The History of the Pandemic
"The History of the Pandemic"
It is important to note that medical technology has allowed for a huge stride to be made to control pandemics, but if you look at the history of thepandemic, you will see just how detrimental to a society a pandemic could be.
We can trace the outbreak of a pandemic all the way back to the time of BC. During the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, Thucydidies recorded the harsh realities of the outbreak of a great pestilence that wiped out 30,000 of Athenian citizens.
In 165 AD, Greek physician Galen, described an ancient pandemic, later to be perceived as Small Pox wiping out soldiers returning from Mesopotamia. At its peak, the disease killed some 5,000 people a day in Rome, as the disease finished its detrimental run, nearly 5 million people were dead.
541-542 AD brought about the Plague of Justinian, named after the reigning emperor Justinia. This virus killed upwards of 10,000 people a day, leaving no time to properly discard the bodies. By the end of the outbreak nearly half the inhabitants of the city were dead. Later investigation lead medical experts to believe this was in fact the bubonic plague -- which is responsible for claiming nearly 200 million lives throughout history.
Following the Plague of Justinian -- there were many outbreaks of the plague, but to record none were more than severe than the black plague of the 14th Century. More than 25 million people succumbed to this disease, which wiped out nearly one-fourth of the Mediterranean population.
In March 1918 an unusually violent virus broke out in a Military Camp in Kansas, and a short six months later, it was considered a worldwidepandemic that spread to all continents. When the Spanish flu pandemic came to an end it ended up infected nearly 1 billion people and claiming the lives of 100 million people. The Spanish flu is considered one of the most lethal forms of apandemic in the history of human kind.