Throughout history, there have been a number of pandemics of diseases, causing fear and dead among

millions of people. The most devastating pandemic was the Black Death, which originated in mid or
central Asia around 1300s and killed an estimated 75-200 million people. It was caused by a strain of
the bacterium Yersinia pestis that was spread by fleas.
Another notorious epidemic in history can name the smallpox virus, which was discovered in 1520 in
a ship of crews from Spain to Mexico. Soon, new waves of refugees carried the virus throughout the
country and beyond, making the whole continent a graveyard. Despite some therapys consulted from
doctors and priests, the virus couldn’t help spreading exponentially, followed by that was a deadly
waves of flu, measles, until the population of Mexico reduced to less than 2 million.
Another 4 centuries witnessed the spread of a virulent strain of fly, nicknamed ‘the Spanish flu’.
Millions of people in India and beyond went down with it and the casualty altogether was up to 50-
100 million cases, a huge number even compared to the catastrophy of WW1.
However, the miracle of the 20th-century achievements in medicine with the born of vaccine and
antibiotics has lead people to survive against hundreds of trivial diseases. Some outbreak of virus seen
in the next century such as the SARS in 2012/3 and the Ebola in 2014 though considered severe
epidemics, recorded the death toll nowhere near the scale of past-epidemics including the Spanish flu
or the Mexican smallpox. That says, may the next 10 years or 100 years see the new outbreak of the
new virus, the humankind no longer stands helpless in front of natural epidemics as before.