Category: Infectious Disease
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Echinococcus granulosus, the sheepdog worm
In the days when Britain ruled the waves and its colonies, some sheep from Thomas Hardy’s Wessex and other counties followed their masters to the antipodes instead of stupidly jumping off a cliff.1 They multiplied in the sun and produced much wool, some of which was later returned to England under the imperial preference system…
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Filariasis and elephantiasis, plagues of the tropics
Imagine being bitten by a mosquito, not in your hometown but in one of the countries you have always longed to visit. After a few days, you may not feel well. This is because you have been invaded by the tiny micro-larvae offspring of a worm that lives in another person. You may or may…
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Rabies, still a deadly disease
The man recovered of the bite,The dog it was that died!—Oliver Goldsmith Unfortunately, this is untrue! An estimated 60,000 people die each year from rabies and most cases are due to dog bites. Rabies affects largely the poor rural populations of Africa and Asia, in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, in Sri Lanka and Thailand, the…
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“Satturday” by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who helped introduce smallpox inoculation to England
Cristóbal Berry-CabánFort Liberty, North Carolina, United States Lady Mary Wortley Montagu1 was born in 1689 to an aristocratic family. She was highly intelligent and self-educated by having access to her father’s library, studying the classics, and even learning Latin. In 1712 she rejected her father’s choice and eloped with Edward Wortley Montagu, a young Whig…
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Mumps: Dolor et tumor
Mumps usually occurs in outbreaks, most often between the ages of 5–9, usually in the winter and spring in temperate climates but at any time in the tropics. After infecting the upper respiratory tract, this contagious virus spreads to the salivary glands, the lymph nodes, the blood, and throughout the body. Symptoms at first are…
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Pertussis—A new or ancient disease?
Pertussis is a respiratory disease characterized by the whoop, the sound made by patients during coughing fits, and popularly known as whooping cough. It may be a more ancient disease than is usually assumed. Mentioned in an ancient Chinese medical classic from before the first century, it was described during the Sui Dynasty by the…
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Martinus Beijerinck: A co-discoverer of viruses
Philip LiebsonChicago, Illinois, United States As early as 1676, Dutch textile worker Anthony Van Leeuwenhoek, working with an early microscope, was the first to identify bacteria. Because of the size of bacteria, easily seen by a microscope, it was inevitable that bacteria would be discovered by someone. Not so with viruses. Although the smallest bacteria…
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Salvador Luria and the bacteriophage
Philip LiebsonChicago, Illinois, United States In 1859, the French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck proposed that if an organism is changed by environmental stimuli, these changes would be passed on to offspring. This theory was eventually disproven. One important study disproving this concept led to the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for Salvador Luria, Max Delbrück,…
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Propagating penicillin in Peoria: From discovery to mass production
Julius BonelloMichael NeffZoe DemkoPeoria, Illinois, United States One of the greatest medical achievements of the twenty-first century was the creation of penicillin. The road to this great achievement began almost 300 years ago when Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (1632–1723), a draper by trade who had no science background, wished to assess the quality of his threads.…
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Epidemics: The deadly foes of humanity
There was a time when humans may have solely attributed their illnesses to powers that could turn rivers into blood, kill firstborns, unleash swarms of frogs, lice, flies, and locusts (Exodus 7-10), cause contagious skin diseases (Leviticus 13:2-33), or send hideous, dangerous serpents to kill evildoers (Numbers 21:5-9).1 But in the relatively brief time of…