Pocket Essentials: Short History of Disease: Plagues, Poxes & Civilisations

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. A Short History of Disease By Sean Martin Oldcastle BooksCopyright © 2015 Sean Martin All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-84344-419-0 Contents Introduction: Definitions, Origins, Chapter One: Prehistory, Chapter Two: Antiquity, Chapter Three: The Dark and Middle Ages, Chapter Four: The New World, Chapter Five: Early Modern to 1900, Chapter Six: The Twentieth Century, Chapter Seven: New Diseases, Notes, Glossary of Diseases, Bibliography, Index, CHAPTER 1 Prehistory There was once a time when there was no disease. Life spans were much longer than those we enjoy today, there was no suffering, and people possessed magical powers. They could fly, go to heaven at will, and understood the language of animals. This is the myth of the golden age, found in cultures the world over. The oldest stories predate Eden: Sumerian cuneiform tablets speak of Dilmun, 'a place where sickness, violence and aging are unknown.' When the sun-god Utu and Enki, lord of soil and earth, brought water, Dilmun flowered and became a beautiful garden. Another pre-Edenic tale is the ancient Persian story of Yima, the first human. During his time, 'there was neither heat nor cold, neither old age nor death, nor disease'. Yima built a beautiful garden, the most widespread image for paradise. This is no coincidence, as Richard Heinberg noted: 'The word paradise itself comes from the Avestan (Old Iranian) word Pairidaeza, meaning a walled or enclosed garden.' But then disaster struck. Myths of the fall are as widespread as those of the golden age. In Eden, the Serpent tempted Eve to eat the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. In Persia — one of the few stories not to attribute the loss of paradise to the actions of a woman — the Fall was brought about when Yima refused to do the bidding of Ahura Mazda, the Zoroastrian god. Divine displeasure resulted in shorter life spans, pain, toil, conflict, and disease. We have been living in this world ever since. If paradise in mythology was a garden, in reality, it was probably a beach. Bacteria found at the Strelley Pool Chert in Pilbara, Western Australia, is thought to be around 3.4 billion years old, making it the oldest known form of life yet discovered. At that stage, the Earth was dominated by ceaseless volcanic activity, the continents still in the process of forming, the skies a thick cloud. We could think of it as an age without disease, but it was also an age without life, or at least life as we know it. We would have found it impossible to breathe, as there was at that stage of Earth's evolution no oxygen: life at Strelley Pool was sulphur-based. The bacteria probably resembled the extremophile bacteria that can be found today in sulphurous caves, acid lakes and in rocks far underground. Rather than being the heavenly arbours of Dilmun, Persia or Eden, the Earth when Strelley Pool Chert was home to the first bacterial life probably more resembled an apocalypse from a painting by John Martin. Bacteria are not only the original form of life on Earth, but also far and away the most successful and abundant. They had the planet all to themselves for at least a billion years. When the Earth had cooled sufficiently, a type of bacteria known as cyanobacteria began to photosynthesise. That is, they were able to use sunlight to convert carbon dioxide and water into carbohydrates. Oxygen is the byproduct of this process. As Earth's atmosphere began to fill with oxygen, the bacteria slowly began to use it as another energy source. Around two billion years ago some photosynthetic Product Description In 2014, the world faces a global crisis as the Ebola epidemic threatens to spread from Western Africa across the planet. Even before recorded history began, disease has plagued human civilisations, claiming more lives than natural disasters and warfare combined. Using an interdisciplinary approach, Sean Martin's A Short History of Disease chronicles