On October 20, 2013, in Leipzig, Germany, more than 6,000 actors and people played as soldiers to recreate the scene of the Battle of Leipzig, celebrating the 200th anniversary of the battle, which led to Napoleon's exile to the Mediterranean island of Elba
Rats, Lice and History
Chongqing Publishing Group
Rats, Lice and History: A New History of Human Destiny is a "biography" of infectious diseases by Hans Zinsel, a biologist who has been working on typhus for many years. Hans Zinsel found that the "first killer" in the process of human civilization is not a historical raider and killing, but an infectious disease that is often ignored by historical researchers. The author reconstructs human history from the perspective of microorganisms, bacteria, viruses, and intermediate hosts, showing the reader a human war without swords, guns, and armies.
Infectious diseases are the "black hand behind the scenes" that affect the war
In 455 AD, a strange disease broke out in the provinces of the Roman Empire, with inflamed eyes, redness and swelling of the whole body, and on the third or fourth day, lung symptoms appeared, and the disease caused countless deaths. The disease caused great panic among the people of the time, and a direct result was that the combat capability of the army plummeted. After several years of contagion, the epidemic eased, but it broke out again in 467, and a large number of people died from the disease. The resurgence of infectious diseases completely destroyed the defenses of the Roman Empire.
Looking at Napoleon's Battle of Leipzig in the same way, there will be different discoveries. In the past, most of the perspectives on the defeat of Leipzig tended to focus on the military, for example, the number of the anti-French army far exceeded that of the French army, Napoleon's lack of cavalry, and the fact that some troops were on the verge of defecting, etc., ignoring the great plague in Napoleon's army. According to the information provided by the author Hans Zinsel, it is very likely that Napoleon's army was infected by villagers suffering from typhus during the march, and the germ spread rapidly in the army, and when the French army withdrew from Moscow, there were fewer than 80,000 soldiers who could fight. Later, Napoleon gathered an army of half a million men, but because the majority of the troops were child soldiers, the resistance to the epidemic was even weaker, so that it quickly collapsed.
Napoleon's military genius was unquestionable, but this "god of war", which had made the whole of Europe tremble, was completely defeated by typhus, and the disease weakened his cavalry and sharply reduced the number of his troops, so that in the war with the anti-French alliance, the French army was not strong enough, the combat plan was not implemented.
"The rolling wheels of civilization have been regressed by the malaria parasites that cause malaria; heavily armed armies, after cholera or dysentery caused by Vibrio cholerae, or infected with Typhoid bacillus, have become a ragtag bunch." Those invisible and untouchable germs, attached to the bodies of rats and lice, have approached human life, thus affecting the fate of nations and countries, and influencing the rise and fall of civilization.
The concept of "virus" opened the door to modern medicine
The earliest written record of the effects of infectious diseases on human beings comes from the ancient Babylonian "Gilgamesh Epic", when people called infectious diseases "heavenly condemnation". Because of the unknown of the pathology of infectious diseases, for a long time, human beings were almost helpless against infectious diseases. Once the plague breaks out, it will pass on uncontrollably from person to person. The Outbreak of the Black Death in Europe in the Middle Ages took almost two-thirds of Europe's population.
Although human beings are full of fear of infectious diseases, they have not given up their resistance to infectious diseases; throughout the history of human anti-epidemic, it is almost a history of scientific and technological progress.
Before the rise of modern medicine, there was no concept of "virus" in the human world, and it was impossible to find the real culprit. But even so, humans have worked hard to come up with ways to mitigate infectious disease outbreaks. For example, in the case of the Black Death, Europeans found that improving hygiene and staying away from rat fleas and wild rodents could achieve certain results. In the Book of Han and the Book of The Ping Emperor, there is also a record of "the people who are sick and sick, and the empty residence is to buy medicine", that is, to establish isolation places for the infected people, and then concentrate on providing medicines. From the perspective of modern medicine, these methods actually control the spread of infectious diseases from the transmission route.
With the advancement of medicine, human beings are no longer helpless in dealing with infectious diseases. In the 16th century, anatomy was developed, physiology was progressing in the 17th century, pathological anatomy was founded in the 18th century, and cytology, bacteriology and other disciplines were established in the 19th century, and in the 20th century, a series of antibiotics were invented, turning "heavenly punishment" into a treatable disease. The epoch-making results came in 1977, when the smallpox virus was wiped out of the global disease spectrum, the first deadly disease eradicated by humanity on its own. At the same time as scientific progress, government functions are also improving, health and epidemic prevention work is generally carried out around the world, and a variety of factors have combined to make infectious diseases change from unscrupulous to preventable and controllable.
Rats, Lice, and History is a book about infectious diseases, in which the author describes in detail the horrors of infectious diseases, and as the author says, the inventions that humans are proud of are probably less than a few disease-spreading body lice, fleas, and mosquitoes. But read through the book, you will still see the light of hope: because in the face of infectious diseases, human beings are not sitting still. Although the historical process has been interrupted by infectious diseases countless times, human beings can always open up new directions in the struggle and constantly move towards scientific rationality, which is the unique resilience of human civilization.
Humans thought they had said goodbye to the jungle system, but were pulled back into the food chain by a small virus
At the end of the book, the author writes: "Typhus has not disappeared, it will continue to exist for centuries. As long as human stupidity and brutality give it a chance, it will take advantage of the void and regroup. "In 2020, after experiencing a sudden epidemic, there is indeed reason to believe that the author is not alarmist. In fact, not only typhus, bacteria, viruses, infected fleas, lice, ticks, mosquitoes have been lurking in the shadows, as long as humans are a little careless and let down their vigilance, they will attack.
Fortunately, after thousands of years of fighting against infectious diseases, human beings have finally gained some valuable experience, and the next thing to do is to apply these experiences to the prevention and control of various infectious diseases more widely, and to minimize the negative impact of infectious diseases on human society. Mainstream biologists, virologists, and medical researchers, including the authors of this book, almost unanimously agree that the prevention and control of infectious diseases requires global cooperation, countries sharing epidemic information with each other, exchanging views and diagnosis and treatment methods, and establishing a global monitoring and early warning system, so that humanity can hope to avoid the threat of deadly viruses.
Infectious diseases were never a national or regional disaster; the Mongols spread through Eurasia to the Spread of the Black Death, bringing suffering to Europe; a smallpox-infected slave came to Mexico with the Spanish conquest, and the Aztec Empire collapsed; through marches and wars, typhus spread from Turkey to Spain, Poland, Austria, and then throughout Central Europe. As long as human beings are still moving and the world is still communicating, infectious diseases can spread throughout the world through any person, from point to surface.
History has proved time and again that once an infectious disease breaks out, it will inevitably bring about greater or smaller disasters, so the key to controlling infectious diseases is "prevention" more critical than "cure". But after all, the information and data of each country are limited, and the virus of infectious diseases may lurk in any corner that human beings have not monitored, and there is a possibility of mutation at any time. Either in the grasslands of Africa, or in the forests of the Amazon, or perhaps even in large cities inhabited by humans. "No matter how safe and orderly life in modern civilization may seem," viruses "parasitize insects that fly or crawl, in our food and water."
William McNeil, the historian who wrote Plague and Man, once said pessimistically: "We will never escape the limitations of the ecosystem, whether we are happy or not, we are in the food chain, and we are eaten." "We drove away the beasts with stones and bows and arrows, we started civilizations with slash-and-burn farming, we thought humans had long since bid farewell to the jungle system, but they were pulled back into the food chain by a small virus." Then you might as well take the courage to fight the beasts and the creation of civilization to fight the epidemic. It is difficult for one person to repel wild beasts, one person cannot reclaim the wasteland, and human civilizations are created on the basis of unity and cooperation. Now, in the face of infectious diseases, what is needed is a more comprehensive cooperation of all mankind, breaking the isolation and isolation, and fighting for mankind.
Yangtze River Daily reporter Li Erjing