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The American Plague: The Epidemic The Shaped Our History

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One of the biggest summer nuisance would be the mosquito, but more specifically the Ades aegypti mosquito. The Aedes aegypti is the vector for yellow fever and the cause of the numerous deaths. In her book The American Plague: The Untold Story of Yellow Fever, The Epidemic the Shaped Our History, Molly Caldwell Crosby presents the idea that the mosquito is not just the only reason an epidemic occurred in the 18th century. This story accounts for the disease that broke out across the world and nearly destroyed almost all of North America’s population, which some believe could have been avoided by simple quarantine analysis and sanitary methods. One of the first important issues that Crosby discusses in her the book is the transmission and spread of yellow fever throughout the country. The epidemic started advancing quickly as countries relied and profited from selling and trading goods from West Africa. A big part of that theory is that Africa had the perfect climate for mosquitos to breed. Yellow fever requires warm weather to multiply and succeeds in hot, wet summers when mosquitoes can breed easily. Steamboats used to transport slaves …show more content…

The routes the ships took into North America were heavily infected with the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which was risking the safety of everyone onboard, especially the port workers and residents around the docks. Molly Crosby references the ships which came from Cuba stating that they were heavily infected with Aedes aegypti eggs. Passengers bitten by the mosquitos would shortly become ill and their immune systems would quickly become compromised and they would die. Since steamboats were the only means of transportation to and over seas, it was the predominant cause of yellow fever spreading worldwide because everyone lived so close together, making it very difficult to be

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Where she was accepted to become infected in order to help find a cure for Yellow Fever. There were seven people that were accepted. However, she and all the others were required to stay at the hospital where they could keep an eye on all of them. All seven volunteers were bitten by the infected mosquito, In hope to create an immunity to Yellow Fever.

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The Antebellum South had a seldom amount of doctors. Unfortunate for both slaves and their owners of this area, they lived in the marshland region, a place where mosquitoes carrying deadly diseases typically lived. Mosquitoes often spread these diseases, killing many slaves (Sullivan 1). The doctors had scarce knowledge about the deadly disease of the south and could do little to prevent the cause or spread of these illnesses. One of the suspected diseases or illnesses that the physicians claimed to harm the slaves was malnourishment.

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During these epidemics accounts by Europeans, and natives were taken documenting the terrible conditions people faced. “The people were overcome by intense cold and fever, The disease was rampant everywhere, It was uncountable the number of people who died this year (DOC 7)” This document shows how terrible diseases were for the native populations, because the natives had not evolved and lived in the same environment as the Europeans they could not tolerate certain illnesses that the Europeans could. In Document 8 you can see an illustration of a man in méxico suffering from a disease in which you are covered in bumps and slowly die. Another reason why disease ran so wildly at the time were because of how Europeans lived.

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When the Europeans stormed into the New World. They brought diseases with them that the Natives were foreign to. They were rarely sick however when the Europeans came diseases rapidly spread. Diseases such as smallpox, influenza, typhus, measles, malaria, diphtheria, and whooping cough. A very common disease that the Africans and Natives got at the time was smallpox.

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The Columbian Exchange: Positive or Negative? Christopher Columbus is credited with ‘discovering’ the Americas. After he ‘discovered’ them, the Old World and the New World began trading plants, animals, and diseases; otherwise known as the Columbian Exchange. The plants and animals were greatly beneficial, but the diseases were quite the opposite, killing many of the Native Americans.

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The reactions from the Christians and the Muslims to the greatly feared disease, known as the Black Death or the Great Plague were different in several ways. The first Plague was documented from 541 to 544 CE. Known as the Plague of Justinian. The Plague came in three different ways: bubonic, pneumonic, and septicemic. With bubonic being the most common.

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Summary: The book The Plague by Albert Campus is about the city of Oran a coastal town in North Africa who is hit with a plague (epidemic) at the start people start to relies and miss what they usually take for granted for example their loved ones like Rambert who is a journalist from Paris. The first sign of the plague or foreshadowing would the rat that Dr. Bernard Rieux found in the front of his hospital where he was just leaving the rat had blood coming out of the mouth he thought it was youngsters that did it as a prank so he easily dismissed it but over the course of time the increase of dead rats appearing around the city began to startle the citizen of Oran. The very first victim to fall to the plague would be M. Michel who showed

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As the Black Plague swept England, thousands of families were directly impacted by the disease. Devin and his family struggle through the consequences of the plague, in hopes that their family will remain intact and secure.   "Don't look at them, Devin. Don't make eye contact, keep your hands in your pockets. Alysa, hold my hand tight."

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days were examined because with each day the number of deaths was higher the previous day. Approximately 60% of the fatalities were women and with the exception of the elderly, the number of fatalities rises with the age of the infected (see figure 2) . It is suggested that women may have made up a greater percentage because they were usually at home and more prone to the risk of infection. There were other common diseases roaming, but the plague was one of the few diseases that could land devastating hits on communities and turn them into ghost towns within a matter of weeks. It might have been a particular point in time where there was a high number of plague deaths but not as much as the 1575 epidemic

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