HISTORY 17 - Pandemics That Changed History
Inspired (if that’s the appropriate word) by the current COVID-19 Pandemic, I decided to write about the history of pandemics. "The plague in Rome" painted in 1869 by Jules Elie Delaunay creates an allegorical representation of the scourge breaking down doors. A pandemic is an epidemic of infectious disease that has spread across a large region, for instance multiple countries, continents, or worldwide, affecting a substantial number of people. Communicable diseases existed during humankind’s hunter-gather days, but the shift to agrarian life 10,000 years ago created communities that made epidemics ( widespread occurrences of an infectious disease in a community at a particular time) more possible. Malaria, tuberculosis, leprosy, influenza, smallpox and others first appeared during this period. The more civilized humans became, building cities and forging trade routes to connect with other cities, and waging war with them, the more likely a pandemic be...