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Pandemics-Wiping Out Populations Worldwide

The Black Death in the Fourteenth Centur... (by Hecker, J. F. C. (Justus Friedrich Carl), 1795-185...)
The Decameron (by Boccaccio, Giovanni)
Omnes de Saba venient, HV 40
One of ours (by Cather, Willa)

With the introduction of vaccines, antibiotics, and public health measures, many diseases have been eradicated. For reasons unknown, others have vanished.

Many diseases throughout history have been classified as pandemics and are prevalent throughout countries, continents, or globally. In recent times, HIV, Ebola, and the Zika virus are classified as pandemics.

The Black Death, also referred to as “The Plague,” is an example of a pandemic. A plague is a contagious bacterial disease characterized by fever and delirium. Typically, buboes (swollen, inflamed lymph nodes) develop in cases of bubonic plague. Pneumonic plague occurs when there’s a severe lung infection and septicemic plague when there’s an infection in the blood.

Modern research suggests that The Plague came from a bacterial infection in rodents and fleas. It arrived in Europe via maritime trade routes from Asia’s Silk Road. The disease’s name likely came from the dark skin boils that appear in cases of bubonic plague.

The Plague claimed more than 20 million lives in Europe between 1347 and 1351. Experts believe that at least 75 million perished. In The Decameron, Giovanni Boccaccio writes: “But here it began with yong children, male and female, either under the armepits, or in the groine by certaine swellings, in some to the bignesse of an Apple, in others like an Egge” (p. 4).

The Plague is covered extensively in Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year and in The Plague by Albert Camus. Recent years have seen outbreaks, including one at the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation in Montana.

The 1918 Spanish Flu (modern research suggests that the virus didn’t originate in Spain, but the country’s media was the first to widely report on it) also accounted for some of the deadliest pandemics. During World War I, it raged in destinations around the globe.

The first case of the Spanish Flu in the United States was at a military camp in Kansas, populated with soldiers who were preparing to deploy to Europe in March 1918. They transported the disease to Europe, Asia, and other countries. The virus eventually spread to civilians when the soldiers returned home via overcrowded trains and ships. Ultimately the influenza pandemic claimed more lives than combat casualties in World War I.

The 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic vanished by 1919, leaving cities and towns emptied in its wake. It’s estimated that one-third of the entire world’s population was afflicted. Death estimates vary from 20 million to 50 million people.

In One of Ours, Willa Cather’s character Claude enlists in the U.S. Army during World War I. Cather writes:

There are a number of sick men this morning, and the only other physician on board is the sickest of the lot. There’s the ship’s doctor, of course, but he’s only responsible for the crew, and so far he doesn’t seem interested. I’ve got to overhaul the hospital and the medical stores this morning. Is there an epidemic of some sort? (p. 286)

Artists also recorded disease, such as Edvard Munch’s Self-Portrait After Spanish Influenza address this disease.

By Regina Molaro