Comparing the AIDS Epidemic and The Plague :: Compare Contrast Disease Health Essays

Comparing the acquired immune deficiency syndrome Epidemic and The PlagueThe destruction and devastation caused by the Black Death of the Middle Ages was a phenomenon left to wonder at in text books of historical Europe. An unbeatable plague swept the continent taking as much as eighty percent of the European cosmos along with it (Forsyth). Today the knowledge base is plagued with a similar deadly disease. The help epidemic continues to be incurable. In an essay written by David Herlihy, entitled Bubonic Plague Historical Epidemiology and the medical exam Problems, the historic bubonic plague is compared withthe period assist epidemic of today. agree to his research, back up will probably prove to be the plague of the millennium (Herlihy p. 18). If genius compares the epidemiology and social impact of these diseases they prove to be quite similar. The current AIDS epidemic has the potential to be the most dangerous and withering plague of the millennium. No one knows exac tly how the AIDS virus erupted. However, one presently dominant theory states that AIDS originated from monkeys in Africathat inherited the human immunodeficiency virus virus to humans through bites (Forsyth). As passel migrated it reached Haiti and then break up to America (Clark p. 65). The bubonic plague, too, was a spontaneous epidemic. The Black Death occurred because a bacillus was carried by fleas that fed off the blood of humans and transmitted the deadly bacillus in the process (Packer). It began in China and stagger bymigration throughout all of Europe and even America (Forsyth). Efforts to withdraw both diseases were entirely unsuccessful. AIDS is now an international problem as wasthe bubonic plague. Like the bubonic plague did in the Middle Ages, AIDS is spreading at an alarming rate. In 1994 seventeen one million million people around the world were infect with the HIV virus that causes AIDS, and four million had developed the disease (Packer). It is estimated t hat by the year 2000 more than forty million people, ninety percent in developing countries will be infected (Packer).The Black Death of the Middle Ages exterminated a third of the population of Europe in just four years. Also, like the bubonic plague, AIDS was once only found among certain delineated social groups (Herlihy p. 18) do drugs abusers and homosexuals in this country and in prostitutes and their contacts in Africa. Due to the early epidemiology of AIDS cases, it was believed that only certain populations in specific areas were infected. Aids may obligate started out in small communities, but it spread quickly and widely.