unknown. It is assumed that with changes in living conditions in Europe, the population began to live further from reservoirs of infection. Due to the lack of wood, houses began to be built from brick and stone, which are less suitable for rats than old-style wooden buildings.

Cholera. In the 19th century cholera pandemics occurred in most countries of the world. In the classic study of the London physician J. Snow, the water route of transmission of infection during the cholera epidemic of 1853–1854 was correctly identified. He compared the number of cholera cases in two neighboring areas of the city that had different sources water supplies, one of which was contaminated with sewage. Thirty years later, the German microbiologist R. Koch, using microscopy and bacterial cultivation methods to identify the causative agent of cholera in Egypt and India, discovered the “cholera comma,” later called Vibrio cholerae (Vibriocholerae).

Typhus. The disease is associated with unsanitary living conditions, usually during war. It is also known as camp, prison or ship fever. When in 1909 the French microbiologist C. Nicole showed that typhus is transmitted from person to person by body lice, its connection with overcrowding and poverty became clear. Knowing how the infection is transmitted allows health workers to stop the spread of epidemic (lice) typhus by spraying insecticidal powder on the clothing and body of those at risk of infection.

Smallpox. Modern vaccination as a method of preventing infectious diseases was developed based on the early successes achieved by medicine in the fight against smallpox by immunizing (vaccinating) susceptible individuals. To administer the vaccine, fluid from a smallpox blister of a patient with an active infection was transferred to a scratch on the skin of the immunized person's shoulder or hand. If lucky, a mild illness occurred, leaving lifelong immunity after recovery. Sometimes immunization caused the development of a typical disease, but the number of such cases was so small that the risk vaccination complications remained quite acceptable.

Immunization began to be used in Europe in 1721, but long before that it was used in China and Persia. It was thanks to her that by 1770 smallpox ceased to occur in the wealthy sections of the population.

The credit for further improvement of smallpox immunization belongs to the rural doctor from Gloucestershire (England) E. Jenner, who drew attention to the fact that people who had had mild cowpox did not get smallpox, and suggested that cowpox creates immunity to human smallpox.

At the beginning of the 20th century. smallpox vaccine became readily available throughout the world due to its mass production and cold storage. The last chapter in the story smallpox was marked by a mass vaccination campaign carried out in all countries by the World Health Organization.

Yellow fever. In the 18th–19th centuries. among epidemic diseases Western Hemisphere yellow fever had a prominent place in the United States, as well as in countries Central America and the Caribbean region. Doctors, who assumed that the disease was transmitted from person to person, demanded the isolation of the sick to combat the epidemic. Those who linked the origin of the disease with atmospheric pollution insisted on sanitary measures.

In the last quarter of the 19th century. yellow fever began to be associated with mosquito bites. In 1881, the Cuban doctor K. Finlay suggested that the disease was transmitted by Aëdesaegypti mosquitoes. Evidence of this was presented in 1900 by the yellow fever commission working in Havana, headed by W. Reed (USA).

The implementation of the mosquito control program over the coming years contributed not only to a significant reduction in the incidence of disease in Havana, but also to the completion of construction of the Panama Canal, which was almost stopped due to yellow fever and malaria. In 1937, a doctor from the Republic of South Africa, M. Theiler, developed an effective vaccine against yellow fever, more than 28 million doses of which were produced by the Rockefeller Foundation from 1940 to 1947 for tropical countries.

Polio. Paralytic poliomyelitis (infantile paralysis) appeared as an epidemic disease at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. It is amazing that in underdeveloped countries with poor, unsanitary living conditions, the incidence of polio has remained low. At the same time, in highly developed countries, on the contrary, epidemics of this disease began to occur with increasing frequency and severity.

The key to understanding the epidemic process in polio was the concept of asymptomatic carriage of the pathogen. This type hidden infection occurs when a person, having become infected with a virus, acquires immunity in the absence of any symptoms of the disease. Carriers, while remaining healthy themselves, can shed the virus, infecting others. It has been found that in conditions of poverty and crowded living conditions, the likelihood of contact with the virus increases sharply, as a result of which children become infected with polio very early, but the disease manifests itself quite rarely. The epidemic process proceeds as an endemic, secretly immunizing the population, so that only isolated cases arise infantile paralysis. In countries with high level life, for example in North America and Northern Europe, from the 1900s to the 1950s there was a marked increase in the incidence of paralytic polio.

The polio virus was isolated by K. Landsteiner and G. Popper already in 1909, but methods for preventing the disease were found only much later. Three serotypes (i.e., types present in the blood serum) of polioviruses have been identified, and strains of each of them were found in 1951 to be able to reproduce in tissue culture. Two years later, J. Salk reported his method of inactivating the virus, which made it possible to prepare an immunogenic and safe vaccine. Long-awaited inactivated vaccine Solka became available for mass use in 1955.

The polio epidemic in the United States has stopped. Since 1961, a live attenuated vaccine developed by A. Seibin began to be used for mass immunization against polio.

AIDS. In 1981, when acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) was first described as a clinical form, its causative agent was not yet known. The new disease was initially recognized only as a syndrome, i.e. combination of characteristic pathological symptoms. Two years later, it was reported that the disease was based on suppression immune system organism by a retrovirus, which was named human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Patients develop increased susceptibility to a variety of infectious pathogens, which manifests itself clinically only at late stages HIV infection, but initially for a very long time, up to 10 years, the disease may be in the incubation period.

The first cases were homosexual men, then there were reports of transmission of the infection through transfusion of blood and its components. Subsequently, the spread of HIV infection was identified among injecting drug users and their sexual partners. In Africa and Asia, AIDS is transmitted primarily through sexual contact. Currently, the disease is spreading throughout the world, becoming an epidemic.

Ebola fever. Ebola virus as a causative agent of African hemorrhagic fever was first identified in 1976 during an epidemic in southern Sudan and northern Zaire. The disease is accompanied high temperature And heavy bleeding, mortality in Africa exceeds 50%. The virus is transmitted from person to person through direct contact with infected blood or other body secretions. Often infected medical staff, to a lesser extent, household contacts contribute to the spread of infection. The reservoir of the infection is still unknown, but it may be monkeys, which is why strict quarantine measures have been introduced to prevent the import of infected animals.

Historical chronicles contain information about numerous victims who died from fatal diseases. In this article we will talk about the most terrible epidemics known to mankind.

Known influenza epidemics

The influenza virus is constantly modified, so finding a panacea to treat this dangerous disease is difficult. World history knows several cases of influenza epidemics that claimed millions of lives.

Spanish flu

The Spanish Flu shocked the population of Europe after the First World War. Since 1918, it has been considered one of the worst pandemics in history. More than 30 percent of the world's population has been infected with this virus, and fatal more than 100 million infections have ended.

The governments of most countries took measures to hide the scale of the disaster. Reliable and objective news about the epidemic was only in Spain, which is why the disease later became known as the “Spanish flu.” This flu strain was later named H1N1.

Bird flu

The first data on bird flu in 1878 were described by a veterinarian from Italy, Eduardo Perroncito. The H5N1 strain received its modern name in 1971. The first infection with the virus was recorded in 1997 in Hong Kong - it was found that the virus was transmitted to humans from a bird. 18 people fell ill, 6 of whom died. A new outbreak of the disease occurred in 2005 in Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia and Cambodia. Then 112 people were injured, and 64 died.

Researchers are not talking about an epidemic yet bird flu. However, they also do not deny the danger of its occurrence, since humans do not have immunity from mutated viruses.

Swine flu

In some countries swine flu called "Mexican flu" or "North American flu". The first case of this disease was recorded in 2009 in Mexico, after which it rapidly began to spread throughout the world, reaching the shores of Australia.

This type of influenza was assigned the 6th, highest, threat level. However, there were many skeptics in the world who treated the “epidemic” with suspicion. A version of conspiracy was put forward as an assumption pharmaceutical companies with the World Health Organization.

During the verification of this fact, the investigative authorities found that some WHO experts responsible for declaring a pandemic received money from pharmaceutical concerns.

Known epidemics of terrible diseases

Bubonic plague or Black Death

The bubonic plague, or as it is also called the Black Death, is the most famous pandemic in the history of civilization. The main signs of this terrible disease, which raged in Europe in the 14th century, there were bleeding ulcers and high fever.

Historians estimate that the Black Death killed between 75 and 200 million people. More than 100 years of hearths bubonic plague arose in different parts the European continent, spreading death and destruction. The last outbreak of this epidemic was recorded in the 1600s in London.

Plague of Justinian

The Plague of Justinian first broke out in 541 in Byzantium and claimed an estimated 100 million lives. On the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, one in four people died as a result of the outbreak.

Severe consequences this pandemic has affected the whole of Europe. However, the greatest losses were suffered by the once great Byzantine Empire, which was never able to recover from such a blow and soon fell into disrepair.

Smallpox

Regular smallpox epidemics devastated the planet until the disease was defeated by scientists at the end of the 18th century. According to one version, it was smallpox that caused the death of the Inca and Aztec civilizations.

It is believed that the tribes, weakened by disease, allowed themselves to be conquered by Spanish troops. Europe was also not spared smallpox. A particularly dramatic outbreak of the disease in the 18th century claimed the lives of 60 million people.

On May 14, 1796, the English surgeon Edward Jenner inoculated an 8-year-old boy against smallpox, which gave a positive result. The symptoms of the disease began to subside, but scars remained at the site of the former ulcers. The last case of smallpox infection was reported on October 26, 1977 in the city of Marka in Somalia.

Seven cholera pandemics

Seven protracted cholera epidemics spanned history from 1816 to 1960. The first cases were recorded in India, the main cause of infection was unsanitary conditions life. About 40 million people died as a result of contracting an acute intestinal infection.

Typhus

Typhus belongs to the group infectious diseases, transmitted from a sick person to a healthy person through lice. In the 20th century, this disease killed millions of people as a result of outbreaks on the front lines and in concentration camps.

The worst epidemic in the world today

In February 2014, the world was rocked by a new pandemic threat – the Ebola virus. The first cases of the disease were recorded in Guinea, after which the fever quickly spread to neighboring countries - Liberia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Senegal. This outbreak has been called the worst in the history of the Ebola virus.

The mortality rate from this fever, according to WHO, reaches 90%, and doctors do not have an effective cure against the virus. In West Africa, more than 2,700 people have died from this disease, while the epidemic continues to spread around the world, covering countries previously untouched by this virus.

According to the site, some diseases are not contagious, but that makes them no less dangerous. We present a list of the rarest diseases in the world.
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16.10 19:28 Diseases that claimed millions of lives

Achievements modern medicine allow us to live longer and die less often than our ancestors. Vaccination, the ability to go to the doctor on time, information about the symptoms of various vile ailments are the main methods of combating infection. But before, people didn’t have all this, and living conditions were frankly unsanitary. Therefore, periodically, terrible epidemics began somewhere, claiming thousands of lives. We'll talk about them today.

Case in Athens

Historians are still arguing about exactly what virus began to “mow down” the inhabitants of ancient Athens during the Peloponnesian War. After the Spartans in 430 BC. The city was besieged, and residents of the suburbs were forced to evacuate beyond the walls. The crowded conditions led to the spread of the disease, which killed every third Athenian. It could be plague, measles, smallpox or some other disaster. Most often they say that it is still a plague. The army of Athens thinned out, and the city's key leader, Pericles, also died. As a result, Athens lost the war, although the Spartans were unable to take the city. And they even lifted the siege, fearing infection.

Black Death

There have been several plague epidemics in human history. However, when we're talking about, for example, about the times of Ancient Rome, then, as in the case of Athens, it could have been smallpox. An unknown disease began to kill the inhabitants of Rome and other provinces of the empire in 165. In a couple of years, it killed about 5 million people, including two emperors. This epidemic has remained in history as the “Plague of Antonia” or the “Plague of Galen.” The physician Claudius Galen described, among other symptoms, a black rash, so it could indeed be smallpox. But the plague version also remains relevant.

In 527, the first documented epidemic of the ancestor of the very plague that we know and fear occurred in Byzantium. The Plague of Justinian raged throughout the vast territory of the Eastern Roman Empire for 60 years, killing millions of people. It has also penetrated into other countries. However, this type of plague is no longer dangerous for us. Recent studies have proven that modern people are much less susceptible to it. If you suddenly find that ancient plague somewhere, you may get sick, but you will be cured without difficulty.

And in 1320, the largest and most terrifying plague epidemic swept through Europe and Asia, which went down in history as the Black Death. It is believed that one of the causes of the epidemic was the cooling of the climate. Low temperatures forced rats and other rodents to move to cities, closer to people, where it was warm and there was something to eat. The fleas that carried the disease moved with them.

First, the plague “walked” through China and India, and then, through the lands of the Golden Horde, it came to Europe. Cramped and dirty European cities, which did not even have sewage systems, became excellent hunting grounds for this infection. The epidemic claimed the lives of more than 25 million people, destroying about 50% of the population of Europe.

But it was during these events that the concept of quarantine appeared. In general, people began to devote more time to questions sanitary standards. Last time The plague visited Europe at the beginning of the 17th century, but it raged in Asia quite recently. In 1910, she appeared in Manchuria. But the second worldwide epidemic did not happen thanks to the timely actions of the Chinese authorities.

Spaniard

But another disease awaited the Europeans who had escaped the plague. The First World War left ruins and dirt across the continent, so the H1N1 flu strain that appeared in 1918 felt quite at ease. By 1919, about 30% of the entire planet's population was sick with the Spanish flu. Up to 100 million people died.

Progress simultaneously helped fight the virus with the help of medical advances. But it also made the situation worse, because thanks to railways and other transport routes, the flu spread at an extremely high speed.

The “Spanish flu” was nicknamed not only because Spain suffered extremely hard from it. But also for the reason that during the war it was a neutral state. Accordingly, military censorship in Spain did not prohibit open writing about the epidemic in the press and publishing research on this topic. In many other countries the topic was taboo.

A series of cholera epidemics

A disease such as cholera still occurs today. She is a frequent companion of dirt and unsanitary conditions. But until recently, its outbreaks occurred frequently and were truly devastating. From 1816 to 1960, the so-called “seven cholera pandemics” occurred, which moved from India to the west and eventually traveled around the globe through America. Until 1860 alone, cholera killed about 40 million people.

Now, however, they are successfully fighting this disease. But it can still be dangerous and deadly, so wash your hands before eating, keep your utensils clean, and drink only clean water.

Malaria

For us, this disease seems exotic; the risk of catching it through a mosquito bite is only in the tropics. But until recently, it could threaten people almost anywhere on the globe, except for the coldest regions. During the American Civil War, about a million people became ill with malaria.

Today, malaria is most common in sub-Saharan Africa. But the risk that someone could bring the infection to other countries remains. Every year up to a million people die from this fever. And up to 250 million people become infected every year. Doctors note that over the past 40 years, the problem of malaria has become increasingly pressing.

Fear of the virus

Of course, we have already overcome many diseases. But viruses and bacteria also do not stand still. Like other living organisms, they develop, mutate, and become immune to our medications. The same flu is “renewed” almost every year, and every year we need to fight it new vaccine. It is possible that other diseases, such as the plague, may return in one form or another.

But it's not just old friends like malaria that threaten humanity. Scientific progress is an unconditional good, but only if it is well controlled. Who knows how new pathogens are stored in test tubes in different laboratories around the world? And where is the guarantee that they will not break free? It looks like a post-apocalyptic movie script, but it could become reality.

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Despite the development of healthcare in the USSR, our country was periodically affected by epidemic outbreaks. The authorities tried to keep silent about cases of mass diseases, which is why we still do not have accurate statistics of epidemic victims.

Flu

For the first time, Soviet Russia faced an influenza epidemic in 1918-1919, when the Spanish flu was raging across the planet. It is considered the most widespread influenza pandemic in human history. By May 1918 alone, about 8 million people (39% of the population) were infected with this virus in Spain.

According to some data, during the period 1918-1919, more than 400 million people were infected with the influenza virus throughout the planet, and about 100 million became victims of the epidemic. IN Soviet Russia 3 million people (3.4% of the population) died from the Spanish flu. Among the most famous victims are revolutionary Yakov Sverdlov and military engineer Pyotr Kapitsa.

In 1957 and 1959, the Soviet Union was overwhelmed by two waves of the Asian flu pandemic; the rise in incidence occurred in May 1957, and by the end of the year at least 21 million people were sick with the flu in our country.

The next time the influenza virus hit the Soviet Union was in 1977-78. The pandemic began in our country, which is why it received the name “Russian flu”. The worst thing is that this virus mainly affected young people under the age of 20. In the USSR, statistics on morbidity and mortality from this pandemic were hidden; at least 300 thousand people worldwide became victims of the “Russian flu”.

Meningitis

In our country, meningitis is rightly considered a disease of overcrowding and poor living conditions. The disease, the mortality rate of which is considered one of the highest in the world, always came unexpectedly and disappeared just as suddenly.

Meningitis is still a mystery to epidemiologists. It is known that the pathogen constantly lives “among us.” Every year, from 1 to 10% of Russians are its carriers, but more often than not, without showing itself in any way, it dies under the influence of the body’s immune forces.

The first epidemic of meningitis was recorded in the USSR in the 1930s and 40s. “The incidence of meningitis in those years was colossal,” notes microbiologist Tatyana Chernyshova. “If today doctors are seriously concerned about the number of cases equal to 2.9 people per 100 thousand population, then then this figure was higher - 50 per 100 thousand.”

The epidemic was associated with large migration flows of the country's population, which poured into socialist construction sites; later the disease actively spread in the barracks of the Great Patriotic War. Patriotic War and in the barracks of post-war construction sites. However, after the war there was no one particularly sick, and the epidemic subsided.

However, in the 60s, meningitis returned; many doctors who first encountered the disease did not even know its symptoms. Epidemiologists were able to determine the cause of the outbreak only in 1997, when scientists were already seriously studying all varieties of meningococci. It turned out that the cause of the disease was a virus that first appeared in China in the mid-1960s and was accidentally introduced into the USSR.

Plague

In the Soviet Union, the plague was considered a relic of the past, although all the plague epidemics in the USSR were known to a narrow circle of specialists. The natural focus of the plague was often the regions of Central Asia, Kazakhstan and Transcaucasia.

The first plague epidemic in the USSR is considered to be an outbreak of its pneumonic form in the Primorsky Territory in 1921, which came from China. And then she appeared with alarming regularity:

1939 - Moscow; 1945 – south of the Volga-Ural region, Central Asia; 1946 – Caspian zone, Turkmenistan; 1947–1948 – Astrakhan region, Kazakhstan; 1949 – Turkmenistan; 1970 – Elbrus region; 1972 – Kalmykia; 1975 – Dagestan; 1980 – Caspian zone; 1981 – Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan. And this is far from full list plague epidemics in the USSR.

Only after the breakup Soviet Union statistics were revealed. From 1920 to 1989, 3,639 people fell ill with the plague, and 2,060 became victims. But if before the war, each plague outbreak claimed hundreds of lives, then from the mid-40s, when sulfidine and blue bluing began to be used, the number of victims decreased to several dozen. Since the late 50s, streptomycin began to be used, which reduced the number of deaths to just a few.

If it were not for the dedicated work of epidemiologists, there could have been significantly more victims. The activities of doctors were strictly classified. Employees of the anti-plague service did not have the right to tell even their loved ones about their work, otherwise they would be fired under the article. Specialists often learned about the purpose of a business trip only at the airport.

Over time, a powerful network of anti-plague institutions was created in the country, which operates successfully to this day. Epidemiologists conducted annual observations of natural plague foci, special laboratories studied strains isolated from ship rats that arrived on ships from potentially plague-prone countries.

Cholera

Civil war, social upheaval, devastation and famine contributed to the spread of cholera pathogens in the young Soviet state. Nevertheless, Russian doctors managed to extinguish the most serious outbreaks of this disease. Very soon the country's leadership reported that cholera was over in the USSR.

But in the mid-1960s the disease returned again. This was already the seventh cholera pandemic for the planet. Starting in 1961 in Indonesia, the infection quickly spread throughout the world. In the USSR, the first case of El Tor cholera, which came with drug dealers from Afghanistan, was recorded in 1965 in the Uzbek SSR. The authorities sent 9,000 thousand soldiers to guard the quarantine zone. The outbreak seemed to be isolated.

However, in 1970, cholera made itself felt again. On July 11, two students from Central Asia fell ill with cholera in Batumi, and from them it began to spread to the local population. Doctors believed that the source of infection was located near the seashore, where wastewater was discharged.

On July 27, 1970, the first cases of cholera were recorded in Astrakhan, and on July 29 there were already the first victims of the disease. The situation in Astrakhan began to develop so rapidly that the country's chief sanitary doctor, Pyotr Burgasov, was forced to fly there.

IN Astrakhan region That year, a large harvest of melons and tomatoes ripened, however, the movement of barges loaded with products was blocked to prevent the spread of the disease to other regions. Astrakhan bore the brunt of the cholera epidemic. In total, by the end of the year, 1,120 vibrio cholera carriers and 1,270 patients were identified in the Astrakhan region, of which 35 people died.

Large outbreaks of cholera emerged in Nakhichevan, Kherson, and Odessa. By decision of the USSR Council of Ministers, all persons caught up in outbreaks of infection were given paid sick leave. Before leaving the infection zone, they all had to undergo observation and bacteriological examination. For these purposes we used 19 sea ​​vessels, including the flagships - the motor ships "Shota Rustaveli" and "Taras Shevchenko".

7093 liters of cholera vaccine, 2250 kilograms of dry culture media, 52428 liters of liquid culture media, millions of packages of tetracycline and a huge amount of bleach were shipped to cholera outbreaks. Through joint efforts, the epidemic was stopped. The Soviet authorities hid the exact number of sick and dead people, but it is known that the number of victims was less than 1% per 100 cases.

AIDS

Until the mid-1980s, the disease of prostitutes, drug addicts and homosexuals was something ephemeral for the USSR. In 1986, the Minister of Health of the RSFSR reported in the Vremya program: “AIDS has been raging in America since 1981, it is a Western disease. We do not have a base for the spread of this infection, since there is no drug addiction and prostitution in Russia.”

Still as they were. For example, the Medical Newspaper of November 4, 1988 spoke about the presence of several brothels almost in the very center of Ashgabat. And this is only official information. The spread of AIDS in the USSR did not take long to occur. By 1988, more than 30 infected people had been identified in the USSR.

According to the Moscow Scientific and Practical Center for Narcology, the first cases of HIV infection among Soviet citizens could have occurred as a result of unprotected sex with African students back in the late 70s.

In 1988, the first AIDS victim was recorded, however, earlier accurate diagnoses was impossible, since the first HIV screening in the USSR was carried out only in 1987. The first Soviet citizen to become infected with HIV is considered to be a Zaporozhye engineer named Krasichkov.

Blogger Anton Nosik, who personally knew the victim, said that Krasichkov was sent to Tanzania in 1984 for industrial construction, where he, being a passive homosexual, became infected through sexual contact. Arriving in Moscow in 1985, he “bestowed” another 30 people with this infection.

By the time of the collapse of the USSR, no more than 1000 cases of AIDS were recorded. But later, despite preventive measures and increasing sexual literacy of the population, the number of HIV cases in the CIS countries began to grow steadily.