DISEASES

For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.

—Matt. 24:7

1173 Plagues In The Past

Between AD 250–262, a pestilence raged all over the Roman Empire, from Egypt to the Hebrides. In some Italian cities, up to four-fifths of the population were wiped out. Men died like flies. Gibbons says that statisticians of the succeeding age estimated that one-half the human race perished in twelve years!

In the 6th century, the bubonic plague spread to Europe as part of a recurring cycle in the entire Roman world for 50 years. The Venerable Bede mentions four distinct waves between 664–683.

Another most terrible plague was the Black Death of 1347–48. It was estimated that one-fourth of Europe’s population died, about 25 million.

Even as late as 1918, an influenza epidemic killed in four weeks more than twice as many as the warring armies had destroyed in four years.

1174 Great Flu Epidemic

The Saturday Evening Post gave this report of the influenza epidemic at the close of WWI:

“No recorded pestilence before or since has equaled the 1918–1919 death toll in total numbers. In those years, an estimated 21,000,000 died of influenza-pneumonia throughout the world, some 850,000 in the United States alone.” More lives were lost in the flu epidemic than on the battlefields of World War I.

1175 Black Death

The Black Death ravaged Europe from 1347 to 1351, killing some quarter of the population, around 25 million. The British Isles lost about 800,000, the world as much as 75 million! This terrible plague was the worst in history. It was a particularly vicious form of bubonic plague which covered the body in a black rash. It was not known at the time that it was transmitted to humans by fleas from black rats.

—David Jefferis

1176 World Health Organization

The World Health Organization, established in 1948 to combat diseases around the world, continues its activities without let-up today. Programs in epidemiological surveillance and eradication are in full-swing worldwide. For instance, in dealing with malaria alone, there are 5 international centers: in Lagos, Manila, Maracay (Venezuela), Lome (Togo), and Sao Paulo (Brazil).

1177 Diseases In Vietnam

A World Health Organization reported that 30 years of war in Vietnam had left South Vietnam with 300,000 prostitutes, and 4 out of every 5 soldiers were afflicted with venereal diseases. The incidents of tuberculosis were one of the world’s highest. About 500,000 people were drug addicts.

1178 Cancer As No. 1

Cancer is now outranked only by heart disease as a cause of death in this country. Among women 15 to 54 years old, it is the leading cause of death from disease. A half century ago, cancer was outranked by tuberculosis, pneumonia, diseases of the heart, and nephritis. Although cancer is commonly a disease of adults, it is nevertheless one of the leading child killers. Among children aged five to nine, cancer, including the leukemias and Hodgkin’s disease, has been for some time the leading cause of death from disease.

1179 100,000 Disease Fatalities

The Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia, reports that death rate from infectious disease in the US is about 100,000 a year—nearly all preventable with vaccines and drugs now available.

More alarming, of the 11 major infectious diseases in the US., 5 have stopped declining—including hepatitis, tuberculosis, and mumps—with two rapidly increasing: measles and gonorrhea.

However, fatalities from the principal infectious diseases, which amounted to 6.8% of the total deaths in 1950 have dropped to below 4%.

1180 Flu Still A Killer

The widespread outbreaks of flu and pneumonia remain the 5th leading causes of death in America. Flu epidemics still sweep the country every 23 years, with major outbreaks every year.

The virulent Hongkong strain came in 1968–69, then the A-England in 1972, and the A-Victoria in 1975. In a bad year, flu epidemics may result in 40,000 extra deaths by lowering people’s resistance. The 1918 swine flu epidemic caused 500,000 above-normal American deaths.

—US News and World Report

1181 World Leaders Not Exempted

WASHINGTON (UPI)—President Ford took his doctor’s advice Monday and stayed in the White House family quarters recuperating from a sinus cold. All formal appointments were canceled as he spent the day taking medicine to combat a temperature of about 100.

MADRID (UPI)—The health of 81-year-old Generalissimo Franco of Spain is again causing speculation. He has a severe cold and influenza, and that’s why he’s canceled upcoming audiences.

MOSCOW (AP)—Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev has been staying at home for the last few days because of a “chill.” Because of this, the Kremlin had to postpone a scheduled meeting between Brezhnev and the French president.

1182 Venereal Diseases Rampant

Venereal disease is climbing by leaps everywhere. Cases of gonorrhea has topped the one million mark. About 100,000 women each year are made sterile by gonorrhea infections. The dean of the School of Public Health at UCLA considered it “out of control.” At least one strain is completely resistant to treatment by penicillin. The main reason: increased sexual promiscuity and homosexuality.

1183 Unprecedented Vaccination Program

The strange virus—Swine Flu—came in the Spring of 1976 at Fort Dix, New Jersey. President Ford, reminded of the great flu pandemic of 1918–19 when 500,000 Americans died, announced an unprecedented vaccination program. The original target was to innoculate 150 million people by Christmas 1976. By year end, however, only 30% had received the shots, when it was suspended amidst controversies and reactions.

1184 Recombinant DNA Experiments

In 1977, the US National Institute of Health required that all recombinant DNA experiments, involving any animal virus, should be subject to the highest containment conditions. In practice, scientists say, these requirements preclude most experiments. Government authorities fear the possibility of experimental animal virus contaminating the world.

1185 Germ Warfare

Fifteen nations have chemical and biological warfare programs. Major General Marshall Stubbs estimated that an aircraft carrying 10,000 pounds of germs could kill 60 million people. Russia and the US have together enough biological weapons to kill every living thing on earth.

1186 Hiroshima’s After-Effects

The Hiroshima Bomb, though utilizing more matter due to its yet primitive process, was classified as a “nominal” 20-kiloton explosion. It obliterated but a four-square mile area, yet its blast effect was so intense that 50,000 people were killed and 55,000 more were wounded and 200,000 people were left homeless.

A subsequent report from the scientists at Kyushu Imperial University classified the effects of the bomb on the human body under three headings: (1) Instant death; (2) Symptoms like those of dysentery followed by death; (3) Throat ulcers, bleeding gums, falling hair and eventual death.

1187 Rabies Vaccine

Until 1885, the dreaded disease, rabies, was unchecked by man. But that year an experiment by Louis Pasteur gave to the world the rabies vaccination.

Pasteur began in 1882 to study the disease, a disease that destroys the nerve cells of part of the brain. He had worked many hours in the laboratory seeking a vaccine to prevent the disease. His long hours in the laboratory were slowly wearing down his health, yet he labored on.

Then in July 1885, a peasant boy, Joseph Meister, was bitten by a mad dog. The boy was brought to Pasteur by his parents. They begged Pasteur to save their son. Pasteur hesitated to use his new vaccine on the boy because it had never been used on a human. Finally, he gave in. And then after several weeks of treatment, the vaccine proved successful and the boy’s life was saved.

1188 “Typhoid Mary”

Mary Mallon worked as a cook for various wealthy families in New York City. Not until 1907, six years after her first job, did disease sleuths from the New York City Department of Health trace her movements from one typhoid-stricken home to another. The newspapers headlined the discovery that “Typhoid Mary” was a walking container of deadly typhoid.

The woman was confined and treated for three years. Then she signed a pledge not to work as a cook again, to watch her hygiene, and to report to the Department of Health every three months.

Mary however, vanished for five years. In 1915 typhoid struck several members of the kitchen staff in a New York Hospital. A check of the employees turned up “Typhoid Mary” again. This time she was put in an institution and remained there until her death in 1938.

—Selected

1189 Measles For Sale

At Wilmington, North Carolina, there was a youngster who certainly had a talent for business. He made a neat bit of profit by selling measles. Yes, the old familiar rash called measles.

He had the measles himself and was delighted to find that it kept him out of the school. He got word to some other boys and suggested that they also could dodge school by getting the measles. In fact, he’d sell the measles to them. He would let them sneak up to his room, unobserved and they could sit there long enough to get a case of red-rash measles for themselves. He would only charge them ten cents apiece.

Seven schoolboys fell for the proposition. They paid their ten cents and got their measles. That made a net profit of seventy cents for the smart boy. His cleverness resulted in a small epidemic of measles in Wilmington!

—Lowell Thomas

1190 Living Inside Bubble

Because his body has no immune defenses against disease, three-year-old David of Houston, Texas, lives in a plastic bubble, and doctors say there’s no medical certainty he’ll ever live elsewhere. Even bacteria that most people can throw off might kill him. For three years he has breathed filtered air, has eaten sterile food, and has been cuddled only by hands wearing big, black rubber gloves which extend through the wall of his bubble.

—Prairie Overcomer

See also: Disasters ; Ezk. 38:22; Zech. 14:12; Luke 21:11; Rev. 11:6, 16:2.