The Impact of European Diseases in the New World Essay

However, the Native Americans didn’t just use these resources they garnered solely for food - they used the resources in several aspects of their lives, specifically for health. The Native Americans were dependant on the use of plants and other resources found in nature to use for curatives. Historians often attest that these curatives were far superior to the ones that Europeans used, and thus the span of life for Native Americans was often longer than that of the European people (The People). However, upon Native American and European contact, the Europeans introduced new, foreign diseases that were deadly because the Native Americans had never been exposed to these diseases, and thus did not have natural immunities to them. This was the same for other infectious diseases introduced to the Europeans, namely syphilis. Although, the amount of Europeans affected by syphilis was not even near the amount of Native Americans killed by some of the European diseases brought over in the Columbian exchange. Bartolomé de Las Casas commented on the epidemic of European viruses that killed thousands of Native Americans: “Who of those in

The origin of disease is a relatively easy idea to understand. Human beings on the planet went through a transition from nomadic, hunter-gatherers to the sedentary lifestyle by utilizing agriculture. This brought relatively small bands of people together into villages, which eventually became towns and cities. In Europe, the people not only used agriculture to feed their growing population, they also domesticated animals for a food source. As the population grew, the size of the herds of animals needed to feed the people grew as well. All animals carry disease and parasites, both in the wild and when they are domesticated. However, domesticated animals proved to be a breeding ground for disease. These domesticated animals were in close contact with the growing population of Europeans and it was not long before the disease was transferred to humans. The microbe, virus, or parasite only had to adapt to living in a human host. The process was relatively quick, and thus the epidemic disease was born in Europe. This was not true for

The pandemic struck the world and infected 1/3 of earth’s human population, killing over 50 million humans. The world’s top doctors have never witnessed anything of this killing magnitude besides the bubonic plague of 1348 but the transmissibility is of nothing they’ve ever seen in their lifetime or of recorded history. People abruptly became aware of the importance of health, and need of medicine and cleanliness.

The history of the United States began with Virginia and Massachusetts; their histories begin with epidemics of unidentified diseases. Smallpox was the worst and the most amusing diseases that were out. Smallpox were just killing down all the Native Americans, they didn’t know what to do with it all. The epidemic destroyed half of the Cherokee in 1738, in 1759 almost half of the Catawba’s, in the first years of the next century two-thirds of the Omaha’s and perhaps half of the population between the Missouri River and New Mexico.

Crops from the New World were also brought to Europe. Because of the surplus in crops, the Indians gave the Europeans a lot of crops in exchange for manufactured goods, which negatively impacted the Indians because they would run out of crops eventually (Doc. 7). With manufactured goods, the Europeans brought smallpox, influenza, typhus, measles, malaria, diphtheria, and whooping cough. The Indians taught the colonial men about tobacco and cocaine, therefore both parties suffered health issues. Over the course of a decade the population of the Indians declined from over 25 millions to just about 1 million people (Doc.

The problem of epidemics like smallpox, measles, and other European, Asian, and African diseases negatively affected the abilities of Native Americans to resist the invasions by Europeans. These sicknesses made native peoples too weak to resist. This pattern was no different in North, South, and Central America. As Europeans entered the lands, so did the diseases and they spread, causing the natives to become weak enough for the Europeans to easily invade.

An epidemic occurs when a disease spreads to more people in one area then usually happens. There have been many epidemics in history that have had devastating effects. Two epidemics that occurred right here in the United States were cholera and scarlet fever. From the 1830’s to the 1860’s, cholera spread throughout the United States killing many people. And in the late 1850’s scarlet fever spread throughout the New England area of the United States. For both of these terrible diseases it is not clear what stopped their rapid spread. Today there is a vaccine for cholera but not for scarlet fever. However, there are ways to protect yourself from catching these diseases. New and stronger illnesses seem to be happening all the time and are in the news. However, we still need to be aware of these diseases from the past so we can keep ourselves healthy.

As stated in Document 5, “It wasn’t the swords or guns that devastated (destroyed) the Native Americans, it was the germs… Brion Davis says this was the greatest genocide in the history of man.” (Document 5). . An estimated 50 to 90 percent of Native Americans died from European diseases. Europeans nearly killed an entire population by coming to America. These diseases included smallpox, influenza and malaria (Document 2).

The greatest adversary to the natives in the Americas was not the swords or guns of the invaders. It was the devastation brought by deadly diseases infecting an unsuspecting population that had no immunity to such diseases.

Each tribe built their own towns and traded over far distances with other tribes. These were the people that were met with European explorers when their ships landed in America. Before the Europeans came along, the Natives would rarely ever die from any type of disease, however as the Europeans came to North America, they brought immense changes to Native American tribes. The Europeans carried a number of new diseases that the Natives were in no way accustomed to. Some of these diseases include the bubonic plague, cholera, typhus, tuberculosis, smallpox, influenza, measles, and the chicken pox. Sometimes the illnesses spread through direct contact with the colonists while other times as they were trading with one another. The Natives had no immunity to these types of diseases therefor were forced to suffer a very great loss. English explorer Thomas Harriot noticed how European visits to small villages of Indians killed the Natives. He wrote: “Within a few days after our departure from every such [Indian] town, the people began to die very fast, and many in short space; in some towns about twenty, in some forty, in some sixty, & in one six score, which in truth was very many in respect of their

After a civilization gains domesticable animals they will contract some of the diseases those animals hold. One key example are the Spanish, they contracted smallpox from some of their domesticable animals, and although it did kill much of their population eventually they gained an immunity to the disease, but they were still carriers of it. The Inca, which the Spanish later came into contact with, contracted smallpox. This was because they didn’t have an immunity to the disease, because they didn’t have any domesticable animals except llamas, which didn’t carry

The Spread of Disease from The Old to The New world. Well the Old world caught diseases from trade. Which wiped out a countless of Indian population. The New World caught diseases because the Americans, the arrival of Europeans brought disease, war, and slavery to many indigenous people. Also the diseases they were spreading were smallpox, measles, whopping cough, chickenpox, plague, typhus, and malaria.

While others, were only effected by direct contact. It was thought to have been sustainable by even touching clothing or other such items of the infected. Conditions of the fourteenth century were also a contributing factor. Famine had been an arising issue due to the number of overpopulation. Because of this, their immune systems began to weaken. “Europeans were susceptible to disease because many people lived in crowded surroundings in an era when personal hygiene was not considered important” (Dowling). The cities were unsanitary and littered with germs, making it easier to sustain such diseases. Unhealthy habits were conducted and medical advances had not yet been made. Doctors themselves had not known what to advise. No prescriptions had worked. There was no cure to what was happening. Most were not even aware of what was impending upon them. Anything that could would be tried, in hopes of living. People were becoming desperate.

Exposure to diseases affected how civilizations conquered other countries and created inequality. Climate and geography affected which crops we could grow, what animals could survive in certain places leading to domestication of those animals. Germs and diseases came with animals and the people of eurasia become immune to these diseases like smallpox. Others like inca were not exposed to the same things the spanish were like living in the same house with the animals, drinking the animals milk and eating the animals meat so it made it easy for the spanish to wipe out the inca and many other countries. The other countries might of been really developed but it was easy for the spanish to kill them in a instance once they gave the disease to

“The rodents spread the plague from China to Europe and it hit Britain in 1348.”(Bates, Claire) So if the world is so populated more people will be homeless, and the disease could spread easier wiping out millions. The black death was also spread by people getting bites from infected rats, the disease travels through the body into the lungs, and when the person coughs or sneezes, the disease is transmitted into the air and can infect people who breath in that same air. So if the world becomes too over populated and there aren’t enough houses people will be living on the streets where disease could spread easier and faster just like the black death. “Indirect contact infections spread when an infected person sneezes or coughs, sending infectious droplets into the air.”(DIRECT…) So if everyone if coughing and sneezing then anyone who breathes in that contaminated air could get the disease. “Last year, it called dengue the “most rapidly spreading mosquito-borne viral disease” in the world—faster than West Nile virus or malaria.”(The deadly…) If this disease was to break out when the world is overpopulated a disease could take out almost half the entire human race.There are hundreds of diseases that can be spread by animals, some examples are all types of Influenza, Bubonic Plague, zoonotic diseases, HIV/AIDS, Ebola, and Polio. One disease is the Zika virus, it is spread by mosquito bites who bite women and when if the infected women gets pregnant the Zika virus transfers the virus to the child, once the child is born the child could be born with a fatal brain defect. When the world becomes more populated more people could get bit with more mosquitos and get the Zika virus and a whole new generation of kids could be born with a brain