Patient Zero

A Curious History of the World's Worst Diseases

Lydia Kang M.D. and Nate Pedersen

2021 Beaverton Lib 614.49 KAN

• p12 Zoonoses Making the Leap

• "In the past 70 years, the vast majority of new infectious diseases have been caused by a virus, parasite, bacterium, or prion that jumped from animal to human" .
• p12 1998 Nipah from bats through Malaysian pigs
• p16 Lyme (Borrelia bacteria) from deer ticks

• p25 Ebola ... bushmeat? (p34)

• p38 Germ Theory Pasteur 1860

• p50 The Plague Yersinia pestis bacteria

• p55 San Francisco 1900 15-block area of Chinatown quarantined
• p63 Autopsy Herophilus 335-280 BCE, widely performed 16th century and after
• p67 Brain jello, like firm avocado after formalin fixative
• p67 privately ordered autopsy $3K to $5K
• p76 Mad Cow, Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (prion) Britain 1984
• p85 Fatal insomnia
• p87 Legionella 1976
• p100 Yellow Fever (Memphis 1878) Aedes aegypti mosquito
• p111 COVID-19, early 2021 US led the world in infections and deaths

• p128 H1N1 Swine flu, 2009 Ukraine prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko lost election while "overplaying dangers"

• p130 HIV 1981, primate(?) in Democratic Republic of Congo
• p138 AZT azidothymidine/zidovudine
• p145 2019 38 million infected, +2M/year
• p146 Columbian exchange diseases
• p154 Uncontacted people, perhaps mostly in amazonia
• p155 Typhus 1577 Oxford outbreak
• p162 1812 - 600K Napoleon Grand Armee attacks Moscow, typhus, 27K return
• p167 1846 Measles in Faroe and Fiji Islands
• p178 Hansen's Disease (Leprosy) Mycobacterium leprae, p188 transmitted to armadillos 400 years ago
• p189 Syphilis Treponema pallidum (to Europe after first Columbus expedition)
• p196 Karen von Blixen (Out of Africa) from husband Gustave Flaubert
• p200 1932 Tuskegee study of untreated syphilis in Negro Males for the next 40 years
• p201 Quackery
• p212 Typhoid Mary Mallon 1869-1938 Salmonella typhi
• p224 1918 Influenza
• p229 historian John Barry suggests source was Haskell, Kansas
• p243 Smallpox killed 1 in 7, variolization killed 6 of 242
• p244 Jenner and cowpox
• p251 Polio, Italian immigrants in Brooklyn 1916
• p260 Salk killed-virus vaccine, Sabin live mutant-virus vaccine - mutated and spread again
• p262 Roosevelt, perhaps Guillian-Barre, not polio
• p263 Hepatitis C, improper reuse of needles and syringes
• p272 20% of cancers blamed on infectious causes, for example human papiloma virus HPV
• p280 Fecal microbiota transplants after Clostridioede difficile
• p282 Cholera, Vibro cholerae
• p288 John Snow 1854 cholera from Broad Street water pump
• p292 Reverend Henry Whitehead proves cesspool leaked sewage into water pump 3 feet away
• p293 Cholera treatable with oral hydration therapy, liter of water (two pints), half teaspoon of salt, six teaspoons of sugar
• p294 Anthrax (Bacilus antracis) weaponization; WW1 Germany, Japan 1930s, Soviet Union, Iraq 2003

• p298 Sverdlovsk/Yekaterinburg 1979 Compound 19, missing exhaust filter

• p300 Anthrax letters after 2001 Sept 11 attacks. 43 tested positive, 22 sick, 4 died. Fort Detrick MD researcher Bruce Edwards Ivins implicated, suicide, no conclusive proof.

• p306 1984 Rajneshee salmonella poisoning salad bars in Wasco county, 750 sick, 45 seriously, no deaths
• p307 Rabies (lyssavirus), nearly 100% fatal without treatment
  • p314 Pasteur attenuated vaccine .p316 prevailing treatment vaccination, rabies-immune-globulin, antivirals, support

• p317 Tuberculosis ( Mycobacterium tuberculosis) airborne wp management

• p329 Smallpox / Variola, last victim British medical photographer Janet Parker 1978
• p334 may re-emerge from carcasses in thawing permafrost

• p340 Wu Lien-teh (layered masks)

• p344 Sarah Little Turnbull N95 respirator