Im not highly educated on disease and pathogens..can't say I'm some kind of historian either.. but has there been any non-viral instances which we'd call a "pandemic" or "epidemic", since the black plague? Seeking to become more informed..
#asknostr #nostr #health #medicine #history
Hmmmm there was the Spanish Flu around the 1920s or so, but pretty sure that's a form of the influenza virus, so obviously viral. It's an interesting question. Do viruses have a better chance of reaching pandemic status?
So, so many.
Cholera comes to mind (bacterial)
CJD (prion)
Various forms of mass hysteria (psychological)
Then there are weird edge cases like Rheumatoid Arthritis: epidemology and paleontology looks /exactly/ like a pathogen (inducing an autoimmune response to the tissues it hides among) except we've looked, a lot, and no microcritter has been convicted yet.
Yeah the psychological is interesting.. and autoimmune, right. I wasn't really thinking a disease like diabetes which is caused by lifestyle. I was thinking germs. The bacterias make sense, but I don't know if they have been pandemic scale. But I guess basically over the last century the population increase makes "pandemics" possible whereas before not so much maybe... But in that time I don't think there has been a national-level bacterial contagen. Maybe because that easier to fight with antibiotics and containment.
Koch's own work shows that Cholera was not caused by the bacteria supposedly responsible
He drank a beaker full of vibrio cholerae and didn't develop cholera disease
