Saints have often been prevailed upon in requests for intercessory prayers to protect against or help combatting a variety of dangers, illnesses, and ailments. This is a list of saints and such ills traditionally associated with them. In shorthand, they are called the patron saints of (people guarding against or grappling with) these various troubles.
Pneumonic plague is a severe lung infection caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. Symptoms include fever, headache, shortness of breath, chest pain, and coughing. They typically start about three to seven days after exposure. It is one of three forms of plague, the other two being septicemic plague and bubonic plague.
The Fourteen Holy Helpers are a group of saints venerated together by Catholics because their intercession is believed to be particularly effective, especially against various diseases. This group of Nothelfer originated in the 14th century at first in the Rhineland, largely as a result of the epidemic that became known as the Black Death.
This is a timeline of the development of prophylactic human vaccines. Early vaccines may be listed by the first year of development or testing, but later entries usually show the year the vaccine finished trials and became available on the market. Although vaccines exist for the diseases listed below, only smallpox has been eliminated worldwide. The other vaccine-preventable illnesses continue to cause millions of deaths each year. Currently, polio and measles are the targets of active worldwide eradication campaigns.
Septicemic plague is one of the three forms of plague, and is caused by Yersinia pestis, a gram-negative species of bacterium. Septicemic plague is a systemic disease involving infection of the blood and is most commonly spread by bites from infected fleas. Septicemic plague can cause disseminated intravascular coagulation and is always fatal when untreated. The other varieties of the plague are bubonic plague and pneumonic plague.
Aloysius de Gonzaga, SJ was an Italian aristocrat who became a member of the Society of Jesus. While still a student at the Roman College, he died as a result of caring for the victims of a serious epidemic. He was beatified in 1605 and canonized in 1726.
Rheumatism or rheumatic disorders are conditions causing chronic, often intermittent pain affecting the joints or connective tissue. Rheumatism does not designate any specific disorder, but covers at least 200 different conditions, including arthritis and "non-articular rheumatism", also known as "regional pain syndrome" or "soft tissue rheumatism". There is a close overlap between the term soft tissue disorder and rheumatism. Sometimes the term "soft tissue rheumatic disorders" is used to describe these conditions.
Camillus de Lellis, M.I., was a Roman Catholic priest from Italy who founded the Camillians, a religious order dedicated to the care of the sick. He was beatified by Pope Benedict XIV in the year 1742, and canonized by him four years later in 1746. De Lellis is the patron saint of the sick, hospitals, nurses and physicians. His assistance is also invoked against gambling.
A panacea is any supposed remedy that is claimed to cure all diseases and prolong life indefinitely. Named after the Greek goddess of universal remedy Panacea, it was in the past sought by alchemists in connection with the elixir of life and the philosopher's stone, a mythical substance that would enable the transmutation of common metals into gold. Through the 18th and 19th centuries, many "patent medicines" were claimed to be panaceas, and they became very big business. The term "panacea" is used in a negative way to describe the overuse of any one solution to solve many different problems, especially in medicine. The word has acquired connotations of snake oil and quackery.
The Pasteur Institute is a French non-profit private foundation dedicated to the study of biology, micro-organisms, diseases, and vaccines. It is named after Louis Pasteur, who invented pasteurization and vaccines for anthrax and rabies. The institute was founded on 4 June 1887 and inaugurated on 14 November 1888.
Maurus (512–584) was the first disciple of Benedict of Nursia. He is mentioned in Gregory the Great's biography of the latter as the first oblate, offered to the monastery by his noble Roman parents as a young boy to be brought up in the monastic life.
Adenovirus infection is a contagious viral disease, caused by adenoviruses, commonly resulting in a respiratory tract infection. Typical symptoms range from those of a common cold, such as nasal congestion, coryza and cough, to difficulty breathing as in pneumonia. Other general symptoms include fever, fatigue, muscle aches, headache, abdominal pain and swollen neck glands. Onset is usually two to fourteen days after exposure to the virus. A mild eye infection may occur on its own, combined with a sore throat and fever, or as a more severe adenoviral keratoconjunctivitis with a painful red eye, intolerance to light and discharge. Very young children may just have an earache. Adenovirus infection can present as a gastroenteritis with vomiting, diarrhoea and abdominal pain, with or without respiratory symptoms. However, some people have no symptoms.
Vaccination of dogs is the practice of animal vaccination applied to dogs. Programs in this field have contributed both to the health of dogs and to the public health. In countries where routine rabies vaccination of dogs is practiced, for example, rabies in humans is reduced to a very rare event.
Bonaparte Visits the Plague Stricken in Jaffa is an oil-on-canvas painting commissioned by Napoleon Bonaparte and painted in 1804 by Antoine-Jean Gros, portraying an event during the French invasion of Egypt. The scene shows Napoleon during a striking scene which is supposed to have occurred in Jaffa on 11 March 1799, depicting the French general making a visit to his ill soldiers at the Armenian Saint Nicholas Monastery.
Saint Roch Interceding with the Virgin for the Plague-Stricken is an early religious painting by the French artist Jacques-Louis David. It shows Saint Roch interceding to the Virgin Mary and Christ Child for the plague sufferers shown around him. He painted it in 1780 during his stay at the Villa Medici in Rome after winning first prize for painting in the Prix de Rome and exhibited it at the 1781 Paris Salon on his return to France. While in Rome he was much influenced by the works of Caravaggio, Poussin, Guercino and Lebrun. He was determined not to be seduced by the Italian baroque style, declaring "the Antique will not seduce me, it lacks animation, it does not move". Nevertheless, he filled twelve sketchbooks with drawings while he was in Rome, and he and his studio used them as models for the rest of his life.
Bernard of Valdeiglesias was a Benedictine Cistercian monk at Valdeiglesias, province of Avila, Spain.
The Catholic Church is the largest non-government provider of health care services in the world. It has around 18,000 clinics, 16,000 homes for the elderly and those with special needs, and 5,500 hospitals, with 65 percent of them located in developing countries. In 2010, the Church's Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Health Care Workers said that the Church manages 26% of the world's health care facilities. The Church's involvement in health care has ancient origins.
Christ Appointing Saint Roch as Patron Saint of Plague Victims or The Plague Victims is a 1623–1626 altarpiece by Peter Paul Rubens. It is located in the Sint-Martinuskerk in Aalst, Belgium and depicts Saint Roch.
Cat bites are bites inflicted upon humans, other cats, and other animals by the domestic cat. Data from the United States show that cat bites represent between 5–15% of all animal bites inflicted to humans, but it has been argued that this figure could be the consequence of under-reporting as bites made by cats are considered by some to be unimportant. Though uncommon, cat bites can sometimes cause rabies lead to complications and, very rarely, death.
A notifiable disease is one which the law requires to be reported to government authorities.
In 1557, a pandemic strain of influenza emerged in Asia, then spread to Africa, Europe, and eventually the Americas. This flu was highly infectious and presented with intense, occasionally lethal symptoms. Medical historians like Thomas Short, Lazare Rivière and Charles Creighton gathered descriptions of catarrhal fevers recognized as influenza by modern physicians attacking populations with the greatest intensity between 1557 and 1559. The 1557 flu saw governments, for possibly the first time, inviting physicians to instill bureaucratic organization into epidemic responses. It is also the first pandemic where influenza is pathologically linked to miscarriages, given its first English names, and is reliably recorded as having spread globally. Influenza caused higher burial rates, near-universal infection, and economic turmoil as it returned in repeated waves.
