Monday, February 6, 2017
I remember how fun it was, being alone at my room back in
college, reading encyclopedia, jumping from one topic to another. I wasn’t
really addicted to Google or anything on the internet. In fact, it was almost
2010 and I only used internet to send e-mail or looking for some images I needed
for my homework.
But when I started to use social media, I became addicted to
the internet and social media. And my blog, part of the social media, has
always been all about me. It’s actually because I have many blogs for so many
things. But then I’m too lazy to continue writing those blogs, and only post in
this diary, so, of course almost everything here is about me. Yes, I’m still
enjoying browsing for scientific, historic things, but I never write any of it
on this blog.
I only keep the miscellaneous in my private notes in my
computer. But now that my computer seems to be dying, I wanna start writing some
notes here, just for back up, just in case.
Anyway, lately I’ve been reading some articles about the
Lower and Upper Palaeolithic Europe, and suddenly these questions just popped
out in my mind:
1. What is the most ancient disease in medical history?
2. What is the most common cause of prehistoric death?
3. How long is the lifespan of most prehistoric humans?
So I found some articles, and I’ll just write down all my
conclusions from those articles. To read the complete articles, just check on
the links.
First question, what is the most ancient disease in medical
history? What about… top 10 most ancient diseases instead?
This is from one of my favorite sites:
science.howstuffworks.com
10 Oldest Diseases in History:
Some archeologists have found some of the most ancient
diseases by analyzing the bones, DNA, and whatever left from the prehistoric
human remains. And here is the list of Top 10 Oldest Diseases in History:
10 > Cholera (dated 400 BCE, Greece and India)
Cholera can be found on the list of diseases catalogued by
the Athenian physician Hippocrates in 400 BCE. Cholera itself has been existing
far before Hippocrates. This disease originated in the Ganges River that
happens to be one of the most ancient locations of human population density.
Cholera lives in the world’s water sources.
9 > Typhoid Fever (430 to 426 BCE, Greece)
A great plague swept through the city-state of Athens, by
the description from the historian Thucydides, has the same symptoms with
Typhoid Fever.
“People in good health were all of a sudden attacked by
violent heats in the head and the throat or tongue, becoming bloody and
emitting an unnatural and fetid breath. When it fixed in the stomach, it upset
it; and discharges of bile of every kind named by physicians ensued,
accompanied by very great distress. If they passed this stage, and the disease
descended further into the bowels, inducing a violent ulceration there
accompanied by severe diarrhea, this brought on a weakness which was generally
fatal.
The disease couldn't have come at a worse time. The plague
contributed to Athens' eventual loss to Sparta in the Peloponnesian War and a
long hiatus for democracy in world history.”
8 > Leprosy (dated 1550 BCE, Egypt)
The Egyptian "Ebers Papyrus," written in 1550
B.C.E., which recommends, "If you examine a large tumor of Khonsu in any
part of a man and it is terrible and it has made many swellings. Something has
appeared in it like that in which there is air ... Then you shall say
concerning it: It is a swelling of Khonsu. You should not do anything against
it" [source: Nunn].
And here’s the scariest part of Leprosy:
“While typhoid and cholera are fairly straightforward in
their aggressive spread through water sources, leprosy relies on another
dispersion strategy -- that of dormancy. People can carry the bacteria that
cause leprosy for 20 years or more before showing symptoms, and during this
time can spread the disease.”
7 > Smallpox (dated 1580 BCE, Egypt)
Generally, the goal of mummification is to preserve soft
tissue. So, as you would expect, Egypt provides a treasure trove of information
on ancient, soft tissue diseases.
The most ancient of these mummies was dated 1580 B.C.E., and
the most recent was the mummy of Ramses V, who died in 1157 B.C.E.
Smallpox is one of history's greatest killers, responsible
for 300 to 500 million deaths in the 20th century [source: Saint Louis University].
6 > Rabies (dated 2300 BCE, Babylon)
Rabies is ingenious: Not only does it infect a host, but it
also hijacks the host's brain in a way that makes the host want to bite things.
This is how rabies gets a ticket to ride. And it's been doing it since at least
2300 B.C.E., when it was described in the Eshuma Code of Babylon [source:
Rupprecht et al.].
5 > Malaria (dated 2700 BCE, China)
Granted, that statistic extends the origin of the disease
back in time past its first definite mention, which was in the Chinese
"Nei Ching" ("The Canon of Medicine"), around the year 2700
B.C.E. [source: CDC].
The disease continues to infect 300 million people every
year, killing 1 million of them [source: Shah].
The Wall Street Journal reports that malaria is responsible
for half of all human deaths since the Stone Age [source: Shah].
4 > Pneumonia
Hippocrates wrote that fluid in the lungs should be called
pneumonia if, "the fever be acute, and if there be pains on either side, or
in both, and if expiration be if cough be present, and the sputa expectorated
be of a blond or livid color" [source: Hippocrates]. But he also
distinctly calls it a "disease of the ancients."
Where exactly does pneumonia place in this list of oldest
known diseases? Because it's a soft tissue disease, the archaeological record
isn't strong. But it's likely that various forms of pneumonia have been around
as long as our lungs.
3 > Trachoma (8,000 BCE, Australia)
“Trachoma is a chronic infection of the upper eyelid that
eventually results in the eyelid constricting and turning the eyelashes in
toward the cornea. Over time, the rubbing of the constricted eyelid and especially
the eyelash makes the patient go blind. This is what happened to Aetius, Paulus
Aeginetus, Alexander, Trailaus, Horace and Cicero. And trachoma is described in
Hippocrates and in the Egyptian Ebers papyrus [sources: Siniscal and Nunn].
But researchers make a compelling case for earlier trachoma
found in a corner of the world little associated with early diseases:
Australia. Aboriginal skeletons from 8000 B.C.E. show a common skull lesion
around the eyes [source: Webb]. Scientists determined that these lesions were
due to bone infection that had come from soft tissue infection. Though there
are a few eye diseases that could fit this bill, the skeletons were found in
the Australian region in which trachoma is most common today.”
2 > TBC (500,000 years ago, Turkey)
In 2008, a team of scientists from University College London
excavated the submerged ancient city of Alit-Yam, off the coast of Israel.
There, they found the buried remains of a mother and her child. Both skeletons
showed bone lesions characteristic of tuberculosis [source: Lloyd]. DNA testing
confirmed it: Tuberculosis is at least 9,000 years old.
While the Alit-Yam finding is the oldest confirmed case of
TB, characteristic lesions have been found on bones found in Turkey, dated
about 500,000 years ago [source: Lloyd].
1 > Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever (as long as the history of
human and animals cells)
“Mitochondria are small organelles found in nearly every
cell in the human body. And they perform a function essential to human life,
converting glucose from food to energy called adenosine triphosphate, or ATP,
which cells can use.
But mitochondria carry their own genetic material --
separate from human DNA -- and these genes look a lot like those of bacteria.
In other words, it's very likely that the mitochondria that we depend on for
survival are the products of an ancient infection [source: Andersson et al.].
Whatever the infection, it predates animal life, let alone
humans. So there's no use exploring the fossil record. Instead, researchers
compared the genes of mitochondria to those of existing bacteria. The closest
match was to bacteria of order Rickettsiales, many of which cause diseases --
including Rocky Mountain spotted fever [sources: Eremeeva and Dasch, Andersson
et al.].
But remember, we're talking about a disease that existed
before animal life. So the oldest disease isn't really Rocky Mountain Spotted
Fever itself, but some unnamed proto-disease with genetic similarity.
Long, long ago bacteria invaded a cell. And because of this
infection, we have life as we know it.
:
Second question: what is the most common cause of
prehistoric death?
So I’ve found this interesting journal in this link:
And they even happened to have the comparison between the prehistoric
human and the present human. It’s a very interesting journal! You really should
check!
Modern Humans and Disease, Highly Developed Countries:
- Life expectancy has increased from ~50 yrs in 1950 to 86 years
in 2000. For the first time in history a mother knows that the loss of one of
her children before maturity is an unlikely event.
- Main causes of death are non-communicable diseases (cancer,
obesity, diabetes, hypertension).
- Food plentiful, sedentary lifestyle.
- Acute infections decline because of improved public health information,
vaccines, medical treatments, and increased resistance to infection due to nourishment
Early Humans and Disease, domestication of plants and
animals (~6000 years ago):
- Creation of first !urban" areas with large populations
in continuous close contact. Increase in food supply and expansion of
populations.
- Main causes of death were accidents, food shortage, predation,
infectious disease, with increases in communicable diseases: TB, Measles,
Smallpox, Leprosy, Polio
- Diet was different from that of hunter-gatherer, but still
based mainly on unrefined plant foods.
- Non-communicable diseases (cancer, obesity, diabetes, hypertension)
were rare to non-existent.
:
And finally…, the last question: how long is the lifespan of
most prehistoric humans?
I found this article with very amazing facts in Wikipedia:
So they have medicine, even before writing existed! Wow! This
is really amazing!
And by the way, how long is the lifespan of prehistoric
humans? Here’s what is written in the page:
“The life expectancy in prehistoric times was low, 25–40
years, with men living longer than women; archaeological evidence of women and
babies found together suggests that many women would have died in childbirth,
perhaps accounting for the lower life expectancy in women than men. Another
possible explanation for the shorter life spans of prehistoric humans may be
malnutrition; also, men as hunters may have sometimes received better food than
the woman, who would consequently have been less resistant to disease.”
Wow! 25 to 40 years old!? Can you imagine? Humans lifespan used to be that short!
Here’s some other interesting links:
Timeline of Medicine and Medical Technology (from 3300 BC to
present):
History of Medicine:
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