The most catastrophic epidemics in human history

The most terrible pandemics ever recorded below were all caused by the same bacteria whose origins are still unknown: Yersinia pestis.

Yersinia pestis is the bacteria that causes the plague. Humans usually contract the disease after being bitten by the flea of ​​a rodent carrying the plague bacteria or after coming into contact with an animal infected with bubonic plague (through droplets, bodily fluids, or tissues).

Currently, antibiotics are somewhat effective in treating bubonic plague, and the disease has never ended. It continues to occur in rural areas of the western United States, Asia, and Africa.

The Justinian Pandemic

This was the first human pandemic that occurred during the reign of King Justinian I in Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, in AD 541. With poor health, hygiene, and education at that time, the epidemic quickly devastated Constantinople and swept across Asia, Europe, North Africa and Arabia, killing an estimated 50 million people – more than one half of the population at that time. After the pandemic, corpses were scattered everywhere, and the mass graves were so full that people had to proceed to push the corpses into the ocean.

Black Death

The epidemic never really went away, and 800 years later, the disease returned and became the deadliest pandemic in human history when it caused the deaths of 75-200 million people in Asia and Asia. Europe only in about 5 years from 1346 to 1351.

People in masks to prevent the Black Death pandemic.

Unlucky people who contract this disease will die after about a week of illness. At that time, the disease was the powerlessness of the medical profession at that time when they had no scientific understanding of the spread of the disease, only knowing that it was related to contact between people. People. The disease also transformed European society, politics and the economy. In utter helplessness in the face of the horrors of the pandemic, European Christians blamed their Jewish neighbors for the epidemic on the Jews. Poisoning wells.

This led to an escalation of violence and bloody massacres. The disease also caused a severe shortage of labor in agriculture and handicrafts, which was the main cause of the social chaos at that time, including the decline of power and political position. of the ruling class. This was also the birth of the modern hazmat suit.

Theo Trung tâm kiểm soát và phòng ngừa dịch bệnh Hoa Kỳ.