Between 1918 and 1919, the great influenza epidemic around the world. According to the earliest official statistics, the flu caused about 21 million deaths. But then, with in-depth research after in-depth research, the number of deaths continued to climb, rising to 50 million. This is a very serious catastrophe in human history, and it is this catastrophe that has led to the great development of human medicine, especially in the field of public medicine.
First, let's clarify the first question. Many people put 1
The flu pandemic of 918 was called the "Spanish flu." The reason was not because the flu broke out from Spain, but because Spain was a neutral country in World War I. But why is it called Spanish flu? Because at that time, the United States, Britain, Germany, these belligerents were all in a state of war in World War I. So all their media have strict media control, and there is almost no discussion about influenza in the newspapers, and Spain is a neutral country, so in May 1918, when the flu broke out in Spain, the Spanish media was full of a lot of discussion about the flu, so everyone named the flu "Spanish flu".
In the history of human medicine, in the early days, the place of origin of the disease was used as the name of the disease. But then it slowly became clear that by looking at where a disease broke out, it was difficult to really determine that the virus originated from this place. Because the origin of all viruses is a very complex matter, it is not possible to simply name a disease after a region.
Because medical experts believe that all these epidemics are the common enemy of all mankind, it is impossible to name a major disease after a region. So today we don't call it the "Spanish flu," we call it the 1918 pandemic.
How serious this flu is, let's start with an overview. The author said that no one can know the true number of deaths, but if the estimate is correct, then the influenza virus caused the death of 8%~10% of young people at that time. Note that it is not 8%~10% of the disease, but 8%~10% of the death of young people in the entire population. Why? Because in that flu, young people bore the brunt of the victim. It reflects symptoms that are much more intense in young people than in middle-aged and elderly people, saying that "they die quickly and tragically, and although the flu pandemic lasted more than two years, about two-thirds of people died within 24 weeks." Most of these dead died in a much shorter period of time, between mid-September and early December 1918. The pandemic killed more people in a year than the medieval Black Death killed in a century. ”
After reading such a thick book, my biggest impression is that there are a lot of lessons worth learning from here. A major influenza is an important challenge and baptism for mankind, and we hope that after our global epidemic, mankind can make further progress.
First of all, we look at the status of this flu from the perspective of the history of medical development. Do you know what American medicine was in in 1918, or in the late 19th century? This really surprised me, that is, I only need to pay tuition fees to be able to go to school. And one of the things that most disqualifies this medical school is that all the professors in the medical school earn entirely from the tuition fees of their students. That is to say, no matter how many students you recruit, the tuition paid by the students will pay the professor.
It's not what we think. Since Hippocrates, there has been the Hippocratic Proclamation of Doctors. But for about 1,000 years since Hippocrates, once you have a problem with this body, well, bleed. How much to put it? Put a pot. Washington died because of bloodletting. Then the doctor often said that the disease had been cured, but he was dead. Doctors believe that for patients to fight disease, you have to show courage.
Including the English king after he fell ill in his later years, it was the English king Charles II of Newton's time, who also branded him with a soldering iron and then bleed him.
So before 1900, medicine had no place in the United States. One of the most interesting things here is that the president of the famous Harvard University, Eliot, went to see how their medical students taught classes, and after reading it, he was terrified. Eliot said: If such a person goes to society to treat others in the future, I will never dare to let them treat them.
So Elliot made a rather overly demanding that our Harvard Medical School students come to an exam when they graduate, and then let them graduate, okay? This was opposed by a large number of professors who said, how can you get him to take the exam? The exam will definitely not pass. If he can't pass the exam, he won't come to our medical school, then we will be unemployed, and we will have no income. In medical schools in the United States, there are no microscopes, no anatomy classes, and no even contact with patients. This was the medical situation in the United States at the time, and you thought that if this was the case for the 1918 flu pandemic, the number of deaths would have been much higher.
But in the 50s of the 19th century, the French and Germans made great progress in medicine. There are two epoch-making figures here, the French one is called Pasteur, and the German one is called Koch. The two of them found that most of the patients' illnesses came from germs. They isolated germs from the patient's tissue, thus ushering humanity into an era of cytopathology.
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