One early morning in November 1941, people in Changde, Hunan Province, were awakened by the roar of a machine. Then people go out and take a look. The streets are sprinkled with soybeans and rice. The starved and panicked people who had suffered in the War of Resistance Against Japan flocked to the streets and carefully packed the grain that fell from the sky in their pockets.
What they don't know, however, is that the city's nightmare is about to begin. In the months that followed, a terrible plague swept through the city. There is no doubt that this is a conspiracy of the Japanese Kou.
But in the history of humanity's struggle with disease, there was a larger outbreak of plague, which was also given an even more terrible name, the "Black Death."
So, how did the Black Death break out in many parts of the world? What was the struggle between humanity and the Black Death? Finally, why did the Black Death end?
Northeast plague 110 years ago
Although the Black Death is also called plague, its culprit is not rats, but a bacterium called plague bacillus. It's just that rats usually carry large numbers of fleas with Y. pestis. Therefore, it is also regarded as the "culprit" of the Black Death.
Here are a few concepts, bacteria and viruses are not the same thing at all. Most of our infectious diseases today are caused by viruses. For example, Middle East respiratory syndrome and the new crown pneumonia epidemic that has swept the world this time are both viral infectious diseases.
The first discovery of the virus did not take until the end of the nineteenth century. Diseases such as plague and cholera, which caused large-scale human deaths before this, were caused by bacteria. Neither exists as a hierarchy in terms of volume or propagation ability.
Plague has had many outbreaks in human history, the most famous of which occurred in Europe in the fourteenth century. At that time, the countries of Europe were not as clean and tidy as we see now, and the whole street was full of stench.
People's domestic water and household garbage have not undergone any harmless treatment and are randomly piled up on the street. The water supply and drainage system in the residential area is completely open air.
Subsequent outbreaks of plague and cholera in Europe were inseparable from the poor public health environment in European countries at that time.
Moreover, Europeans do not have the habit of bathing. To be precise, Europeans at that time did not have the habit of bathing. Earlier, in ancient Rome, "bathing and bathing" was regarded as a popular entertainment activity.
The whole city of Rome is dotted with large and small bathhouses and aqueducts. People talk about official duties in the bathhouse and laugh at each other. Even the Roman aristocracy of that time had to soak in the bath pool even to eat.
However, when Rome fell, Europeans attributed the fall of the Roman Empire to "their love of bathing too much." Because Rome "bathed in the wrong country", later generations of Europeans basically stopped bathing.
Normal "bathing" was seen as an unforgivable sin in Europe at the time. Since there is no hygiene, there will be fleas on the body, fleas on the body, and the "Black Death" will naturally come to the door.
In contrast, although Chinese in the same period also lived in feudal dynasties, at least our living conditions were relatively hygienic.
Moreover, although the level of Chinese medicine at that time also had certain limitations, it had formed a mature pharmaceutical and pathological foundation that could be called "medicine".
What was the level of medical development in Europe at that time? At that time, European doctors treated diseases in a simple and crude way - "bloodletting". At that time, the Western medical community believed that diseases lurked in the body and could pose a threat to the human body at any time.
So we have to get them all out by bloodletting them all out. Cold, bloodletting. Fever, bloodletting. All diseases can bleed. And, even more frighteningly, the scalpels of that year did not have ultraviolet disinfection at all.
Whether a patient undergoing treatment is at risk of secondary infection is really entirely up to God's mood. Under such a rough treatment method, many black death patients did not die under the torture of bacteria, but died under the scalpel of doctors.
Therefore, during the "Black Death pandemic" throughout the European Middle Ages, people could only pray for God's forgiveness. The Black Death pandemic took 25 million innocent lives.
Regarding the causes of this large-scale "Black Death", scholars believe that there are two main aspects. One is that in the 13th century, Genghis Khan and his descendants launched three large-scale western wars.
Especially during the Second Battus Expedition, someone in the Mongol army was infected with plague. Due to the lack of medical treatment in the Mongol army at that time. Batu took a look at it, and it couldn't be cured anyway. It would be better to take the corpses of these soldiers as weapons.
Thus, in the war against the European countries, a large number of corpses with plague bacteria were thrown into the city by the Mongols with trebuchets. The local residents have no idea what these blackened and decomposed corpses mean to them.
Soon after, the cities of these countries appeared one after another "empty cities" destroyed by the virus. The Mongols occupied large areas of territory effortlessly.
In addition to the Mongol invasion brought a large amount of plague bacillus transmission. The death of the Europeans themselves is also an important reason for the plague to "kill all sides" in Europe.
Since the whole of Europe was under the rule of the Roman Church at that time, the per capita cultural level of ordinary people was almost "prenatal education", and everyone in European society believed in the lies of the Church. The Holy See said to them: There are many witches in our lives.
These witches are able to get in touch with the devil in a very special way. In addition, in addition to these witches, cats are also "messengers of the devil". Their eyes glow at night. That's because they can see the devil.
This sudden fall of the Holy See caused panic among the entire European population. Every household began to report witches and hunt cats. Suddenly, a large number of innocent women were accused of being witches and burned alive.
After the european cats were exterminated by humans, the ecological balance of European cities was destroyed. Rats breed in large numbers in European cities, and these wandering rats provide excellent conditions for the spread of the "Black Death".
When the "Black Death" spread in Europe, people thought it was a curse from God. Many voluntarily accepted the scourge of the Roman Court to atone for their original sins. They hope to avoid contracting the "Black Death". But this approach is doomed to be useless.
During the Great Plague of the Middle Ages throughout Europe, one-third of the people in Europe died of the "Black Death.". The rest of the people ran away, there were no living people in the city, and the "Black Death" naturally stopped spreading. However, this still does not solve the most fundamental problem - "sanitary conditions and hygiene habits".
Later, someone secretly took a bath. People were surprised to find that they were not sick. Thus, under the impetus of the Roman Church, a "bathing mania" was set off throughout Europe.
At that time, when europeans were at their most, they had to take four or five baths a day. Even later, a special bathhouse business model of "private room bathhouse" appeared. So, because Europeans were all about hygiene, the "Black Death" basically disappeared in the region.
However, Europeans who are obsessed with bathing have not escaped the punishment of "syphilis". Of course, all of this is an afterthought. Although the Black Death ceased to exist in Europe, it remained active elsewhere in the world.
In 1910, a year before the fall of the Qing Dynasty, the plague made another comeback in northeast China. Because at this time, the northeast was already connected to the "Middle East Railway".
Many people infected with the plague traveled south along railways and trains. This caused the epidemic to spread from Manchuria to all of northeast China.
At this time, the Qing government showed rare decisiveness and high efficiency. They quickly closed the entry channel to the northeast. Returned Malaysian overseas Chinese Ng Lien Tak was sent as the Chief Medical Officer Plenipotentiary to the Northeast region to deal with the plague epidemic.
Soon, Wu Liande isolated all the sick patients, blocking the transmission route of the virus. The local plague was controlled to some extent.
Later, Wu Liande and several assistants secretly dissected the remains of the sick and dead. First-hand experimental samples were obtained. The pathogen of this northeast epidemic was finally confirmed to be "Y. pestis". He established the "Plague Institute" in Harbin and personally served as its director.
Woollend
Four months later, the plague that shocked China and the country was completely eradicated. The speed was so fast that the European and American countries that were very developed in medicine at that time felt incredible.
In the decades that followed, the Nationalist government's governance of Chinese society nearly failed. A large amount of state money and civilian property have been embezzled by officials, and the government has invested very little in health and infrastructure work.
As a result, there are sporadic plague outbreaks in many villages and small counties in China. The Nationalist government, on the other hand, was tired of civil war, had no time at all, and did not want to care about the lives of the people in these places.
After the founding of New China, China launched a large-scale "patriotic health" campaign. Teach everyone to bathe frequently, pay attention to hygiene, and water must be boiled before drinking.
In addition, Chairman Mao made instructions, set up a large number of township health centers throughout the country, and trained a batch of "rural barefoot doctors" as an important supporting force for grass-roots health work. Today, the plague is almost extinct in China.
For thousands of years, the struggle between mankind and disease has never stopped. Countless people lost their lives for this great struggle. There is no doubt that our struggle is not over even today.
We often say that the history of mankind is an ode to courage and heroism. In any case, however, health work at the grassroots level depends on thousands of ordinary people.
Only when everyone develops good hygiene habits, truly pay attention to hygiene, cooperate with treatment, and develop healthy living habits is the best consolation for those who have sacrificed for the progress of human medicine.
Resources:
The Black Death and Medieval Europe
The Impact of the Black Death on Europe, Silk Road
The Mystery of the Black Death Disaster in the World of Prose Poetry
The Black Death: The Fall of Medieval Europe, China Economic Review
"Wu Liande and the "Northeast Plague"" Cheng Congjie