THE LAST 2000 YEARS

ON EARTH

WITH

PANDEMICS AND DISEASES

By

Søren Nielsen

2023

What has happened on Earth in the last 2000 years with pandemics and diseases.

And how many people died of these diseases and pandemics.

The first on was in 430 BC.

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The Plague of Athens.

The Plague of Athens was an epidemic that devastated the city-state of Athens in ancient Greece during the second year (430 BC) of the Peloponnesian War when an Athenian victory still seemed within reach. 

The plague killed an estimated 75,000 to 100,000 people, around one quarter of the population, and is believed to have entered Athens through Piraeus, the city's port and sole source of food and supplies.

Much of the eastern Mediterranean also saw an outbreak of the disease, albeit with less impact.

The plague had serious effects on Athens' society, resulting in a lack of adherence to laws and religious belief; in response laws became stricter, resulting in the punishment of non-citizens claiming to be Athenian. 

Among the victims of the plague was Pericles, the leader of Athens. 

The plague returned twice more, in 429 BC and in the winter of 427/426 BC. 

Some 30 pathogens have been suggested as having caused the plague.

Plague of Cyprian.

The Plague of Cyprian was a pandemic that afflicted the Roman Empire about from AD 249 to 262.

The plague is thought to have caused widespread manpower shortages for food production and the Roman army, severely weakening the empire during the Crisis of the Third Century.

Its modern name commemorates St. Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, an early Christian writer who witnessed and described the plague.

The agent of the plague is highly speculative because of sparse sourcing, but suspects have included smallpox, pandemic influenza and viral hemorrhagic fever (filoviruses) like the Ebola virus.

In 250 to 262, at the height of the outbreak, 5,000 people a day were said to be dying in Rome. 

Cyprian's biographer, Pontius of Carthage, wrote of the plague at Carthage:

"Afterwards there broke out a dreadful plague, and excessive destruction of a hateful disease invaded every house in succession of the trembling populace, carrying off day by day with abrupt attack numberless people, every one from his own house. 

All were shuddering, fleeing, shunning the contagion, impiously exposing their own friends, as if with the exclusion of the person who was sure to die of the plague, one could exclude death itself also. 

There lay about the meanwhile, over the whole city, no longer bodies, but the carcasses of many, and, by the contemplation of a lot which in their turn would be theirs, demanded the pity of the passers-by for themselves. 

No one regarded anything besides his cruel gains. 

No one trembled at the remembrance of a similar event. 

No one did to another what he himself wished to experience."

Accounts of the plague date it about AD 249 to 262. 

There was a later incident in 270 that involved the death of Claudius II Gothicus, but it is unknown if this was the same plague or a different outbreak.

According to the Historia Augusta, in the consulship of Antiochianus and Orfitus the favour of heaven furthered Claudius' success. 

For a great multitude, the survivors of the barbarian tribes, who had gathered in Haemimontum were so stricken with famine and pestilence that Claudius now scorned to conquer them further... during this same period the Scythians attempted to plunder in Crete and Cyprus as well, but everywhere their armies were likewise stricken with pestilence and so were defeated.

Japanese smallpox epidemic.

The 735–737 Japanese smallpox epidemic was a major smallpox epidemic that afflicted much of Japan. 

Killing approximately 1/3 of the entire Japanese population, the epidemic had significant social, economic, and religious repercussions throughout the country.

A few decades prior to the outbreak, Japanese court officials had adopted the Chinese policy of reporting disease outbreaks among the general population. 

This recording practice greatly facilitated the identification of smallpox as the disease that afflicted Japan during the years 735–737.

Increased contact between Japan and the Asian mainland had led to more frequent and serious outbreaks of infectious diseases. 

The smallpox epidemic of 735–737 was recorded as having taken hold around August 735 in the city of Dazaifu, Fukuoka in northern Kyushu, where the infection had ostensibly been carried by a Japanese fisherman who had contracted the illness after being stranded on the Korean peninsula.

The disease spread rapidly throughout northern Kyushu that year, and persisted into the next. 

By 736, many land tenants in Kyushu were either dying or forsaking their crops, leading to poor agricultural yields and ultimately famine.

Also, in 736, a group of Japanese governmental officials passed through northern Kyushu while the epidemic was intensifying. 

As members of the party sickened and died, the group abandoned its intended mission to the Korean peninsula. 

Returning to the capital with smallpox, the officials helped spread the disease to eastern Japan and Nara.

The disease continued to ravage Japan in 737. 

One manifestation of the pandemic's great impact was that by August of 737, a tax exemption had been extended to all of Japan.

Based on fiscal reports, adult mortality for the smallpox epidemic of 735–737 has been estimated at 25–35% of Japan's entire population, with some areas experiencing much higher rates.

All levels of society were affected. 

Many court nobles perished due to smallpox in 737, including all four brothers of the politically powerful Fujiwara clan: Fujiwara no Muchimaro (680–737), 

Fujiwara no Fusasaki (681–737), 

Fujiwara no Umakai (694–737), and 

Fujiwara no Maro (695–737). 

Their sudden departure from the royal court allowed for the ascension of noted rival Tachibana no Moroe to a high official position in the court of Emperor Shōmu.

The epidemic not only killed a large segment of the population, it triggered significant dislocation, migration, and imbalance of labor throughout Japan. 

Highly affected were construction and farming, especially rice cultivation.

Over the next several centuries, Japan continued to experience smallpox epidemics. 

But by the early part of the 2nd millennium, smallpox had become endemic to the Japanese population and thus less devastating during outbreaks.

Black Death.

The Black Death (also known as the Pestilence, the Great Mortality, or the Plague) was a bubonic plague pandemic occurring in Afro-Eurasia from 1346 to 1353. 

It is the most fatal pandemic recorded in human history, resulting in the deaths of 75–200 million people in Eurasia and North Africa, peaking in Europe from 1347 to 1351. 

Bubonic plague is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, but it may also cause septicaemic or pneumonic plagues.

The Black Death was the beginning of the second plague pandemic.

The plague created religious, social, and economic upheavals, with profound effects on the course of European history.

The Black Death's territorial origins are disputed. 

The pandemic originated either in Central Asia or East Asia, but its first definitive appearance was in Crimea in 1347. 

From there, it was most likely carried by fleas living on the black rats that travelled on Genoese merchant ships, spreading throughout the Mediterranean Basin and reaching Africa, Western Asia, and the rest of Europe via Constantinople, Sicily, and the Italian Peninsula. 

Current evidence indicates that once it came onshore, the Black Death was in large part spread by human fleas – which cause pneumonic plague – and the person-to-person contact via aerosols which pneumonic plague enables, thus explaining the very fast inland spread of the epidemic, which was faster than would be expected if the primary vector was rat fleas causing bubonic plague.

The Black Death was the second disaster affecting Europe during the Late Middle Ages (the first one being the Great Famine of 1315–1317) and is estimated to have killed 30% to 60% of Europe's population.

In total, the plague may have reduced the world population from an estimated 475 million to 350–375 million in the 14th century.

There were further outbreaks throughout the Late Middle Ages, and with other contributing factors it took until 1500 for the European population to regain the levels of 1300. 

Outbreaks of the plague recurred at various locations around the world until the early 19th century.

The Great Plague of Seville.

The Great Plague of Seville (1647–1652) was a massive outbreak of disease in Spain that killed up to a quarter of Seville's population.

Unlike the plague of 1596–1602, which claimed 600,000 to 700,000 lives, or a little under 8% of the population and initially struck northern and central Spain and Andalusia in the south, the Great Plague, which may have arisen in Algeria, struck the Mediterranean side of Spain first. 

The coastal city of Valencia was the first city to be hit, losing an estimated 30,000 people. 

The disease raged through Andalucía, in addition to sweeping the north into Catalonia and Aragon. 

The coast of Málaga lost upwards of 50,000 people. 

In Seville, quarantine measures were evaded, ignored, unproposed and/or unenforced. 

The results were devastating. 

The city of Seville and its rural districts were thought to have lost 150,000 people— starting with a total population of 600,000. 

Altogether Spain was thought to have lost 500,000 people, out of a population of slightly fewer than 10,000,000, or nearly 5% of its entire population. 

This was the greatest, but not the only, plague of 17th century Spain.

Almost 25 years later, another plague ravaged Spain. 

For nine years (1676–1685), great outbreaks of the disease attacked in waves across the country. 

It struck the areas of Andalucía and Valencia particularly hard. 

In conjunction with the poor harvest of 1682-83 which created famine conditions, the effects killed tens of thousands of the weakened and exhausted population. 

When it ended in 1685, it is estimated to have taken over 250,000 lives. 

This was the last outbreak of plague in Spain in the 17th century.

Three great plagues ravaged Spain in the 17th century. 

They were:

1: The Plague of 1596–1602 (Arrived in Santander by ship from northern Europe, most likely the Netherlands, then spread south through the center of Castile, reaching Madrid by 1599 and arriving in the southern city of Seville by 1600.)

2: The Plague of 1646–1652 ("The Great Plague of Seville"; believed to have arrived by ship from Algeria, it was spread north by coastal shipping, afflicting towns and their hinterlands along the Mediterranean coast as far north as Barcelona.)

3: The Plague of 1676–1685.

Factoring in normal births, deaths, plus emigration, historians reckon the total cost in human lives due to these plagues throughout Spain, throughout the entire 17th century, to be a minimum of nearly 1.25 million. 

As a result, the population of Spain scarcely budged between the years 1596 and 1696.

The disease is generally believed to have been bubonic plague, an infection by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, transmitted via a rat vector. 

Other symptom patterns of the bubonic plague, such as septicemic plague and pneumonic plague, were also present.

The Great Plague of London.

The Great Plague of London, lasting from 1665 to 1666, was the last major epidemic of the bubonic plague to occur in England. 

It happened within the centuries-long Second Pandemic, a period of intermittent bubonic plague epidemics which originated from Central Asia in 1331, the first year of the Black Death, an outbreak which included other forms such as pneumonic plague, and lasted until 1750.

The Great Plague killed an estimated 100,000 people—almost a quarter of London's population—in 18 months.

The plague was caused by the Yersinia pestis bacterium, which is usually transmitted through the bite of a human flea or louse.

The 1665–66 epidemic was on a much smaller scale than the earlier Black Death pandemic and became known afterwards as the "great" plague mainly because it was the last widespread outbreak of bubonic plague in England during the 400-year Second Pandemic.

In order to judge the severity of an epidemic, it is first necessary to know how big the population was in which it occurred. 

There was no official census of the population to provide this figure, and the best contemporary count comes from the work of John Graunt (1620–1674), who was one of the earliest Fellows of the Royal Society and one of the first demographers, bringing a scientific approach to the collection of statistics. 

In 1662, he estimated that 384,000 people lived in the City of London, the Liberties, Westminster and the out-parishes, based on figures in the Bills of Mortality published each week in the capital. 

These different districts with different administrations constituted the officially recognized extent of London as a whole. 

In 1665, he revised his estimate to "not above 460,000". Other contemporaries put the figure higher (the French Ambassador, for example, suggested 600,000), but with no mathematical basis to support their estimates.

 The next largest city in the kingdom was Norwich, with a population of 30,000.

As in other European cities of the period, the plague was endemic in 17th-century London.

The disease periodically erupted into massive epidemics. There were 30,000 deaths due to the plague in 1603.

35,000 in 1625, and 10,000 in 1636, as well as smaller numbers in other years.