Drugs: A Very Short Introduction by Leslie Iversen

Author:Leslie Iversen [Iversen, Leslie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780192854315
Amazon: 0192854313
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2001-12-06T00:00:00+00:00

Plagues and pestilences: combating the unseen invaders

Throughout human history infectious diseases have plagued us. As the human species became more and more numerous and lived in increasingly high densities in towns and cities, we became a fertile breeding ground for the many species of bacteria, fungi, and viruses that have evolved specifically to take advantage of Homo sapiens. For most of human history we have had no effective medical means of combating the ravages of infectious diseases, and had to rely instead on the sophisticated defences of our own immune system. When the immune system is overwhelmed, however, often in response to exposure to an unfamiliar infection that has spread from some other part of the world, the consequences can be lethal. The spread of bubonic plague (the ‘Black Death’) throughout Europe in the Middle Ages, for example, led to the death of as many as half of the population in many countries. Even in the twentieth century, the ‘Spanish flu’ epidemic killed some thirty million people within six months in 1918 – twice as many as had died in the First World War.

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