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UPFRONT
The invisible fight Epidemics have clung on to the underbelly of human existence for as long as time cares to remember. They’ve steered the course of history, brought populations together and torn them apart – but which ones have had the biggest effect on us?
T
he US has been witness to its fair share of medical epidemics throughout the decades – from polio to typhoid, smallpox to typhus. Irrespective of age, social stature or ethnicity, one thing has always reigned true when it comes to epidemics both past and future: their ability to sweep indiscriminately through entire populations of people has never faltered – and most probably never will. Yet rather ironically, since the days of modern medicine, trying to keep one step ahead of the game when it comes to epidemic predictions and vaccinations has, on occasion, actually had detrimental effects. So, in an effort to highlight under-estimated epidemics of years gone by, EHM has put forward its front-runners.
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Polio epidemic: 1940-1953 With its presence being announced as far back as 1916 in Brooklyn, New York, it wasn’t until the 1940s that the polio epidemic really sunk its teeth into the American population. Although around 90 percent of polio infections caused no symptoms at all, if the virus entered the blood stream then it meant severe and crippling disabilities for the carrier, which unfortunately ended up as the usual precursor to the expiration of life. Spanning just longer than a decade at its peak, the worst polio epidemic in US history came in 1952, where almost 58,000 cases were reported. Out of those figures, 3145 died and a further 21,269 were left with varying degrees of paralysis. The virus also managed to singlehandedly introduce the world to the macabre yet life-saving iron lung that filled the wards of US hospital wards in the mid-50s and breathed for thousands of patients, hundreds of times a day.
10/11/2010 16:35