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The term used to describe tuberculosis was “pthisis”. Hippocrates described pthisis as an almost always fatal disease where physicians would actually leave their patients.
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In Athens, Greece a plague struck. It killed nearly 100,000 people which is about 25% of the population.
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The typhoid outbreak in 430 BC wiped out almost a third of Greece’s population.
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Measles were first identified in the 9th century by an Arab physician.
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The Plague of Justinian arrived in Constantinople at 542 CE from China. The disease stayed a problem for 225 years before it disappeared in 750 CE.
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The Bubonic Plague, also known as Black Death, was brought to Europe by the trading ships. The illness would cause black boils all over the body that oozed pus and blood. The Bubonic Plague would continue to kill more than 20 million people in Europe in the next 5 years.
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In the Middle Ages, most mothers didn't have much to eat and had to resort to water mixed with sewage. Newborn babies were usually born infected and died before reaching a year of age.
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The first signs of Typhus were brought into the world. People that caught this disease were almost guaranteed death.
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People in the 1500’s commonly confused chicken pox with the scarlet fever, as they were extremely similar.
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Somewhere around the 1520's, Paracelsus finds the cure for syphilis. He concluded that drinking mercury would cure the syphilis.
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Paracelsus believed that natural components were the best ingredients for medicine. So, he introduced chemical substances into the medical field around the 1520's
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Zacharias Jansen invented the microscope in 1590, which allowed scientists to get a closer look at diseases and how they were caused.
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From 1633-1634, settlers in Massachusetts were infected with smallpox. About 70% of the Native American population dropped and around 800 of the 5,900 Bostonians that were infected died.
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Edward Jenner created the Small pox vaccine from cow pox.
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In Philadelphia, 5 thousand people died from the Yellow Fever and 17,000 left the city. Since Philadelphia used to be a port, ships from all over would come and go. This left high risk for disease.
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Living conditions in the 18th century were extremely poor. This created an opportunity for diseases to start and wipe out communities. Most doctors understood how disease affected the body and how to fix it, but it wasn’t clear on how the diseases were spread. So, there continued to be dirty conditions and bacteria was spread easily.
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The second out of the three epidemiological phases for Scarlet Fever took place from around 1825-1885.
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Joseph Jackson Lister discovered that combining multiple weak lenses could provided clearer magnification
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Asiatic Cholera was an epidemic that took place in Britain and killed around 30,000 people.
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Dr. Robert Koch finds the cause of tuberculosis, a bacteria named Mycobacterium tuberculosis.
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U.S. residents were recommended to get the MMR vaccine for measles.
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U.S. residents were recommended to get the DTP vaccine for whooping cough.
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U.S. residents were recommended to get a vaccine for small pox.
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U.S. residents were recommended to get the DTP vaccine for Tetanus.
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U.S. residents were recommended to get the MMR vaccine for mumps.
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U.S. residents were recommended to get the Hib vaccine for influenza.
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U.S. residents were recommended to get the vaccine for Hepatitis B.
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U.S. residents were recommended to get the vaccine for chicken pox.
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Ebola originated in Africa and eventually became a worldwide fear when it was found in the United States.
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The latest epidemic was the Zika virus, which is spread by mosquitoes. Pregnant women were most in danger at this time.
