Category: Diseases & Pathogens, Health, Maryland
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The Threat Throughout the last three thousand years, smallpox has shadowed civilization. A viral infection, the disease spread along trade routes, emerging first in Africa, Asia and Europe and reaching the Americas in the sixteenth century. Because smallpox requires a human host to survive it tended to smolder in densely populated areas, erupting in a full-blown epidemic every ten years or so. Wherever it appeared, the legacy of smallpox was death, blindness, sterility and scarring. While some medical practitioners claimed to cure smallpox, most medical traditions focused on prevention.
History of Medicine The tragedy of the AIDS epidemic brought about an outpouring of items, intended to educate the public about the disease and its consequences. Starting in the early 1980s—AIDS was first identified in 1981—the initial response to the disease generated ephemeral public health materials, such as buttons, posters, cards, comic books, and even lunch boxes. Since AIDS was both incurable and invariably fatal, these messages of prevention were the only effective steps that public health officials could take. Produced by government health departments as well as private organizations, these ephemeral objects became an important medium for messages of awareness, prevention, compassion, and responsibility.
History of Medicine Introduction 引言 Tuberculosis was one of the major epidemic diseases in 20th-century China, along with smallpox, malaria, cholera, schistosomiasis, and other epidemics. Organized efforts to fight the disease began in 1933 when the National Anti-Tuberculosis Association of China was established. From 1950 through 1980, the Chinese government launched anti-tuberculosis campaigns as part of the national public health movement. The Anti-TB Association and the Red Cross played important roles in the health education campaigns. Health posters became an important tool to disseminate health knowledge and methods of prevention and treatment. The campaigns, along with the universal free healthcare, led to a significant decline of tuberculosis.
