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plague-felaket,salgın,veba
PLAGUES IN WORLD HISTORY
A part taken from the Introduction of the book PLAGUES IN WORLD HISTORY

by JOHN ABERTH
explicable-nedeni anlaşılmaz fascinate-hayran bırakmak,merak etmek
bane-zehir

Why study disease? It’s not a very pleasant subject to contemplate. The pages of its
keyfi-isteğe bağlı
history are full of suffering and death. Its comings and goings often seem arbitrary
and simply inexplicable, the bane of most historians. There is no happy ending.
morbid-hastalıklı
And yet . . . there is something about plagues that fascinates. For those with morbid
gösteri büyüleyici korku uyandırma
minds, the spectacle of mass death is mesmerizing in its capacity to inspire fear,
panic, viciousness, and cruelty. But for those of us who hold out some hope for hold out for-
humanity, there is also to be found—even in a time of plague—kindness, dayanmak
kahramanlık temper-sertleştirme,öfke
generosity, courage, and heroism. Truly, an epidemic tempers a society, subjecting
yenik düşmek
it to trials either to which it must succumb or over which it must triumph. There is
no middle ground with plague. It is the litmus test of civilizations.
litmus-turnusol
interchangeably-birbirinin yerine
Obviously, for our purposes, plagues and disease will be used interchangeably. Even
though “plague” does refer to a specific disease,1 which will be a main focus of this
book, the origins of the term can be traced back to the Latin word plaga, meaning a
“blow” or “wound.” While in the classical context of the Latin language plague
might be associated with a misfortune or disaster of some kind, it was not
necessarily associated with disease; this only seems to have emerged during the
late Roman Empire, when the Church issued a definitive Latin “Vulgate” edition of
the Old and New Testaments, largely through the labours of St. Jerome, by 405 C.E.
In this new context, plague naturally came to mean a “blow” from on high, such as
struck down-devirmek,aciz bırakmak
when the Hebrew God struck down every firstborn male in Egypt, as recounted in
recount-describe,telling stories
the Book of Exodus. But this idea, if not the term, for plague was a common
emanate-çıkmak,yayılmak
inheritance from the ancients, all of whom viewed disease as naturally emanating
from the gods. Like the Hebrews, the Greeks could conceive of disease as a
punishment or test for humans, with perhaps the most famous example being
Apollo using his silver bow to rain down plague upon the Greeks, after Agamemnon
insult-saldırmak,aşağılamak
had insulted his priest, Chryses, in the opening pages of Homer’s epic poem The
Iliad. But in older Egyptian and Mesopotamian cultures, the reasons for the gods
sending down disease could also be rather mysterious and unfathomable. unfathomable-akıl
ermez,anlaşılmaz
The history of disease, of course, is very old. It goes right back to the very
beginnings of humanity, when men and women first became aware of the pain and
suffering caused by abnormal conditions, such as the invasion of their bodies by
other organisms. Ever since they evolved from apes, humans were infected by the

caused-sebep olan,sebep olmuş 1

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hastalığa yakalanmış
same diseases that afflicted their primate ancestors and that were caused by
microbes that originated and adapted to their hosts millions of years ago. Some of
these “heirloom” infections include herpes, hepatitis, and yellow fever, all caused
by viruses, as well as malaria, caused by a plasmodium. Later, when humans
became hunters, other diseases passed to them from animals when they ate raw or
partially cooked meats. For instance, Paleolithic man may have suffered from a
variety of bacterial diseases, including anthrax, brucellosis, tularemia, and glanders,
as a result of the microbes being present in the wild game they hunted.
However, the opportunities for disease causation and spread are thought to have
increased dramatically with the advent of settled agriculture at the dawn of the
koruma-kollama
Neolithic period in c. 8000 B.C.E. Maintaining close and regular contact with
domesticated animals, not to mention with other humans, as well as creating
stagnant reservoir pools such as irrigation ditches and accumulating large amounts
of human waste, perhaps within contaminating distance of drinking supplies,
opened a new chapter in the disease history of humankind by allowing illnesses to
become endemic, or perpetually present, in the artificial microbe pools thus
gelişmek
created. Chronic diseases that could thrive even in small populations and that were
associated with the new, man-made environments include tuberculosis,
schistosomiasis, and typhoid fever. However, some “density-dependent” diseases,
such as measles or smallpox, that may have originated in Neolithic man’s newfound
relationship with domesticated animals nonetheless had to wait until human
sürdürmek-ayakta tutmak
populations became large enough to sustain them, which could not have happened
much before 3000 B.C.E. Other ills that are caused by dietary deficiencies also
daha sabit
increased at this time, despite the fact that more and steadier supplies of food were
offset -karşılamak
now available, since this was offset by a decline in the variety of foods that had
göçebe
formerly been consumed under more nomadic circumstances. offset-
karşılamak,dengelemek
Eventually, trade, war, migrations, and other activities that brought distant human
populations together were also to add to this disease environment, of which
illnesses like plague and influenza were to be the primary beneficiaries. Early
humans also made efforts to counteract or compensate for disease-ridden
sewer-kanalizasyon imposing-etkileyici
conditions by designing sewer systems, imposing unclean food taboos, or setting up
social barriers between disparate populations or “castes,” such as were distinctive
yine de
features of ancient civilizations in India and Palestine (Hebrew culture). Yet, such
elde etmiş olabilir
efforts may have had mixed success. For example, the impressive sewer systems
uncovered in the urban environments of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa, part of the
Indus River valley civilization in India dating to around 2600 B.C.E., even boasts
individual household latrines connecting to the underground drains. It would seem
obvious that this was part of an effort to contain waste contamination and protect
freshwater drinking supplies, but one should not discount the possibility that it was
discount-önemsememek
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equally motivated by a desire to efficiently collect waste for use as fertilizer, in

which case the likelihood of contracting disease would only increase.
Toward the end of the Neolithic period, we begin to accumulate other evidence of
den başka
the impact of disease upon human societies aside from the archaeological. Our
most valuable sources now become the written records that first make their
appearance around 3000 B.C.E. Perhaps the earliest descriptions of and references
to disease can be found in ancient Mesopotamian literature. The epic poem
Gilgamesh, written down around 2000 B.C.E. but recounting events that apparently
occurred several centuries earlier, tells of how the hero’s friend, Enkidu, contracts a
zayıflatıcı hastalık
debilitating illness that confines him to his bed for twelve days until he dies. The
identity of the disease that kills Enkidu is never made clear, for its symptoms are not
atfetmek
described; we know only that it causes Enkidu great pain and that he ascribes it to
lanet intikam
the curse of the gods in retribution for slaying the Bull of Heaven. However, further
yol açmış olabilir sağlamak
details as to what this illness may have entailed are supplied by the “Poem of the
Righteous Sufferer,” part of the Mesopotamian wisdom literature dating to the
babilBabylonian period during the first half of the third millennium B.C.E. Like Enkidu,
prostrate-halsiz,perişan
the “Babylonian Job” lies prostrate in his bed, although his condition is more fully
described: He has become deaf, blind, and dumb; a stiffness has taken over his
zayıflamış inflame-iltihaplı
limbs; and his flesh has become emaciated and inflamed. All this is accompanied by
a headache, intestinal distress, and discharge of phlegm; at its worst, the disease
forces the patient to spend “the night in my dung like an ox” and wallow “in my
excrement like a sheep.” If the disease has come from the gods, the sufferer
şaşırıp kalmak
remains mystified as to why, since he has performed all of the usual rituals,
libations, prayers, and other observances in honour of his deities. Like the later
kullanılmış,günahı bağışlanmış
biblical Job, however, the sufferer is eventually redeemed by the Babylonian god
Marduk, who restores him to his former health and happiness.
From the almost equally ancient Egyptian culture comes the first recorded medical
literature in history, the medical or surgical papyri, the oldest of which perhaps
dates to the time of Imhotep in the 2600s B.C.E., even though the manuscript itself
was not written down until about a thousand years later. In these medical papyri,
Egyptian physicians describe both the medical conditions they are trying toçaretreat—
which as often as not are trauma instead of disease related—and their remedies,
which include both magical incantations and more “rational” techniques such as
yorumlama
surgery and herbal recipes. Interpretation of these texts, however, is hampered by
hatalı
the still inexact knowledge of hieroglyphics and by the fact that the ancient Egyptian
mind-set was quite unlike our modern outlook. In addition, Egyptian art, despite its
tasvir etmek
often-stylized representations, sometimes depicts spinal or limb abnormalities in
rahatlama
statuary and relief carvings of its subjects, deformities that were possibly caused by
disease. Finally, on occasion we are fortunate enough to have the physical evidence

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of the diseased body itself, preserved in mummified form with even the skin still
bozulmamış intact, a unique contribution of ancient Egyptian culture. This has allowed scholars
to detect diseases even when they did not penetrate to the bone, such as the
smallpox lesions evident on the lower face, neck, and shoulders of the pharaoh,
Ramses V, who died in c. 1145 B.C.E. In addition to smallpox, Egyptian mummies
have also pointed to the presence of tuberculosis, schistosomiasis, and
poliomyelitis.