-
12 ships from the Black Sea arrived in Messina, most of the crew dead and those still alive were extremely ill. The ships were quickly ordered to depart, but the disease had already transferred to the citizens of Messina. -
The Bubonic Plague, commonly referred to as the "Black Death" was one of the deadliest pandemics in history, killing over 20 million people throughout Europe, 1/3 of its population at the time. It has resurfaced multiple times throughout history, but never to the scale of its initial destruction in the 14th century.
-
Bills of mortality were posted around the city which disclosed the number of deaths for that week. This spread fear among populations because the numbers were in the thousands every single week and nobody knew how to control it. These bills had never been seen before in previous periods of large-scale disease. Tracking information about how people were dying and where they were dying would become extremely common in future societies to help track the spread of the disease. -
During the mid-17th-century, the Bubonic Plague arrived in London and ravaged the city for over a year, before being cut short by the Great Fire of London, which drove out most rodents and vessels for the disease. While no exact death toll could be measured during that period due to less than effective methods of tracking the disease, an estimated 100,000+ people died in London due to the plague, roughly 1/4 of the population at the time.
-
Louis Pasteur, Joseph Lister, and Robert Koch were the main forces behind the discovery of germs and how personal hygiene is extremely important in fighting off disease and illness. The discoveries made by these men throughout the second half of the 19th century became revolutionary in fighting disease and sickness, ushering society into a new wave of health and medicine. Carbolic acid, an antiseptic, was used to sanitize medical instruments and maintain clean environments via a spray device. -
During the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, The Red Cross posted ads around cities throughout US cities urging people to wear masks to prevent the spread of influenza. Similar to what we see today, there was massive debate about the effectiveness of masks against the virus. Common practices such as hand washing and social distancing were also echoed throughout communities dealing with the virus. -
The Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918 infected roughly 500 million people at the time and killed 20-50 million worldwide. At the time, the world population was a little over 1.5 billion, meaning that 1/3 of the entire population was infected with this lethal strain of influenza. There was no flu vaccine or widespread effective treatment to combat the virus at the time, meaning that it was impossible to control. Over the next year or two, it began to die out and become less lethal as time went on.