You Gotta Know These Plagues and Pandemics
- The Great Plague of Athens struck Greece in 430 BC, during the Peloponnesian War. According to the historian Thucydides, the disease spread to Athens from Ethiopia and killed up to 25% of the city’s population, including its leading statesman, Pericles. Though the illness spread to other cities, its particular impact on Athens helped Sparta become the foremost city in Greece. The cause of the plague remains unknown; historians have speculated that it may have been typhus or an unknown type of hemorrhagic fever.
- The Antonine Plague spread across the Roman Empire from AD 165 to 180. Roman troops brought the disease into the Mediterranean world after returning from war against Parthia in Mesopotamia. The outbreak is named for the Antonine dynasty, which ruled Rome at the time under co-emperors Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus (the latter of whom likely died of the plague); the dynasty’s founder, Antoninus Pius, had died in AD 161. The physician Galen wrote detailed accounts of the outbreak, which allowed modern scholars to determine that the plague was likely either smallpox or measles.
- The Plague of Justinian is a common name for the first plague pandemic that swept Europe and Asia beginning during the 540s. The plague struck Constantinople during the reign of Justinian I, who was attempting to reassert Roman control over the Mediterranean. It was caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, the same agent that later caused the Black Death. The plague and its many recurrences devastated Byzantium and neighboring countries like the Sassanid Empire; their weakened states helped enable the Muslim conquests in the 7th century.
- The Black Death is a common name for the second plague pandemic which spread in the mid-14th century. Mongol forces likely introduced the plague to Europe while besieging the Genoese colony of Kaffa in Crimea. Over the following decade, the disease killed roughly half of the continent’s population. It also sparked major social disruptions, including peasant revolts in England and France and mass anti-semitism, due to many blaming the plague on Jews. The frame story for Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron involves ten people fleeing the plague in Florence. Scattered plague outbreaks continued across Europe for the next 300 years, including the Great Plague of London in 1665. It is likely the deadliest pandemic ever.
- Syphilis, a sexually transmitted disease, spread across Europe beginning in the 1490s. While its origins are disputed, many Renaissance and contemporary scholars believe it came to Europe from the Americas after Christopher Columbus’s voyages. It was first described among French troops invading Naples in 1495 and known then as the “great pox.” Syphilis remained a major public health threat in the western world until the introduction of penicillin in the 1940s. In the 20th century, the U.S. government conducted a study in Tuskegee, Alabama that involved intentionally and inhumanely not treating hundreds of Black men infected with the disease.
- Typhus, an infectious fever carried by lice, spread across Europe in the late 1400s. While it may have been responsible for ancient pandemics, typhus was first conclusively identified among Spanish troops attacking Granada near the end of the Reconquista (15th century). Later typhus epidemics often coincided with military conflicts, for instance, causing most of the deaths during the Thirty Years’ War and Napoleon’s invasion of Russia. Typhus killed many victims of the Holocaust, including Anne Frank.
- Smallpox, a disease caused by the variola virus, circulated as early as 1500 BC. While the disease became endemic across Europe and Asia, it caused devastation when introduced to new populations. Smallpox came to the Americas through Spanish conquistadors, causing millions of deaths among indigenous civilizations like the Aztecs and Incas. Later colonial efforts caused the disease to reach and decimate Aboriginal Australians and other native peoples. Chinese doctors developed strategies for inoculating against smallpox in the 1500s, while Edward Jenner created the first ever vaccine to prevent it in 1796 using the similar cowpox virus. A successful 20th-century campaign by the World Health organization led to the eradication of smallpox in 1980.
- Cholera is an intestinal infection that originated in India. Largely as a consequence of British colonialism, cholera swept the globe during six pandemics in the 19th century. In the U.S. the disease killed former president James Polk and caused many deaths along the Oregon Trail. While studying cholera in London, epidemiologist John Snow recognized the Broad Street pump as the common link in an outbreak and concluded that the disease was water-borne. Though now less fatal due to available treatments, cholera persists in large parts of the world; it killed over 10,000 people during a 2010s outbreak in Haiti.
- The Spanish Flu pandemic killed up to 100 million people from 1918 to 1920. Caused by the H1N1 strain of influenza, the disease was first documented in a U.S. army camp in Kansas. It acquired its misleading name because Spain was one of the few countries not to censor information about it amid World War I, a conflict that drove the disease’s spread. Because Spanish flu often caused cytokine storms in its victims, it disproportionately affected younger people. Notable victims of the pandemic included Gustav Klimt and Max Weber.
- AIDS, a condition caused by HIV (the human immunodeficiency virus), triggered a pandemic beginning in 1981. Originating in monkeys, the virus jumped to humans in the early 20th century but did not spread widely until decades later. It is primarily sexually transmitted and devastated gay communities across the world in the 1980s and ’90s, largely due to intentional government inaction. The AIDS epidemic has also devastated sub-Saharan Africa; a 2013 study estimated that nearly 80% of all people currently living with HIV were from southern Africa. Gay journalist Randy Shilts chronicled the early pandemic and government indifference in his book And the Band Played On; he later died of AIDS himself. Public awareness of HIV/AIDS increased as it killed celebrities like Rock Hudson. The introduction of the drug AZT in 1987, later accompanied by other drugs, slowly helped reduce the disease’s mortality rate from nearly 100%. The pandemic spurred many works of art and literature, including the play Angels in America and the massive AIDS Memorial Quilt.
This article was contributed by ÎÞÓǶÌÊÓƵ editor Ben Miller.