History of Pandemics
Pandemics have been with humanity over many centuries. Excluding ancient times, recorded major pandemics occurred in 430 B.C – The Plague of Athens, with other epidemics following:
430 BC Plague of Athens; 165 A.D. Antonine Plague; 250 A.D. Plague of Cyprian;
540 Plague of Justinian; 1350 Black Death (Bubonic Plague); 1665 Great Plague of London;
1817 First Cholera Pandemic; 1855 Third Plague Pandemic; 1875 Fiji Measles Pandemic;
1889 Russian Flu; 1918 Spanish Flu; 1957: Asian Flu; 1968 Hong Kong Flu;
1981 AIDS; 2003 SARS; 2009 Swine Flu – H1N1; 2020 COVID-19 Flu.
This list doesn’t include MERS, Zika, or Ebola breakouts in more recent years nor the Polio epidemic in the early 1900s. It also doesn’t include a major outbreak of yellow fever in the late 1690s and again in late summer of 1793.
Malaria, another ancient disease is referenced in Chinese documents from about 2700 BC, clay tablets from Mesopotamia from 2000 BC, Egyptian papyri from 1570 BC and Hindu texts as far back as the sixth century BC. The first recognized dengue epidemics occurred almost simultaneously in Asia, Africa, and North America in the 1780s, shortly after the identification and…
