Pandemics: From the plague of Athens to COVVI-19 ...
Back on the deadliest pandemics in the world, from Antiquity to the present day.
©️Gallica - BnF
Le 30 janvier 2020, l’Organisation mondiale de la Santé qualifiait l’épidémie de coronavirus d’ «urgence de santé publique de portée internationale». Très vite, ce virus apparu dans la ville de Wuhan en Chine est propagé dans le monde entier. On parle alors de pandémie, puisqu’il s’agit d’une « épidémie étendue à toute la population d’un continent, voire au monde entier ».
Back on the deadliest pandemics in the world, from Antiquity to the present day.
Athens plague
At the beginning of summer 430 BC. J.C., a disease spread very quickly within the city of Athens. It is presented as being completely unprecedented by Thucydide which will bring back the facts in the Book II of its history of the Peloponnese War. Clinical manifestations show strong headache, violent cough, the rash of bulbs and ulcers and extreme fatigue. The columnist reports that even the scavengers do not approach corpses. If they do it, they die.
Several medical interpretations are given. Based on the writings of Thuvydides, nearly 15 diagnoses will be offered by academics: typhus, smallpox, measles, typhoid fever or Ebola fever ... Others attest that it is not a single disease but many constituting a set with various but no less ferocious syndromes.
There are two epidemic waves, the first from 430 to 428 and the second from 428 to 426, terraging the Athenians. Some historians believe that there would have been nearly 200,000 victims of this epidemic potentially born in Ethiopia and spent in Egypt and Libya before arriving in Greece.
Black Death
We are in the Middle Ages this time, around 1346, when a plague pandemic affected Eurasia and Africa. This disease arrived from China by the silk road spreads at a crazy speed and made significant demographic, socio-economic and religious damage. The German doctor and writer Justus Hecker (1795-1850) describes this pandemic as a real factor of transformation of medieval society.
Europe has no choice but to set up again health regulations. Several cities prohibit the entry of travelers, are completely confined and set up quarantines until 1352.
Historians estimate that almost 40% of the European population would have succumbed to the disease, between 30 and 45 million people, a figure that rises up to nearly 200,000 dead worldwide.
Cholera
There are many epidemics of cholera. Several will affect France, notably between 1829 and 1837, 1840 and 1860, 1863 and 1875. This disease from Asia via Russia ravages the populations of the 19th century.
Intense diarrhea, vomiting, dehydration, corpses are numerous in record time. The displacement of populations will increase the spread of the disease which will give more than a million people around the world.
Even today, the disease strikes countries whose health conditions promote its spread.
Source : https://www.biusante.parisdescartes.fr/histmed/image?cisb0631
Spanish flu
Autre fléau de la Première Guerre Mondiale, cette épidémie aurait tué entre 50 et 100 millions de personnes entre 1918 et 1919. Possiblement arrivée d’abord aux Etats-Unis, on la surnomme « Spanish flu » car c’est en Espagne que cette souche sera particulièrement virulente et meurtrière.
This flu is extremely contagious and fever and bacterial infections kill quickly, in ten days.
Il est dit de cette grippe qu’elle se serait progressivement diluée dans la grippe « douce » et qu’elle aurait muté au fur et à mesure pour être plus mortelle.
For more information, see our article 70+ Resources on epidemics that have marked history.