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Virgin Soil Epidemic
In epidemiology, a virgin soil epidemic is an epidemic in which populations that previously were in isolation from a pathogen are immunologically unprepared upon contact with the novel pathogen. Virgin soil epidemics have occurred with European settlement, particularly when European explorers and colonists took diseases to lands they settled in the Americas, Australia and Pacific Islands. When a population has been isolated from a particular pathogen without any contact, individuals in that population have not built up any immunity to that organism and also have not received immunity passed from mother to child. The epidemiologist Francis Black has suggested that some isolated populations may not have mixed enough to become as genetically heterogeneous as their colonizers, which would also have affected their natural immunity, due to the potential benefits to immune system function due to genetic diversity. That can happen also when such a considerable amount of time has passed ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire ruled the Mediterranean and much of Europe, Western Asia and North Africa. The Roman people, Romans conquered most of this during the Roman Republic, Republic, and it was ruled by emperors following Octavian's assumption of effective sole rule in 27 BC. The Western Roman Empire, western empire collapsed in 476 AD, but the Byzantine Empire, eastern empire lasted until the fall of Constantinople in 1453. By 100 BC, the city of Rome had expanded its rule from the Italian peninsula to most of the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean and beyond. However, it was severely destabilised by List of Roman civil wars and revolts, civil wars and political conflicts, which culminated in the Wars of Augustus, victory of Octavian over Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, and the subsequent conquest of the Ptolemaic Kingdom in Egypt. In 27 BC, the Roman Senate granted Octavian overarching military power () and the new title of ''Augustus (title), Augustus'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Smallpox Virus Virions TEM PHIL 1849 (crop)
Smallpox was an infectious disease caused by Variola virus (often called Smallpox virus), which belongs to the genus ''Orthopoxvirus''. The last naturally occurring case was diagnosed in October 1977, and the World Health Organization (WHO) certified the global eradication of the disease in 1980, making smallpox the only human disease to have been eradicated to date. The initial symptoms of the disease included fever and vomiting. This was followed by formation of ulcers in the mouth and a skin rash. Over a number of days, the skin rash turned into the characteristic fluid-filled blisters with a dent in the center. The bumps then scabbed over and fell off, leaving scars. The disease was transmitted from one person to another primarily through prolonged face-to-face contact with an infected person or rarely via contaminated objects. Prevention was achieved mainly through the smallpox vaccine. Once the disease had developed, certain antiviral medications could potentially ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spanish Flu
The 1918–1920 flu pandemic, also known as the Great Influenza epidemic or by the common misnomer Spanish flu, was an exceptionally deadly global influenza pandemic caused by the H1N1 subtype of the influenza A virus. The earliest documented case was March 1918 in Kansas, United States, with further cases recorded in France, Germany and the United Kingdom in April. Two years later, nearly a third of the global population, or an estimated 500 million people, had been infected. Estimates of deaths range from 17 million to 50 million, and possibly as high as 100 million, making it the deadliest pandemic in history. The pandemic broke out near the end of World War I, when wartime censors in the belligerent countries suppressed bad news to maintain morale, but newspapers freely reported the outbreak in neutral Spain, creating a false impression of Spain as the epicenter and leading to the "Spanish flu" misnomer. Limited historical epidemiological data make the pandemic' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
African Slave Trade
Slavery has historically been widespread in Africa. Systems of servitude and slavery were once commonplace in parts of Africa, as they were in much of the rest of the ancient and medieval world. When the trans-Saharan slave trade, Red Sea slave trade, Indian Ocean slave trade, and Atlantic slave trade (which started in the 16th century) began, many of the pre-existing local African slave systems began supplying captives for slave markets outside Africa. Slavery in contemporary Africa still exists in some regions despite being illegal. In the relevant literature African slavery is categorized into indigenous slavery and export slavery, depending on whether or not slaves were traded beyond the continent. Slavery in historical Africa was practised in many different forms: Debt slavery, enslavement of war captives, military slavery, slavery for prostitution, and enslavement of criminals were all practised in various parts of Africa. Slavery for domestic and court purposes was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Malaria In The Caribbean
Malaria has had a significant impact on the history of the Caribbean, due to its effects on the colonization of the islands and the corresponding impact on society and economy. Malaria was not found in the Americas prior to the discovery of the New World by Europeans. There was therefore even less immunity among the native populations than there was among Europeans. Due to their genetics, African slaves had greater immunity to falciparum malaria, and this was one reason why slaves were brought in great numbers from Africa. Creoles felt that diseases such as malaria were tools preventing their territories being invaded by Europeans. The Caribbean countries most affected by malaria were the Greater Antilles islands and other humid islands like Martinique and Trinidad and Tobago. Anopheles mosquitoes thrive mostly in areas of humidity and fresh water, so the disease was not found on islands such as the Bahamas and Antigua Antigua ( ; ), also known as Waladli or Wadadli by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
History Of Australia (1788–1850)
The history of Australia from 1788 to 1850 covers the early British colonial period of Australia's history. This started with the arrival in 1788 of the First Fleet of British ships at Port Jackson on the lands of the Eora, and the establishment of the penal colony of New South Wales as part of the British Empire. It further covers the European European land exploration of Australia, scientific exploration of the continent and the establishment of the other History of Australia#Establishment of further colonies, Australian colonies that make up the modern States of Australia, states of Australia. After several years of privation, the penal colony gradually expanded and developed an economy based on farming, fishing, whaling, trade with incoming ships, and construction using convict labour. By 1820, however, British settlement was largely confined to a radius around Sydney and to the central plain of Van Diemen's Land, Van Diemen's land. From 1816, penal transportation to Austr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zoonosis
A zoonosis (; plural zoonoses) or zoonotic disease is an infectious disease of humans caused by a pathogen (an infectious agent, such as a virus, bacterium, parasite, fungi, or prion) that can jump from a non-human vertebrate to a human. When humans infect non-humans, it is called reverse zoonosis or anthroponosis. Major modern diseases such as Ebola and salmonellosis are zoonoses. HIV was a zoonotic disease transmitted to humans in the early part of the 20th century, though it has now evolved into a separate human-only disease. Human infection with animal influenza viruses is rare, as they do not transmit easily to or among humans. However, avian and swine influenza viruses in particular possess high zoonotic potential, and these occasionally recombine with human strains of the flu and can cause pandemics such as the 2009 swine flu. Zoonoses can be caused by a range of disease pathogens such as emergent viruses, bacteria, fungi and parasites; of 1,415 pathogens known t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guns, Germs And Steel
''Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies'' (subtitled ''A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 Years'' in Britain) is a 1997 transdisciplinary nonfiction book by the American author Jared Diamond. The book attempts to explain why Eurasian and North African civilizations have survived and conquered others, while arguing against the idea that Eurasian hegemony is due to any form of Eurasian intellectual, moral, or inherent genetic superiority. Diamond argues that the gaps in power and technology between human societies originate primarily in environmental differences, which are amplified by various positive feedback loops. When cultural or genetic differences have favored Eurasians (for example, written language or the development among Eurasians of resistance to endemic diseases), he asserts that these advantages occurred because of the influence of geography on societies and cultures (for example, by facilitating commerce and trade between different cult ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jared Diamond
Jared Mason Diamond (born September 10, 1937) is an American scientist, historian, and author. In 1985 he received a MacArthur Genius Grant, and he has written hundreds of scientific and popular articles and books. His best known is '' Guns, Germs, and Steel'' (1997), which received multiple awards including the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction. In 2005, Diamond was ranked ninth on a poll by '' Prospect'' and ''Foreign Policy'' of the world's top 100 public intellectuals. Originally trained in biochemistry and physiology, Diamond has published in many fields, including anthropology, ecology, geography, and evolutionary biology. In 1999, he received the National Medal of Science, an honor bestowed by the President of the United States and the National Science Foundation. He was a professor of geography at UCLA until his retirement in 2024. Early life and education Diamond was born on September 10, 1937 in Boston, Massachusetts. His parents were both Eastern Europ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Hardy McNeill
William Hardy McNeill (October 31, 1917 – July 8, 2016) was an American historian and author, noted for his argument that contact and exchange among civilizations is what drives human history forward, first postulated in '' The Rise of the West'' (1963). He was the Robert A. Millikan Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Chicago, where he taught from 1947 until his retirement in 1987.. (Biographical details from bottom of page 95.) In 1980-81 he held the George Eastman Professorship at the University of Oxford. Early life and education William McNeill was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, the son of theologian and educator John T. McNeill, where he lived until age ten. The family then moved to Chicago, while spending summers on a family farm on Canada's Prince Edward Island. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1938 from the University of Chicago, where he was editor of the student newspaper and "was inspired by the anthropolo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
