It's not the first time in history that the world has stopped due to a pandemic and unfortunately it will not be the last.
The wave of Covid-19 suddenly catapulted us into scenarios that we would never have thought we should live and that we thought were far from our daily lives.
And even if today we have a health system more ready than in the past to face viruses and infections, even very serious, there are conditions that don't change: when new viral strains develop to which none of us are immune, the infections spread in uncontrollably and we start counting the victims.

Imagine what happened in the past centuries when these emergency conditions occurred ... in fact there are epidemics that have marked epochs or that have even changed the fate of some peoples.
This is why I tried to find out about the most important pandemics that humanity has experienced throughout its history. What begins today is an excursus of 5 articles, in which I will tell you about the main epidemics that have occurred in the history of humanity.

1 - PLAGUE OF ATHENS

_{Plague in an Ancient City - Michiel Sweerts Image Public Domain}

In 430 BC , during the Peloponnese war, in Athens there was a violent epidemic that lasted for 4 years.

During this time, it decimated the troops and the population of the city, killing a quarter of both. Some historians of the time even speak of more than half of the Athenian population, others of a total of 100,000 deaths, but significantly reliable information about it is not available. The disease then spread rapidly to much of the Eastern Mediterranean.

For a long time, there has been talk of an epidemic of bubonic plague, as the infected people had gangrene of the extremities of the upper and lower limbs.
Furthermore, the deadly virulence made the infection even more extensive, but the speed with which the virus killed its hosts was also the cause of its relatively fast extinction.

Many sick people died because doctors refused to treat them, fearing that they themselves would be infected. The corpses were thus piled up in mass graves and set on fire.
Furthermore, the epidemic also accelerated the end of the war, as the Spartans refused to enter Athens and withdrew their troops, frightened by the very likely possibility of contagion.

The origins of the disease are not clear, although the historian Thucydides spoke of a strain from Ethiopia and arrived in Athens through the Port of Piraeus, a place frequently frequented by sailors from Africa and the Middle East.
Another of the triggers, as well as a significant aggravating one, could be the state of war, or at least some related aspects. Pericles, in the general era of the City-State of Athens, had founded his war strategy on the supremacy of the Athenian fleet. As a result, he called the entire population to retreat within the city walls, creating states of overcrowding, as many people from the surrounding countryside also returned within the walls. This situation, combined with poor hygiene, indisputably favored the spread of the epidemic.

In 2005, the dental pulp was analyzed and DNA was extracted from three teeth found ten years earlier at the Kerameikos cemetery in Athens.
Well, the researchers highlighted pathogenic bacteria of typhoid fever. As early as 1999 the University of Maryland in the United States had conducted specific research and Dr. David Durack had stated that "epidemic typhoid fever would be the most plausible cause of the Athens Plague".
In fact, many typhoid symptoms correspond to those described with great precision by Thucydides and the characteristics of the fingers and toes are also among them.

The other similar symptoms are those listed below:

• Fever
• Redness and inflammation in the eyes
• Sore Throats leading to bleeding and bad breath
• Sneezing
• Loss of voice
• Coughing
• Vomiting
• Pustules and ulcers on the body
• Extreme thirst
• Insomnia
• Diarrhea

In any case, we will never know for sure what the nature of this epidemic is, as it could have been caused by a definitively mutated pathogen.

There were also consequences from a social and religious side.
After the disappearance of Pericles, according to some sources, died together with his family proper because of the epidemic, a state of decadence of customs was established and there was a rampant increase in crimes.
People were no longer afraid of the law, had no regard for others, as they didn't consider their reputation more important; simply, people feared that they could not live long enough and indulged in unbridled actions, indiscriminate expenses of money and acts of violation of the law.

The fear of the gods also ceased to exist, as religious buildings were full of dead and sick people and the habit of worship was lost. Furthermore, the people became increasingly convinced that the gods, especially Apollo, favored Sparta and that they were the cause of the misfortune and death that had struck their city.

Thanks for reading and see you at the next episode

GM

Sources

<sub>- Manolis J. Papagrigorakis, Christos Yapijakis, Philippos N. Synodinos e Effie Baziotopoulou-Valavani, DNA examination of ancient dental pulp incriminates typhoid fever as a probable cause of the Plague of Athens, in International Journal of Infectious Diseases, vol. 10, nº 3, 2006, pp. 206–214, DOI:10.1016/j.ijid.2005.09.001, PMID 16412683
- Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 2.48.1
- "Plague of Athens: Another Medical Mystery Solved at University of Maryland". University of Maryland Medical Center. Archived from the original on 2015-12-04. Retrieved 2016-02-10
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_of_Athens</sub>