A brief outline of the history of world epidemics-pandemics. Part I

Abstract

Pandemics in human history led to losses of millions of people and a significant decline in economic and social life. At the end of autumn 2019, humanity once again «unexpectedly» ran into the manifestations of mass infectious defeat. But the alarming reports of doctors were not heard by society. Unfortunately, what they predicted soon became a bitter reality of our time.The article traces and partially analyzes the consequences of epidemics-pandemics that occurred in ancient Athens during the Peloponnesian War, the plague of Antoninus, the plague of Justinian and the «black death» in the fourteenth century. To cope with the pandemic, cities and rulers sought out and lured doctors, paying for their services six months or even a year in advance. At that time, the saying appeared «the presence of a doctor in the city is a blessing from God!» The predecessors of modern infectious disease doctors, the «plague doctors», also appeared. For the first time, quarantine was used as an anti-epidemic protection. Its high efficiency is evidenced by the fact that 600 years later the WHO recognizes quarantine as the only possible effective way to combat the coronavirus pandemic.Dogmatic medicine, which was completely defeated in the fight against the plague, began to change in favor of the conclusions of doctors with practical knowledge, who not only tried to prevent the disease but also to cure it, and surgery received a significant impetus for its further development.After partial recovery from the plague pandemics, at the end of the 15th century in Spain and Italy, an epidemic of a «new» infection broke out unexpectedly. In a record short time, it captured residents of all other countries of Europe and Asia, regardless of age, gender and social status. In view of the result, it was first called «sexual plague», and later — more familiar to us — «syphilis». This epidemic-pandemic with certain periods of its extinction and revival continues to this day, affecting hundreds of thousands of people worldwide each year.At the beginning of the seventeenth century epidemics were not only in Europe but also in the colonies of the Spanish crown. With a strange pattern they arose in the 20s of almost every century. This particular year, a pandemic of a dangerous infectious disease, smallpox, broke out.That is, from antiquity to the beginning of the eighteenth century the society, with great human and economic losses, suffered several epidemics-pandemics, which not only significantly slowed down its progress, but also allowed the human community to redefine the further vector of its existence and development.