Disease In North America
What is disease?
How do you get it?
What can it do to you?
How is a disease different from a cold?
Before the Europeans came to North America the Native Americans had not had a major disease to kill an entire group or tribe.
When the Europeans crossed the Atlantic looking for land and riches they brought with them diphtheria, measles, smallpox, and malaria.
The Native Americans did not have the ability in their bodies to fight off these new diseases. So they died in large numbers.
Today we say their immunity was low.
What are the effects of these diseases?
Smallpox is a virus that is only seen in humans. It is transferred through the air currents from person to person. It is an infectious, and highly contagious disease. The infected person has raised bumps all over the body. This disease was eradicated by vaccination and this had not been invented in the 1600’s. The last time smallpox was seen was in 1974.
Diphtheria is a highly contagious bacterial infection, which mainly affects the nose, throat and occasionally the skin, but in more serious cases, it can attack the heart and nerves. The disease is transferred in drops of moisture when someone coughs or sneezes. The disease still exists today. It is seen only rarely and can be treated if caught early. A person with this disease will usually be quarantined in a hospital setting and given antibiotics to destroy the bacterium and you may also be given an immunization to prevent any reoccurrences of diphtheria. When you are young, you are given a shot, which prevents this disease.
Measles is a viral infection that causes an illness displaying a characteristic skin rash known as an exanthem. Measles is also sometimes called rubeola. Measles still exists today but is mostly prevented by vaccine. Foreign travelers brought in most cases of measles in this country in the last ten years. Measles is a rash that starts at the <
head and covers the entire body. It is accompanied by a high fever.
Malariais a disease that is contracted from a bite from a mosquito. It is an illness that can return and one syntom is a high fever. People are infected by these mosquitos in the subtropics and in Africa. When someone is bitten by a mosquito, parasites enter the blood and move to the liver where they multiply over the next one to three weeks. Then they spread to the body where they begin to do damage on all of your body organs. There is medication now for people to take to help with the disease.
So imagine, there were no medicines and there were explorers and settlers coming to your land and bringing their diseases to you and there is nothing you can do.
When one Native American would come into contact with a European carrying the disease, he or she would then take the disease back to the family and village. If there were only herbs and Medicine Men to treat these diseases, it was more than likely that an entire tribe could die.