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November 2004: BEASTIES
This Fall one of the major news items is the shortage of flu vaccine. At my age and medical condition I am one of those that is considered “at risk”, but if there is no vaccine what can you do?
In the past there have been many epidemics of one kind or another, especially between the 14th and 18th centuries. Bubonic plague, the so-called “Black Death” is discussed at length in world history, reason being : it killed a high percentage of the population of Europe resulting in significant economic and political consequences. Typhus, tuberculosis, malaria, cholera, and diphtheria would all have there turn at decimating the population.
In the 18th century a giant step was made in alleviating the terrible floods of disease. An English country doctor named Edward Jenner paid attention to an “old wives tale” in his native Goucester. The “tale” was that milk maids were renowned for their beauty, and the reason was that they didn’t catch smallpox with its massive scarring because they had been afflicted with the rather mild cow pox. He set up an experiment and in 1798 published a paper declaring that inoculating humans with fluids for the sores of cow pox would prevent them from contracting small pox. Vacca is Latin for cow; the cow pox was called vaccinia, and the inoculation became vaccination. Unfortunately, it was years before the medical establishment of the time accepted the findings of a simple country doctor. Jenner died in 1823 and it was not until after his death that vaccination against small pox was accepted.
Of course small pox is caused by a microscopic organism. Microscopic organisms had been discovered long before Jenner’s time. Anton Van Leeuwenhoek, a Dutchman, became fascinated with the magnifying glasses he used in his job in a store for counting threads in cloth. He taught himself to grind and polish lenses that magnified up to 270 times. He was the first person to see bacteria, yeast plants, and the astonishing life to be found in a drop of pond water. He called the tiny creatures “little beasties”. Later, Robert Hook, an English physicist, improved on Van Leeluwenhoek’s gadget. It was a long time before any connection was made between the “little beasties” and infectious diseases. Even after some scientists accepted the “little beasties” as the cause of diseases, many refused to accept it. Partly because not every disease is caused by microorganisms. An example is scurvy, which is caused by nutritional deficits. Also, no one understood the operations of the body’s immune system, as well as such things as the connection between stagnant water and the mosquitoes that carried yellow fever and malaria.
At the time of the American Civil War, doctors did not accept the theory that tiny organisms caused disease and infection and that there was a connection between cleanliness and infection. The women that did the nursing understood much better than the medics. Florence Nightingale in Europe, and Clara Barton in America made strides in the prevention of infection through cleanliness. The big shot doctors were disdainful of advice from stupid nurses, who were after all, nothing but women.
A man named Dr Ignaz Semmilweiss worked in an obstetric ward in Vienna in 1857. He noticed that on wards where medical students received instruction the death rate from child bed fever (really an infection) was about 20% while in the wards where midwives received training the rate was less than 3%. Semmilweiss observed that medical students came directly from the autopsy room. The midwives did not go to the autopsy room. That was the beginning of the modern techniques of antiseptic surroundings to cut down on the “little beasties”. Unfortunately for America, word did not get around in time to help the wounded of the Civil War. More men died of disease than from gunfire and infection was rampant in the hospitals. Eventually, the “little beasties” were identified as the bad guys.
The biggest epidemic in the modern era was the influenza epidemic of 1918. Sometimes called Spanish Flu swept the world. Not only was the Spanish Flu virulent, it displayed an unusual preference in victims, tending to select young healthy adults rather than the very young and very old. Before 1918 it was believed we knew enough about epidemics to fight them successfully. We were wrong. In America, deaths from influenza were estimated at 675,000, about 200,000 in the month of October alone.
I have a personal link to the 1918 flu epidemic. My father had taken a moonlight job digging graves in Granville, Illinois. His moonlight job turned into a full time one for awhile, as graves couldn’t be dug fast enough to keep up with the deaths.
Could anything like this happen today? The medical establishment hopes not but they aren’t sure. Those “little beasties” multiply so fast they have great opportunity for genetic mutation, which can render our present treatments useless. So, lets hope the flu vaccine gets to us and in the meantime, do what you can to avoid those “little beasties”.