Pandemic

Used to describe any disease that effects people over an extensive geographical area. There have been a number of significant pandemics in human history, all of them generally zoonoses that came about with domestication - smallpox, diphtheria, influenza, tuberculosis etc. There have been a number of particularly significant epidemics that deserve mention above the 'mere' destruction of cities:

Peloponnesian War, 430 BC - An unknown agent killed a quarter of the Athenian troops and a quarter of the population over four years. Ended the dominence of Athens. But the sheer virulence of the disease prevented it's wider spread.

Antonine Plague, 165-180 and 211-266 - Smallpox brought back from the Near East killed a quarter of those infected and five million in all. During the second outbreak 5,000 people a day were dying in Rome.

Plague of Justinian, started 540 - The first recorded outbreak of the bubonic plague. It started in Egypt, reached Constantinople two years later, killing 10,000 a day and 40 per cent of the people overall, and went on to destroy up to a quarter of the population of the eastern Mediterranean.

The Black Death, started 1300 - Nine hundred years after the last outbreak the bubonic plague returned to Europe. Started in Asia the disease reached Europe in the 1340s (possibly from Italian merchants fleeing fighting in the Crimea) and killed twenty million Europeans in six years, a quarter of the toal population and a much higher proportion in urban areas.

Cholera, first pandemic 1816-1826 - Previously isolated to the Indian subcontinet the pandemic began in Bengla then spread across India by 1820. It extended as far as China nad the Caspian Sea before receding. The second pandemic (1829-1851) reached Europe, London in 1832, New York in the same year, the Pacific coast by 1834. The third pandemic (1852-1860) mainly effect Russia, with over a million deaths. The fourth pandemic (1863-1875) spread mostly in Europe and Africa. The sixth pandemic (1899-1923) had little effect in Europe because of advances in public-health but Russia was badly affected again. The seventh pandemic began in 1961, called El Tor after the strain, in Indonesian and and reached Bangladesh in 1963, India in 1964, and the USSR 1966.

Influenza, 1918-1919 - Beginning in August 1918 in three disparate locations - Brest, Boston and Freetown the disease spread across the world killing twenty-five million in all, 500,000 in the USA and 200,000 in England. It vanished within six months and the actual strain was never determined.

The epidemic disease of wartime was typhus, because of this it was called Camp Fever. Emerging during the Crusades it had it's first impact in Europe in 1489 in Spain. During fighting between the Spanish and the Muslims in Granada the Spanish lost 3,000 to war casualties and 20,000 to typhus. In 1528 the French lost 18,000 troops in Italy, and lost supremecy in Italy to the Spanish. In 1542 30,000 died of typhus while fighting the Ottomans in the Balkans. The disease also played a major role in the destruction of Napolean's grande armee in Russia in 1811.

Also there were the encounters between European explorers and populations in the rest of the world often introduced local epidemics of extraordinary virulence - The entire native (Guanches) population of the Canary Islands in the C16; Half the native population of Hispaniola in 1518 through smallpox; Smallpox also ravaged Mexico in the 1520s (killing 150,000 including the emperor in Tenochtitlan alone) and Peru in the 1530s, adding the European conquerers; Measles killed a further two million Mexican natives in the 1600s; As late as 1848 40,000 out of 150,000 due to measles in Hawaii.

There are also a number of unknown diseases that were extremely serious but have now vanished and the aetiology of the disease cannot be established. Examples include the previously mentioned 'plague' in 430BC Greece and the 'English Sweat' in C16 England which struck people down in an instant and was more greatly feared than the bubonic plague

Diseases that may attain pandemic proportions include Labrea black fever, Lassa fever, Rift Valley fever, Marburg, Ebola and Bolivian haemorrhagic fever. But currently the recent emergence of these diseases into the human population means their virulence is such that they tend to 'burn out' in geographically confined areas. AIDS can be considered a pandemic but currently the most serious effects are confined to southern Africa and the disease is slow to spread.