Search results for "Smallpox"
showing 10 items of 10 documents
Further studies on the AB0-typing of ancient bones
1972
This paper deals with the AB0-typing of bone material from the 14th century. From 151 femora, 126 gave a positive reaction, the rest did not react at all. 53.9% A, 16.7% B, 23.8% H and 5.6% AB are the respective results. Some hypotheses suggesting relations between infectious diseases and AB0 blood groups are discussed. The AB0 distribution seems to point to an association with plague and smallpox.
Guinea Worm Infection in Dogs: A Case of Reverse Zoonosis that Impedes Dracunculus medinensis Eradication
2020
Dracunculus medinensis or Guinea worm was largely considered an exclusive human parasite. The adult female D. medinensis (up to 100 cm long and 1.5–2.0 mm thick) inhabits and moves in the connective tissue, including the skin. Large females protrude from the skin causing unusual and unambiguous signs. Hosts become infected by drinking water containing the crustacean intermediate hosts (cyclopoid copepods known as water fleas) infected with Guinea worm L3 larvae. After years of a successful eradication campaign (focused mainly on preventing humans from drinking unfiltered or untreated water), Guinea worm transmission has been eliminated from most, but not all, countries. An unforeseeable hig…
Town population size and structuring into villages and households drive infectious disease risks in pre-healthcare Finland
2021
Social life is often considered to cost in terms of increased parasite or pathogen risk. However, evidence for this in the wild remains equivocal, possibly because populations and social groups are often structured, which affects the local transmission and extinction of diseases. We test how the structuring of towns into villages and households influenced the risk of dying from three easily diagnosable infectious diseases—smallpox, pertussis and measles—using a novel dataset covering almost all of Finland in the pre-healthcare era (1800–1850). Consistent with previous results, the risk of dying from all three diseases increased with the local population size. However, the division of towns …
Reports on Encounters of Medical Cultures: Two Physicians in Sweden’s Medical and Colonial Connections in the Late Eighteenth Century
2019
Kontturi’s chapter focuses on two Swedish physicians reporting from London and Caribbean Swedish colony St. Barthélemy to Swedish medical college in 1798. The emphasis is on their participation in the global networks of colonial medicine, shaping and sharing medical information from colonies outside of Europe. Their reports show how they promoted the hybridisation of different medical cultures with their distinctly open-minded curiosity towards new information, which was in line with the old Linnaean tradition of scientific travelling. The chapter also draws attention to their impact on how global diseases such as syphilis and smallpox were managed and treated in their own sphere of influen…
Vaccines Through Centuries: Major Cornerstones of Global Health
2015
Multiple cornerstones have shaped the history of vaccines, which may contain live-attenuated viruses, inactivated organisms/viruses, inactivated toxins, or merely segments of the pathogen that could elicit an immune response. The story began with Hippocrates 400 B.C. with his description of mumps and diphtheria. No further discoveries were recorded until 1100 A.D. when the smallpox vaccine was described. During the eighteenth century, vaccines for cholera and yellow fever were reported and Edward Jenner, the father of vaccination and immunology, published his work on smallpox. The nineteenth century was a major landmark, with the "Germ Theory of disease" of Louis Pasteur, the discovery of t…
The Immunology of Zoonotic Infections
2012
Zoonotic infections are in general defined as infections transmitted from animal to man (and less frequently vice versa), either directly (through contact or contact with animal products) or indirectly (through an intermediate vector as an arthropod or an insect) [1]. Although the burden of zoonotic infections worldwide is major, both in terms of immediate and long-term morbidity and mortality [2, 3] and in terms of emergence/reemergence and socioeconomical, ecological, and political correlations [4], scientific and public health interest and funding for these diseases remain relatively minor. Zoonoses include diseases induced by diverse pathogens (bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites), …
Human Monkeypox: A Comprehensive Narrative Review and Analysis of the Public Health Implications.
2022
Recently, numerous cases of monkeypox were reported from several non-endemic countries in Europe, North America, and Oceania, suggesting an unusual and alarming public health issue, particularly considering that the disease is not directly related to human or animal travels. Attention is currently being drawn to this phenomenon since more than 70% of the global population is no longer vaccinated against smallpox. Indeed, the smallpox vaccination also confers some indirect degree of protection against other poxviruses, including monkeypox. We performed a narrative review to describe the existing literature with regard to monkeypox using the MEDLINE, EMBASE, and Scopus databases. This review …
Management of infections pre- and post-liver transplantation: Report of an AISF consensus conference
2014
SummaryThe burden of infectious diseases both before and after liver transplantation is clearly attributable to the dysfunction of defensive mechanisms of the host, both as a result of cirrhosis, as well as the use of immunosuppressive agents.The present document represents the recommendations of an expert panel commended by the Italian Association for the Study of the Liver (AISF), on the prevention and management of infectious complications excluding hepatitis B, D, C, and HIV in the setting of liver transplantation.Due to a decreased response to vaccinations in cirrhosis as well as within the first six months after transplantation, the best timing for immunization is likely before transp…
The seasonality of three childhood infections in a pre-industrial society without schools
2021
AbstractBackgroundThe burden of many infectious diseases varies seasonally and a better understanding of the drivers of infectious disease seasonality would help to improve public health interventions. For directly transmitted highly-immunizing childhood infections, the leading hypothesis is that seasonality is strongly driven by social gatherings imposed by schools, with maxima and minima during school terms and holidays respectively. However, we currently have a poor understanding of the seasonality of childhood infections in societies without schools and whether these are driven by human social gatherings. Here, we used unique nationwide data consisting of >40 epidemics over 100 years…
El Instituto Médico Valenciano y la difusión de la vacuna
2004
The Medical Valencian Institute promoted a campaign of smallpox free vaccination (1851- 1894) by means of humanized vaccine sent from England. It spread the vaccination for the whole Spain and published careful statistics of the vaccinations practised in the Bulletin of the Medical Valencian Institute. The National Institute of Vaccination (1871) did not recognize his labor and one denied to him the category of Provincial Institute of Vaccination.