Cholera is an infection of the small intestine by some strains of the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. Symptoms may range from none, to mild, to severe. The classic symptom is large amounts of watery diarrhea that lasts a few days. Vomiting and muscle cramps may also occur. Diarrhea can be so severe that it leads within hours to severe dehydration and electrolyte imbalance. This may result in sunken eyes, cold skin, decreased skin elasticity, and wrinkling of the hands and feet. Dehydration can cause the skin to turn bluish. Symptoms start two hours to five days after exposure.
Arsenic poisoning is a medical condition that occurs due to elevated levels of arsenic in the body. If arsenic poisoning occurs over a brief period of time, symptoms may include vomiting, abdominal pain, encephalopathy, and watery diarrhea that contains blood. Long-term exposure can result in thickening of the skin, darker skin, abdominal pain, diarrhea, heart disease, numbness, and cancer.
The miasma theory is an abandoned medical theory that held that diseases—such as cholera, chlamydia, or the Black Death—were caused by a miasma, a noxious form of "bad air", also known as night air. The theory held that epidemics were caused by miasma, emanating from rotting organic matter. Though miasma theory is typically associated with the spread of contagious diseases, some academics in the early nineteenth century suggested that the theory extended to other conditions as well, e.g. one could become obese by inhaling the odor of food.
William Farr CB was a British epidemiologist, regarded as one of the founders of medical statistics.
Ergotism is the effect of long-term ergot poisoning, traditionally due to the ingestion of the alkaloids produced by the Claviceps purpurea fungus—from the Latin clava "club" or clavus "nail" and -ceps for "head", i.e. the purple club-headed fungus—that infects rye and other cereals, and more recently by the action of a number of ergoline-based drugs. It is also known as ergotoxicosis, ergot poisoning, and Saint Anthony's fire.
Pellagra is a disease caused by a lack of the vitamin niacin (vitamin B3). Symptoms include inflamed skin, diarrhea, dementia, and sores in the mouth. Areas of the skin exposed to either sunlight or friction are typically affected first. Over time affected skin may become darker, stiffen, peel, or bleed.
Sweating sickness, also known as the sweats, English sweating sickness, English sweat or sudor anglicus in Latin, was a mysterious and contagious disease that struck England and later continental Europe in a series of epidemics beginning in 1485. The last outbreak occurred in 1551, after which the disease apparently vanished. The onset of symptoms was sudden, with death often occurring within hours. Sweating sickness epidemics were unique compared with other disease outbreaks of the time: whereas other epidemics were typically urban and long-lasting, cases of sweating sickness spiked and receded very quickly, and heavily affected rural populations. Its cause remains unknown, although it has been suggested that an unknown species of hantavirus was responsible.
The Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) is a weekly epidemiological digest for the United States published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It was originally established as Weekly Health Index in 1930, changing its title to Weekly Mortality Index in 1941 and Morbidity and Mortality in 1952. It acquired its current name in 1976. It is the main vehicle for publishing public health information and recommendations that have been received by the CDC from state health departments. Material published in the report is in the public domain and may be reprinted without permission. As of 2019, the journal's editor-in-chief is Charlotte Kent.
The Great Stink was an event in Central London during July and August 1858 in which the hot weather exacerbated the smell of untreated human waste and industrial effluent that was present on the banks of the River Thames. The problem had been mounting for some years, with an ageing and inadequate sewer system that emptied directly into the Thames. The miasma from the effluent was thought to transmit contagious diseases, and three outbreaks of cholera before the Great Stink were blamed on the ongoing problems with the river.
The Broad Street cholera outbreak was a severe outbreak of cholera that occurred in 1854 near Broad Street in Soho, London, England, and occurred during the 1846–1860 cholera pandemic happening worldwide. This outbreak, which killed 616 people, is best known for the physician John Snow's study of its causes and his hypothesis that germ-contaminated water was the source of cholera, rather than particles in the air. This discovery came to influence public health and the construction of improved sanitation facilities beginning in the mid-19th century. Later, the term "focus of infection" started to be used to describe sites, such as the Broad Street pump, in which conditions are favourable for transmission of an infection. Snow's endeavour to find the cause of the transmission of cholera caused him to unknowingly create a double-blind experiment.
The 1983 West Bank fainting epidemic occurred in late March and early April 1983. Researchers point to mass hysteria as the most likely explanation. Large numbers of Palestinians complained of fainting and dizziness, the vast majority of whom were teenage girls with a smaller number of female Israeli soldiers in multiple West Bank towns, leading to 943 hospitalizations.
The 1992–1993 Jack in the Box E. coli outbreak occurred when the Escherichia coli O157:H7 bacterium killed four children and infected 732 people across four states. The outbreak involved 73 Jack in the Box restaurants in California, Idaho, Washington, and Nevada, and has been described as "far and away the most infamous food poison outbreak in contemporary history." The majority of the affected were under 10 years old. Four children died and 178 others were left with permanent injury including kidney and brain damage.
Anna Pierce Hobbs Bixby, sometimes spelled Bigsby, born Anna Pierce, was a midwife, frontier doctor, dentist, herbologist, and scientist in southern Illinois.
The sleeping sickness of Kalachi, Kazakhstan is a conjectured medical condition which causes a person to sleep for days or weeks at a time, together with other symptoms such as hallucinations, nausea, intoxicated behavior, disorientation and memory loss. The phenomenon was only reported in Kalachi and the nearby village of Krasnogorsk. It was first reported in March 2013 and by 2016 had affected about 150 people. The syndrome appeared to be non-communicable. The disease disappeared for some time but re-emerged in 2015, and affected all age groups.
The Morinaga Milk arsenic poisoning incident occurred in 1955 in Japan and is believed to have resulted in the deaths of over 100 infants. The incident occurred when arsenic was inadvertently added to dried milk via the use of an industrial grade monosodium phosphate additive. This incident also led to negative health effects for thousands of other infants and individuals, which has had lingering health effects.
In 1900, more than 6,000 people in England were poisoned by arsenic-tainted beer, with more than 70 of the affected dying as a result. The food safety crisis was caused by arsenic entering the supply chain through impure sugar which had been made with contaminated sulphuric acid. The illness was prevalent across the Midlands and North West England, with Manchester being the most heavily affected.
The National Hotel was a hotel in Washington, D.C. It was located on the northeastern corner of the intersection of Pennsylvania Avenue and 6th Street NW. John Gadsby had it built in 1826. The hotel was sold to the city in 1929, and it was demolished in 1942.
The Sleeping Sickness Commission was a medical project established by the British Royal Society to investigate the outbreak of African sleeping sickness or African trypanosomiasis in Africa at the turn of the 20th century. The outbreak of the disease started in 1900 in Uganda, which was at the time a protectorate of the British Empire. The initial team in 1902 consisted of Aldo Castellani and George Carmichael Low, both from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and Cuthbert Christy, a medical officer on duty in Bombay, India. From 1903, David Bruce of the Royal Army Medical Corps and David Nunes Nabarro of the University College Hospital took over the leadership. The commission established that species of blood protozoan called Trypanosoma brucei, named after Bruce, was the causative parasite of sleeping sickness.
