Trying to Study Medical History

One of history's most appealing qualities is the many mysterious events, people, and sometimes places that are mentioned yet very little information exists about who or what it or they were. One these many mystery events are sometimes disease. In early human records dating all the way back to ancient Egypt there have been records of plagues and bouts of diseases that often times confuse and boggle the minds of every historian who reads the accounts in what limited form records that exist from the particular time period. This highlights one the inherent problems with tracking the spread and/or outbreak of disease or diseases throughout history.

Records are often incomplete or do not give enough detail as to what the symptoms of the disease were and when and/or, if possibly known, the source of the outbreak. This sort of historical data forces researchers to rely on other forms of data in order to create a coherent picture of what sort of medical disaster occurred and possibly what the inhabitants did to treat the disease itself. In the absences of concrete or even circumstantial data for that matter, historians are forced to propose theories based largely on what little is known about the epidemic in order to come to a conclusion on what sort of epidemic it was that befell those unlucky souls. Sometimes historians don't even have the pleasure of a record of the disease but merely the notation of a colony or even a civilizations virtual disappearance from the face of the Earth, in these cases sometimes historians must try and track the occurrence of disease epidemics in the area and hope that there is some how a link between an epidemic in one place and the disappearance of the colony in the other. While there are a number of records concerning disease outbreaks, there are often times very little records on how many people were afflicted and with what, this comes from the way society worked in America during the 1700's and 1800's where doctors were scarce and/or not trusted, people would treat themselves and this could sometimes lead to not so good results.

One of the greatest tools for a historian studying past epidemics and often times his/her biggest problem is that of historical records that were left behind in the wake of an epidemic's departure. In the centuries prior to the 17^th and 18^th centuries, record keeping was very scare in many areas, though a number of events are well recorded it was often found that many records were kept by monks, priests, and other clergy as they were often the only group for miles that had any knowledge of how to read and write. This brings forth the first problem about finding records from the deepest points of history, education. The upper-class and clergy were for the most part the only two groups in Europe and America that had any formal education and was capable of reading and writing, therefore the apparent lack of records concerning population, occurrence of disease, etc, etc. While there are numerous cited records concerning major epidemics such as the many smallpox epidemics that swept the east coast of the North American colonies following settlement in the 16^th century and continuing until smallpox's eventual eradication centuries later.

Though the records are sometimes sporadic, most name smallpox directly as the cause for the epidemic. This is not always the case however, sometimes records from the time of a plague carry very little detail or come to historians incomplete be it due to a fire or other disaster that damaged the records, for example: In 1635 there was an outbreak of a disease in Guadeloupe, Mexico. Many historians point to yellow fever as the culprit in this case, however due to a lack of established records that could confirm yellow fever's unique symptoms against the many other diseases, the most historians can do is track the occurrence of yellow fever in the area during that time period, as well as other diseases, and attempt to establish a connection to the 1635 epidemic. While vague and incomplete records detailing an epidemics symptoms and results may be a difficulty that faces historians on a regular basis, there are other records that can be used to help establish the conditions of a location at the time of an epidemic and can possibly assist historians as to what disease would have thrived in that area and resulted in an epidemic. With yellow fever for example, most of the largest yellow fever epidemics that occurred in the Americas occurred in the area of a sugar plantation or a sugar refinery, mostly due to the fact that these locations provided a profitable breeding and feeding ground for the Aedes aegypti mosquito which carries malaria, by tracking the location and establishment of the sugar industry and correlating that data with the dates mentioning an epidemic, historians can come up with the possible dates for a yellow fever epidemic, though the conclusion would not be final due to a lack of concrete evidence suggesting that it was indeed yellow fever.

There are times when there are no records of a disease but of something more mystical, such as witchcraft. It is now believed today that many cases that occurred centuries ago had nothing to do with magic and the such but ranged from the cases of hating your neighbor to a possible disease that infected somebody and resulted in the person acting a little nutty for awhile. This conclusion has been reached for the most part concerning the Salem Witch Trials in 1691 in Salem, Massachusetts. While the witch trials are a heavily recorded and documented event in history, the records make no mention of anybody bringing forth the possibility of a disease infecting the girls and resulting in their apparent hysteria. In cases such as this historians must use the records of the girls different reactions and symptoms as recorded by trials, and compare those notes to modern medical knowledge concerning the different types of diseases that could result in those symptoms.

Thanks to modern medical knowledge and technology, historians have managed to deduce that there is a highly probable chance that the girls that were at the center of the Salem Witch Trials may have been caused by one of two possible disorders. The first is ergot, which is a disease that attacks cereal grains and is caused by a fungus. This fungus replaces the grain with a long, hard, black colored sclerotial body which contains several potent alkaloids including approximately 10% of the narcotic hallucinogen LSD. The ingestion of this diseased grain would result in many of the disorders that were observed occurring in Salem during the witch trials. Another possible theory which is plausible but doesn't carry as much weight is that the girls were afflicted with a disorder known as Artic Hysteria. This particular affliction is based around the lack or imbalance of several nutrients in the person's diet. The hysteria is caused by low absorption of calcium in a person's body; this can be brought on by a lack of green, leafy vegetables, dairy products, and a lack of sunlight on the person's body which carries vitamin D. At the time of the witch trials in Salem, the staple diets were high in phosphorus which led to an imbalance and possibly, ultimately, Artic Hysteria. The example of the Salem Witch Trials shows how historians face such matters as apparent witchcraft or odd afflictions using modern medical knowledge to unravel some of history's great mysteries.

Sometimes there is such a lack of records or the records are so incorrect that all historians know is that there was disease in such and such place at this time period and a lot of people died as a result of it. As it can be seen, this sort of record keeping leaves a lot of questions that need to be answered if historians are to understand what happened at this place and how it shaped future events. An example of this is one of the first epidemics to occur in the Americas in 1493. This disease occurred on the islands that were visited by the earliest Europeans under Christopher Columbus in the Caribbean. Due to the fact that these island civilizations were almost completely wiped out and they had no known ability of how to read and write, historians are forced to rely on the extremely limited records of Columbus and his crew. One of the most accurate pieces of data historians have for this epidemic is the exact start date, December 9^th, 1493. At this point historians must use deductive reasoning and the diseases symptoms to conclude as to what this early epidemic was. Historians were able to rule out malaria due to the lack of evidence of European contact prior to the epidemic; malaria's incubation period doesn't fit the epidemic timetable that has been established, there is also the modern familiarity with malaria that has resulted in its removal from the list of possible diseases for this event. Historians were also to rule out another big killer for this time period, yellow fever.

ellow fever was ruled out by historians due to its obvious African origin and since there had been no African slaves brought over or even contact between the Americas and Africa at this point in time, a yellow fever epidemic seemed apparently impossible. Further driving home this point was that Yellow fever's incubation period didn't fit and that one of yellow fevers key symptoms was absent thereby getting it scratched off the list of possible contenders. In the end, historians came to the conclusion that the only possible disease that could have caused the epidemic was Swine Influenza. Swine Influenza is connected with the presence of pigs, and fortunately there were pigs present. Eight hogs had been brought along on the voyage from the Canary Islands with Columbus's crew. The hogs are the focal point, the swine flue's incubation period and starting point tie in perfectly with the timetable for the 1493 epidemic. Historians have also compared the swine influenza to other outbreaks in different parts of the world that had a mortality rate and found the symptoms and timetable to be much more accurate than other theories that were proposed. As it can be seen, in the absences of accurate and/or complete records, historians rely on modern knowledge of the diseases that were predominate in that time period and compare their noted symptoms, incubation periods, and origins to determine whether or not that disease is linked to a particular epidemic in another part of the world.

Often time's historians don't have the luxury of an accurate statistical record for a epidemic or occurrence of diseases. This comes from the way society in the Americas worked. Doctors were few and far between in the Americas up through the mid-19^th century, also a large number of people did not trust doctors (though this particular trait continues on to this day and age). As a result of this a majority of the people relied on self-help medical guides to treat different medical emergencies that would occur. One of the most predominate self-help guides is Gunn's Domestic Medicine, also known as the Poor Man's Guide to Medicine. This guide was written mostly for frontier and lower-class families. Many of the different diseases and disorders listed in it are unfamiliar to modern schools of thought, though this is probably due to the way these conditions are named and described. This guide would not only list the symptoms of the particular disease and/or condition that you are facing but also ways to treat it.

Though noble, many of these treatments involve substances that are now known to be poisonous and sometimes lethal to human beings. Most treatments though revolve around the school of thought for the time period that if a person got afflicted with something, all which needed to be done, was flush out the system or bleed the bad substance out of the afflicted. This was a predominate school of thought for the time period in which doctors and scientist back then theorized that a person got sick because of bad matter that had entered the body, this was a very long time before the germ theory was even considered and taken seriously, and needed to removed by either bleeding, throwing it up, or by way of an enema. As such, there were many distasteful concoctions that were developed to assist a person in removing substances by way of the latter two directions. Though this could sometimes help a person if they were afflicted with a simple case of indigestion or something of the sort, it was often times not so successful, but it didn't stop people from trying. Due to these different ways people would treat themselves, very few records exist concerning the number of frontier families or lower-class families that would come down with any kind of disease since those families preferred to keep to themselves during such times. A rather humorous method of treatment that should be brought up is that many doctors considered alcohol to be a rather good stimulant and form therefore an excellent form of treatment. It would be sometime before the discovery was made that it wasn't all that good for your liver.

As it can be seen, historians facing a rather daunting task when given the arduous assignment of tracking or pinpointing disease outbreaks and epidemics not only in the New World, but in Europe and Asia as well as this is made difficult by the many different obstacles listed previously. The lack of detailed, accurate records for epidemics in the early days of colonization in the New World mostly due to a lack of educated people who could keep those records, as has been mention before hand, for most of the colonial era mostly clergy and the upper-class had any access to a formal education and therefore the only ones capable of keeping detailed records on what occurred. Sometimes accurate records were kept at the time of an epidemic but were then lost in a fire or other disaster that befell a settlement, nature is just as unkind to historical record as can be humanity itself.

Sometimes there are detailed records of a medical event or epidemic that appeared but the record keepers describe it as an event of more mystical and evil type proportions. The example of the Salem Witch Trials and the possibility of a contamination by ergot or cases of artic hysteria occurring are one such thing. Though the residents of Salem did not know about ergot and artic hysteria back then, it is known to doctors and medical historians today and the knowledge of these two conditions allows researchers to examine the events of then and determine if it was actually one, the other, or both. In the absence of complete and/or detailed records, historians rely on archeology, reasonable deduction, modern medical knowledge, and the few vague records that do exist to determine what did happen as explained in the example of the Swine Influenza epidemic of 1493. The difficulty of researching diseases in the past isn't always because of bad record keeping, but because people back than preferred to handle their own problems with the help of medical guides written for those who couldn't afford a doctor, didn't trust one, or didn't have any sort of access to one. Historians facing many daunting tasks in the exploration of history, but that's what makes it so much fun.