The most famous of the epidemic in the history of mankind: how did that work out?

History teaches us that even the worst epidemic ever ends. And this, with the features of today can not but rejoice. But exactly how the end of the epidemic? What? And, most importantly, why? Let's examine the historical experience.

Three of the most deadly pandemics in human history was caused by the same bacterium, the plague Bacillus Yersinia pestis.

The first of them — and the first pandemic in human history, broke out in Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire in 541 BC It was brought from Egypt across the Mediterranean, with the tribute that conquered Egypt paid the grain of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian. With the grain to Constantinople arrived and rats that spread of infected fleas around the city.

Swirl the plague spread across Europe, Asia and North Africa, killing between 30 and 50 million people — almost half the population of the civilized world.

The epidemic ended, only when infect became more certain: everyone who died, had been ill in one form or another, having received immunity.

The plague returned to Europe 800 years later. The epidemic of "black death" that broke out in 1347, the year took about 200 million lives.

It was then, in the fourteenth century, Europeans for the first time clearly understood that the cause of the infection is getting contact with the infected, and began to take gradual steps to avoid such contacts.

First, the authorities of the port of Ragusa, under the control of Venice: they began to leave the newly arrived ships at anchor first at 30, and then for forty days. All this time no one had the right to go from ship to shore. If only for a specified period no one aboard fell ill, the ship could come into the port, and the men — to go to the city.

To be a good experience: infection in the city stopped. From the Italian names numbers 40 — "Tarantino" — and went the word "quarantine", which quickly spread, along with corresponding practice across Europe.

London was not given respite after the "black death". For 300 years from 1348 to 1665 godv British capital was recorded about 40 outbreaks of plague, more than once a decade. In each of the epidemics in the British capital perished about 20% of the population.

At the beginning of the XVI century in Britain, first came the law on isolation of cases. Home patients reported a bale of hay and tied to the pole or the hitching post out front. The one who in the family was sick, had to go out with the stick painted white. Cats and dogs were killed EN masse, as it was considered that they are the carriers of the plague.

London's great plague of 1665 was the last and most severe outbreak, it claimed 100,000 lives of Londoners in 7 months. For Borba disease all public events in the city have been cancelled. Cases of force was boarded up in their homes, noting door red crosses and the words: "God, have mercy on us!" The dead were dumped on a cart and were buried in a common ditches. These violent measures, however, had put an end to plague forever.

Smallpox was a native "inhabitant" of the Old world, killing three out of ten cases and leaving the way memory ugly scars. But the number of deaths in Europe seemed a trifle compared to the New world.

When smallpox came to America with the first travellers in the fifteenth century and began to mow tens of millions of native Americans, who had no natural immunity to the disease.

Only in the late eighteenth century with the smallpox has been eliminated. Salvation became the first in the history of mankind vaccine. British physician Edward Jenner obnaruzhil that milkmaids immune to smallpox. As it turned out, almost all of them were pereboleli cow pox, are not dangerous to humans, and then become immune to the "human version" of the disease.

Jenner conducted an experiment: he taught the 9‑year-old son of his gardener, cow pox, and then subjected him to bacteria smallpox. The boy did not get sick. Then Jenner began EN masse to apply this method.

Two centuries later, in 1980, the world health organization declared that smallpox completely wiped off the face of the Earth.

In the early to mid — nineteenth century, cholera has killed in Britain, tens of thousands of people annually. Medicine of that time claimed that the disease spreads through the "miasma" contained in the bad air.

But British physician John Sonu suspected that a serious illness, to kill people for a few days after the first symptoms, not hiding in the air and in drinking water in London. He studied the records in hospitals and morgues, studying the place of outbreaks. He created a map of deaths from cholera during the 10 days and found Custer, where he died about 500 people, around the well in broad street, is popular in the city's source of drinking water.

He convinced the city government to close the column on the Ford street and the infection stopped. This achievement is not destroyed cholera instantly — but was the first step to understanding its causes and the fight against the disease hygiene and drinking water purification. Today, cholera is destroyed in developed countries, but in third world countries its outbreaks occur regularly, and are associated with drinking-water quality.