One
may not always equate disease with natural disasters, other examples being
earthquakes or hurricanes, but they are part of the history of people and
communities and they are a product of nature, in these cases a most virulent
kind that does not involve the destruction of property.
The
world does not see epidemics of the scope that existed before the discovery of
vaccines or development of modern hygiene practices. But even into the 20th
century, in many regions where our ancestors lived, communities were often
attacked by diseases. If you want to count the types and numbers of epidemics
that we know about just in recorded history, there is a list on Wikipedia (List of Epidemics).
Very
commonly in past centuries, smallpox, cholera, influenza and plague killed
thousands of people, sometimes millions, before they were checked or ran out of
steam. Today most are confined to less-well developed regions of the world,
where living conditions are poor and good hygiene virtually non-existent. In
developed countries we have learned how to control or eradicate most of them
through maintaining ourselves in better health and with inoculations. We still
see small pockets of sicknesses we thought we had rid ourselves of in areas
where people have determined they do not need vaccines, but thankfully they are
small in number.
Family
historians will undoubtedly come across examples in their own families where
ancestors contracted and even died of diseases we don’t hear much about any
more. I wrote about the Scourge
of Phthisis (Tuberculosis) in 2015 and how it had killed
great-grandmothers of my wife and me. I have come across references to this
particular malady in many records.
I
know that the main community in which my Shepheard ancestors lived – Cornwood,
Devon, England – according to the church burial register, was visited by
cholera, measles, typhus, smallpox and whooping cough. These were recorded only
by two incumbents in two periods between 1770-1772 and 1799-1823. We do not
have causes of death in church records for the other years between 1685 and
1993 but can reasonably surmise that, at least in the early centuries, disease
was also a factor in the deaths of residents. A high proportion of the deaths in
this area, prior to the 20th century, were children and infants as I
described in a post title Trends
in Ages of Death in Cornwood Parish, Devon in 2015.
One
of the last major epidemics in modern times was the Spanish Flu in
1918-20. Estimates put the death toll between 75 million world-wide. Not since
the Plague of
Justinian in 541-545 (25-50 million, 40% of population) or the Black Death in 1346-50
(75-200 million, 30-60% of population), has the number been so high. Hundreds
of thousands more died during the Great Plague of
the 1660s. Early European explorers brought diseases with them to foreign
shores, unleashing devastating results to indigenes populations, completely eradicating
many communities. While this was not strictly caused by only natural
conditions, the result was the same.
Not
all death or burial records indicate what the causes of death were. In the case
of many people, especially children dying within a short period it may be
useful too look at whether disease was the reason. Information about those
events may be found in newspapers or other historical publications.
Disease,
particularly when widespread is no less a disaster than an earthquake or
hurricane. While not caused by geologic or atmospheric processes it is still a
part of nature.
