Lecture 5: Smallpox and Influenza

Question 1

What was the first recorded plague? Was it?

Answer 1

• the plague of athens

- ca. 430 BC

Question 2

What were the symptoms of the plague of athens?

Answer 2

fever, painful skin rash, great thirst

Question 3

Was there a known treatment for the plague of athens?

Answer 3

no

Question 4

What resulted from the plague of athens?

Answer 4

athens lost the war

Question 5

What is the plague of athens suspected to be?

Answer 5

smallpox

Question 6

Briefly summarize the fall of the aztec empire. Why did it fall?

Answer 6

• Hernando Cortez (Spain), with few than 600 men, conquered the Aztec empire, with a population of several million
• Smallpox broke out among the aztecs 4 months into the battle.
• population lacked inherited or acquired resistances

Question 7

What is the estimate of how much of the aztec population died from smallpox?

Answer 7

1/4 to 1/3

Question 8

What does William McNeil argue?

Answer 8

that the reason why the Aztec Empire fell to a few hundred had much more to do with the outbreak of smallpox than other factors.

Question 9

When and where was the first reported outbreak of smallpox in North America?

Answer 9

In Missouri in 1781

Question 10

How did smallpox spread in North America?

Answer 10

through the trade routes –> water lines

Question 11

How many local indigenous treatments attempted to control the spread of smallpox and find a remedy? What is an example of a treatment among the Blackfoot?

Answer 11

• 38+

- eating small bits of the blankets

Question 12

Smallpox was a ‘___soil’ epidemic.

Answer 12

virgin

Question 13

Does small pox remain infection outside the body?

Answer 13

yes

Question 14

Smallpox travels on___carriers.

Answer 14

symptomatic

Question 15

What was the outbreak of smallpox among plains cree in Canada mitigated by?

Answer 15

vaccines

Question 16

What did Edward Jenner observe?

Answer 16

That milking maids sometimes developed symptoms that looked similar to smallpox, but which did not progress to smallpox. It seemed, he surmised, that the milking maids had actually contracted some other strain of the disease, cowpox.

Question 17

After discovering cowpox, what did Jenner wonder?

Answer 17

If humans could be infect with cowpox, and if they might acquire immunity to smallpox

Question 18

What did Jenner do in his original experiment?

Answer 18

Inoculated an 8 year old boy with cowpox. 6 weeks later he inoculated the same boy with active fluid from smallpox. The boy did not develop smallpox andJenner believed that he had found an effective prevention strategy.

Question 19

Was the smallpox vaccine helpful? (people still got sick, but they didn’t___.)

Answer 19

die

so it was helpful

Question 20

What is inoculation?

Answer 20

An older technique that involved exposure to similar diseases, or dead for of the infection.

Question 21

Who developed vaccination?

Answer 21

Edward Jenner.

Question 22

What is vaccination?

Answer 22

Involved infecting individuals with a mild (attenuated) strain of, in this case, smallpox.

Question 23

What intensified English-French divisions in Montreal in 1885?

Answer 23

Smallpox

Question 24

A combination of what two efforts tried to control smallpox in Canada in 1885?

Answer 24

medical and political efforts

Question 25

What did prevention methods grow from in Canada?

Answer 25

traditional practices

Question 26

Where was the largest outbreak of smallpox in the country?

Answer 26

Montreal, 1885

Question 27

In 1885, Montreal had the highest death rate, at___deaths per___people “owing to the violent attack of smallpox from which the city suffered in 1885, there having been no less than____from that disease”

Answer 27

• 54.25
• 1000
• 3193

Question 28

What did some preventative methods include?

Answer 28

Recognizing that smallpox was inevitable but some survived and the survivors were immune.

• eating the scabs of the sick
• injecting pus from the sick under the skin of the healthy

Question 29

Government elected officials split between ___and ___ over smallpox vaccine

Answer 29

English and French

Question 30

Why did the French and English have differing views on vaccination? What were the two perspectives?

Answer 30

-English saying that they will vaccinate healthy children –> French: why take healthy children to get sick?
English assumption that yo make more money by getting vaccinated. Government says that if not everyone is vaccinated, then there is no point.

Question 31

What does Louis Riel have to do with smallpox?

Answer 31

• He was not for the government

- French newspapers –> don’t trust English government –> hang our own, vaccinate our children.

Question 32

What did the english refer to the french as because they resisted vaccinations?

Answer 32

• backwards
• catholic
• poor
• illiterate

Question 33

Why did the English accept vaccination (3 reasons)?

Answer 33

• more scientific
• pro-government
• foreward thinking

Question 34

What is the first major disease to have been wiped out by public-health measure?

Answer 34

smallpox

Question 35

When did WHO declare smallpox eradicated?

Answer 35

1980

Question 36

When was a particularly bad case of influenza?

Answer 36

1918

Question 37

Influenza, 1918 Model
Total deaths___
Day___

Answer 37

Total deaths- 31 022 801

Day- 183

Question 38

Over how many Canadians died of influenza during WWI? What percent were between he ages of 25-40?

Answer 38

• over 50 000

- 60%

Question 39

Which groups of people were disproportionately affected by influenza? What was this a result from?

Answer 39

• wage labourers, farming families, Aboriginals, women.
• result of they races to medical care, isolated, and the related and compounding effects of the disease on age earners in the family

Question 40

True or false: more died from influenza than battle.

Answer 40

true

Question 41

What were women encouraged to do in 1918 during influenza? Why is this?

Answer 41

• perform nursing duties, often with no training, and became susceptible to infection
• many nurses and doctors overseas

Question 42

Was the medical profession able to reach a consensus on how to handle to influenza crisis? Why?

Answer 42

no, because there were no known causes and no known remedy

Question 43

Due to lack of results from the medical profession on how to handle influenza, what group of people began to take matters into their own hands?

Answer 43

municipalities

Question 44

What did municipalities, specifically Saskatoon, do to get a handle on smallpox.

Answer 44

• lifted the ban on alcohol (medicinal use, grief, fear, panic)
• ban on public activities
• quarantine at university
• limited rail services

Question 45

What did non-medical organizations work together to promote with influenza? What did they believe caused the flu?

Answer 45

• promote urban and sanitary reforms

- that lack of sanitation led to the speed of the flue

Question 46

What did influenza promote changes within?

Answer 46

• municipalities
• the medical and nursing professions
• (believed that filthy urban spaces spread flue)

Question 47

Is it known what started to curb the flu?

Answer 47

it is unknown

Question 48

Epidemic disease affect not only individual bodies, but what else as well?

Answer 48

systems of governance and social conventions

Question 49

___is often left acting to outbreaks.

Answer 49

medicine

Question 50

What is the only disease to be declared eradicated?

Answer 50

smallpox

Question 51

Are traditional or local reactions more or less affective in treating diseases as scientific solutions

Answer 51

are often as effective

Question 52

What is critical in addressing an epidemic (besides medical intervention)?

Answer 52

public reception

Question 53

___health methods have been proven to be moderately effective in control.

Answer 53

public