Tag: diseases

What were (really) the worst years in history?

Pavel

2020 is now over, and many have the feeling that it was one of the worst years in history. But are you really sure? We start from Ancient Greece, which could also include 1628 BC among its worst years, with the famous Minoan Eruption, on which, however, science has yet to provide sufficient answers to statistical analyzes to fully understand its extent. Then there are the war years, including both World Wars and, in any case, to make a comparison with the just ended 2020 is absolutely wrong. But the…

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Sanatorio Durán: one of the most haunted places in Costa Rica

Ivan

We are along the road to Irazú Volcano, 7 kilometers north of the city of Cartago, Costa Rica. It’s said Carlos Durán Cartín, an eminent physician who briefly served as president of Costa Rica (1889-90), opened this tuberculosis hospital in 1918 hoping to treat his own daughter who was suffering from the disease, for which there was no known treatment in Central America at the time. Others say that she contracted the disease after the hospital opened but, in any case, he chose a remote location complete with good weather,…

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Hong Kong and the sad echoes of the 1894 plague epidemic

Nathan

While COVID-19 are stopping the world on current days, a 19th-century pandemic still haunts Hong Kong’s Sheung Wan district. Nearly 130 years ago, the neighborhood was an epicenter of one of the deadliest pandemics on record, and like many former zone in which plague spread, the area still carries with it the weight of that tragedy. At the time the waterfront city was a British colony and vital port of trade. As such, it experienced a mass influx of mainland Chinese laborers, from tradespeople to servants, who came to the…

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The Truth behind Edmonton’s Haunted Hospital~

Leo S

It is known as one of the most haunted buildings in Alberta, Canada: it is the former Charles Camsell Hospital in Edmonton, which holds long forgotten secrets still waiting to come to light. Some have said they’ve seen figures in the windows and there are lot of locals that think their ancestors spirits haven’t found peace and they’re still wandering, because for a lot of people it was not a happy place. First established as a Jesuit College in the early 1900’s, it was then used as a military base…

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Spanish Flu: the deadliest epidemic in human history

Pavel

From 1918 to 1920, a strain of influenza known as Spanish flu caused a global pandemic, spreading rapidly and killing indiscriminately young, old, sick and otherwise-healthy people, and at least 10% of patients died. Estimates vary on the exact number of deaths caused by the disease, but it is thought to have infected a third of the world’s population and it caused a never seen number of dead: from 50 to 100 million people died in just over a year. The greatest historical cause that led to such a number…

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The remarkable story of Eyam’s self-quarantine in the 17th century

Adam

November 1st 1666, All Saints Day. The plague takes away its latest victim in the remote village of Eyam, England. One of the many deaths from the Great Plague of 1665/66, but not only. Because this twenty-year-old boy, the last of the 260 people in the village taken away from the disease, perhaps he would have had a chance to save himself, like others, if he had not accepted a very difficult but sensible decision, made approximately four months earlier from all the inhabitants of Eyam. From 1665 to 1666,…

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The “anomalous” burial of a child in a 5th century Umbrian cemetery

Adam

Lugnano in Teverina is a small village, located in the region of central Italy Umbria, surrounded by green hills that descend towards the valley of the Tiber river. At the beginning of the first century AD, on one of these hills, an unknown man, probably a wealthy Roman, built his villa (a complex of over 1800 square meters), which however was already in ruins around the third century. For some unknown reason, around the middle of the 15th century, when the western Roman empire was very close to its end,…

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Portraits from Bedlam: 17 photographs from one of the most infamous mental hospital of the 19th Century

Pavel

It was called Bethlem Royal Hospital, but it was nicknamed “Bedlam”, London’s famous horror hospital. Founded in 1247, It was the first mental health institution to be set up in Europe, and reaches up to the present day, resulting still active today in the heart of the English capital. Among the most famous treatments are the “rotational” treatments, invented by Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of the most famous Charles, which involved positioning the patient on a chair suspended in the air that was turned for hours, with the declared aim of…

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Anatori Burial Vaults: A tragic story of Khevsureti’s village.

randomcollabs

The Anatori Vaults are a number of square slate structures located in a remote area in Georgia near the border of Chechnya, a land surrounded with lot of mysterious legends and folklore that captivate every visitor. This area of Georgia is wild and remote. Pagan “Ram’s Head” churches can still be found in this area and its proximity to Chechnya, a Russian republic, only adds fuel to the story’s fire…. We are in high mountains region Khevsureti, in the North direction from Tbilisi near the border of Russian republic. Distance…

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