Diseases: humans dealt with them thousands of years ago, and we deal with them again now. Even with all of the money spent on scientific research each year, there is still no cure for cancer, and new unknown illnesses emerge all the time.
It truly is fascinating to learn how certain diseases wiped civilizations off the map at one point in our history, but are more or less nonexistent today. Where did these diseases spawn from, and what obliterated them? Thanks to archeologists, much of this information can be determined by the appearance of bones. Based on the lesions on a human skeleton in conjunction with DNA testing, scientists are able to guess how old a disease is — but it doesn’t work for all diseases. While the age of tuberculosis can be estimated in this way, pneumonia relies more on lung tissue which doesn’t preserve as well.
Let’s examine some of the most ancient diseases that have engendered plagues around the world:
Rabies
Who would’ve thought rabies was one of the oldest diseases on the planet? After all, aren’t we still warned today not to approach a dog or raccoon foaming at the mouth? In fact, rabies dates back to 2300 BCE when it was first mentioned in the Eshuma Code of Babylon. Rabies is a lethal disease; not only does it attack the host — it takes over the host’s brain so it wants to bite everything in sight. Strangely enough, in 2004 a Wisconsin native was the first to survive rabies without getting an immediate vaccination after being bitten by a ferocious bat.
Typhoid Fever
Typhoid first emerged in Athens between 430 and 426 BCE. It is a bacterial disease transmitted by the ingestion of food or water that has been contaminated by the feces of an infected person. Because we live in a society where sanitation and cleanliness are highly valued, Typhoid is a rarity these days in most countries. However back in the day, nobody would think twice to dive into a river in order to ‘cool off’ the fever. In reality, the river would be infected with the bacterium from an infected person’s feces — thus easily spreading the illness.
Cholera
The cholera plague likely occurred well before the time of Typhoid, even though the disease was first recorded later in 400 BCE by Hippocrates, an Athenian physician. Cholera likely comes from the Ganges River of India and Bangladesh, though scientists believe cholera exists in many water sources around the world even today. The Ganges River supported a massive population at the time, perhaps the most densely populated area of the world at the time. This heavy usage of the river allowed the disease to spread like wildfire.
Leprosy
People used to think the Bible passage Leviticus 13:2 was the first text to mention this disease. But leprosy is older than we previously thought; the symptoms are written in the Egyptian ‘Ebers Papyrus’ which dates back to 1550 BCE. Leprosy was misunderstood back in the day, and misdiagnosed often for two reasons. One, leprosy spread throughout the body in a dormant state. One could be infected for a length of time and not even know it. Also, people who had syphilis and psoriasis would be diagnosed with leprosy and sent off to leper colonies where they would eventually die anyway even if they just had a skin condition.
Tuberculosis
A few years ago, scientists excavated an ancient city off the coast of Israel to find the skeleton of a mother and child who showed evident signs of Tuberculosis. This allows us to confirm that TB is 9000 years old. New research also has shed new light on the origins of TB: while we originally thought cows carried the disease and transferred it to humans, it seems this is not so. TB is a nasty illness that still affects people today, though not in the numbers it once did. It’s transferred much in the way a cold is — through an infected person coughing or sneezing the bacteria into the air.
Malaria
According to the Wall Street Journal, malaria can be attributed as the cause of half of all human deaths since the Stone Age. Can you believe it? And it’s still a huge problem today in Africa and Central America. It was first recorded in the Chinese ‘Canon of Medicine’ around 2700 BCE. “The disease continues to infect 300 million people every year, killing 1 million of them.” Sure people traveling to countries with disease-carrying mosquitos can get vaccinated beforehand, but the sad truth is that people living in these developing countries can’t afford the care to fight the disease once infected.
There are more ancient illnesses we didn’t discuss here — pneumonia, smallpox, the Spanish flu, the black plague. If you liked this post and are as fascinated with ancient illnesses as we are, leave us a comment and we’ll continue our discussion in another blog post!