In 1878, thousands of refugees fled Cuba during the tail end of the Ten Years' War for independence from Spain — and with them they carried yellow fever. Despite government efforts, including the Quarantine Act, which gave the Marine Hospital Service authority to quarantine infected ships, New ...
Though it had long been eradicated in other parts of the world, the infectious disease smallpox raged through mid-1970s India, with more than 100,000 reported cases and at least 20,000 deaths. India was declared smallpox-free in May 1975.
The Plague of Athens was catastrophic, especially to Greek forces who were in the midst of a war with Sparta. Modern researchers have conjectured about the nature of the plague, with some saying it was typhoid, typhus fever, smallpox or even anthrax. But its true nature may never be known.
Cholera has been around for centuries — the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates seems to allude to it in his work — but for a long time it was restricted to the delta region of India's Ganges River. It wasn't until 1817 when, carried by travelers along trade routes, the disease spread ...
Five years before 39-year-old Franklin Delano Roosevelt was diagnosed with polio, the paralyzing disease struck thousands in the U.S., killing some 6,000. During the 1916 epidemic, 9,000 cases occurred in New York City, which called for quarantines.
China's Yunnan province was the setting for the third and last great plague pandemic, which began in the 1850s. The infectious fever wreaked havoc on Chinese citizens, killing tens of thousands, and by the late 19th century it had made its way to Hong Kong and Guangzhou, which proved ...
The pandemic's most devastating moment was a four-year spell between 1347 and 1351 that, according to some estimates, wiped out as much as two-thirds of Europe's population. The plague — which most historians believe was the bubonic plague, though others have suggested an ebola-like virus — ...
The last in a long series of London bubonic plagues that started in 1499, this epidemic killed about 20 percent of Londoners. It started to subside in early 1666 and finally ended after the Great Fire of London later that year.
