A Man Named Carlos Chagas

Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna was born in Jalapa, Veracruz Mexico, on February 21, 1794. He belongs to a “criollo” middle class family. His parents were from Spain. He was a Mexican politician and military leader who was President of Mexico eleven times from 1833 to 1855. He was president officially six times, and unofficially five more. He was also a disastrous president of Mexico because he lost Texas and much more of the current American west in the United States. However, by far he was an important figure of his generation in the Mexican history. Many people love him during his first years of president, and he was remembered for two major conflicts, the Battle of the Alamo in 1836 during the Texas Revolution, and as a restored Mexican leader during the Mexican-American War in 1847 (tshaonline.org).

Born Francisco Gonzalez Pizarro to Gonzalo Pizarro and Francisca Gonzalez, Pizarro was an illegitimate son in a society that canonised breeding. He was abandoned by his father, a poor infantry colonel, and grew up in the poverty-stricken Trujillo, Spain. The exact date of his birth is unknown, but he is thought to to have been born some time between 1470 and 1471. Pizarro was given little or no education, and he remained illiterate throughout his life. His mother, Francisca Gonzalez, married later in life, and gave birth to Pizarro’s half-brother, Francisco Martín de Alcántara. Alcantara would later accompany Pizarro on his conquest of Peru.

A Spanish conquistador is that of a conqueror, and explorer, especially one of Mexico and Peru. The beginning of the 16th century was deemed the commencement of the Spanish conquistadors in which was named ‘The Age of Discovery’, where the conquistadors of places such as Spain and Portugal explored the new world and conquered various territories. Looking at military defenses, secrecy and disinformation, financing and governance, and their way of life people can begin to grasp a comprehension of the impact of the Spanish conquistadors. In searching for an understanding for the ways of the Spaniards and their conquests the lessons to be learnt for existing populations can be unraveled.

When Hernando de Soto came to the native Americans he spread diseases like smallpox and measles. Hernando

The person I interviewed name is Javier Gonzales. He is his Hispanic and is from Spain. He has been living here in America for 30+ years. He states “he feels more like an American than his own culture”. He is now 49 years old. He goes back to visit his family yearly because he still have brothers and sisters that lives in Spain.

Jose Guadalupe Posada, “father of Mexican modern art”, was a lithographer, printer and illustrator for newspapers and much more in the 19th and 20th century. He was born on February 2, 1852 in Aguascalientes. His gifts as an artist was revealed at a young age. In 1868 at the age of 16, he began working at a printing house owned by Jose Trinidad Pedroza.

The Black Death ushered in a need for practical medicine. Understanding the cycle of germs, the need of controlling human contact, and the lessons of sanitation and proper handling of disease and materials would prove valuable lessons of the plague. Guy De Chauliac, the

In 1899, after the Spanish- American war, Bailey K. Ashford found a parasite in the New World that was widespread among the rural inhabitants of Puerto Rico. Intrigued, he conducted several studies of the anemia caused by hookworm, which was responsible for many deaths in the area, and set up a treatment plan to cure the infected. Ashford set up dispensaries for the Puerto Rican population. Between 1904 and 1910, American officials treated 287,568 hookworm cases, nearly 1/3 of the population (Sledge 129). Meanwhile, in the United States, Charles Wardell Stiles of the United States Public Health and Marine Hospital Service was informed by Ashford of the hookworm outbreak. Interested in the information, Stiles took a preliminary survey

Garella thought that yellow fever didn’t exist. He was terribly wrong and missed a very important and critical health hazard that led to thousands of worker’s death. Many people thought that the yellow fever was caused by bad air, but it had been proven that the disease was transmitted by mosquitoes. It was very tragic that it led to a lot of workers to death because it wasn’t properly detected during the survey. It was a good that William Gorgas used the research of physicians Ronald Ross, Carlos Juan Finlay, and Walter Reed along with his own experience to get rid of the yellow fever within 18 months or it could have led to more deaths. House mosquito was the carrier of the yellow fever, reading the article is was bred in swamps, on the sides of river, and in puddles. As a worker it was very hard to determine where the mosquitoes were coming from. It was surprising not to see how the workers were being protected from the fever and mosquitoes, some would get immune and would live a long time, but what about new workers that would come in and help build canal, how were they protected. As shown in the picture crude oil was brought in to spray the areas where mosquitoes were breeding to disrupt their life cycle. The spread of the yellow fever was eventually limited by using screens to bar them away from

This was a turning point in his life where renouncing the encomienda, or legal system justifying the occupation of natives under Spanish rule (Encomienda) became paramount. His political ventures began in the year 1515 where the Spanish government allocated him authority to establish a colony off the Venezuelan coast where the alleviation of the natives suffering and exploitation could begin (Baym 39). At this juncture in his fight to end slavery, some countermeasures were presented. One of which was the importation of African slaves to ease Indian suffering. This idea was not conducive to Casas’ cause and he soon redacted it. As stated in Casas History of the Indies, “black slavery was as unjust as Indian slavery, and was no remedy at all” (Las Casas). In this instance, Casas was aware of the injustice of slavery no matter the person.

Illnesses and diseases, such as malaria, typhoid, and dysentery, took a toll on the lives of the vulnerable people

Given the material presented above, it is hardly surprising that German expeditions into Italy frequently suffered from heavy disease mortality. But how can we be certain that any given disease outbreak is malaria, as opposed to typhoid, typhus, bubonic plague, or some other disease associated with marching armies? In general, the medieval chroniclers were not very helpful in distinguishing between various infections, and this reflects the prevailing mindset to disease at the time. Rather than regarding diseases as discrete entities caused by specific pathogens, pre-modern writers generally believed that disease was caused by environmental factors, especially swamp miasmas or urban filth. What is more, diseases were understood as existing along

Devéze’s understanding of yellow fever had come entirely from the ideas of physicians in the West Indies. Like American doctors, West Indies doctors theorized that the fever evolved from disturbances in the atmosphere which disrupted the balance of the humors. Much like the rotten coffee theory, the doctors claimed that yellow fever developed from putrid exhalations that contaminated the air. Devéze used this theory while trying to understand the epidemic in Philadelphia. He proclaimed that when the air was filled with infected matter, the body would become susceptible to disease. He writes that the degree of which the disease affected the body differed among patients. The deadliness of the disease was based on aspects such as unhealthy

He was instead appointed chairman of the board that had been hurriedly formed to investigate the outbreak of typhoid that had reached epidemic proportions in most large army camps. Hundreds of new cases of typhoid were found every day and many were of fatal outcome; bad water was again thought to be the mode of transmission of the bacillus, which had recently been identified. The board found that water was of little importance as a vector of the disease, which, they reported, was rather spread by flies and contact with fecal material. In 1900 Reed was appointed head of an army board to investigate the causes of yellow fever, which had broken out among American troops in Cuba. In the United States yellow fever was an annual disease. It swept up the eastern seaboard and often spread to the Gulf states and up the Mississippi River valley. The places in which it occurred, the season of its occurrence, and the temperature coordinates of its spread were predictable and well known but not understood. No one knew what caused it, and the terror that accompanied it was equaled only by the misapprehension of its nature.The Alabama physician Josiah No had suggested that an insect, perhaps the mosquito, caused the disease but had little evidence, and in 1881 Carlos Finlay, working closely with the United States Yellow Fever Commission in Havana, suggested that yellow fever was transmitted by Culex fasciatus (now called Aëdes aegypti ). The question of the cause of yellow fever was nonetheless still a challenge when Reed took it Up. Upon arriving in Havana, Reed and his co-workers pursued further investigations of Sanarelli’s Bacillus icteroides and concluded that it was the hog-cholera virus. They then turned to the theory of the mosquito as the vector of yellow fever. Since there was no laboratory test for yellow fever, Finlay also aided them in the clinical

Astoundingly, William Gogas was able to eraticate yellow fever in just 18 months. This illness along with Malaria wreaked havoc on the health and wellness of the canal population. Yellow fever was so pervasive and intrusive that it caused among fever and chills much more deadly symptoms including, organ failure, internal hemorrhaging, and jaundice. Much debate surrounded the transmission of yellow fever. Upon reading the effective results of Colonel Gorgas, I was inclined to research what methods he employed to tackle such a feat. I found through additional research a more thorough account of his eradication techniques which first included convincing President Theodore Roosevelt to front the price tag for a process most