Assassins That Span the Ages: Bacteria and Viruses

(A virus takes up residence in a healthy cell. Photo courtesy of Getty Images.)

Imagine that you are a settler in San Antonio of the 1800’s. You and your family have just constructed a jacál, a hut, as your new residence, much like those constructed by María Andrea Castañon and her family. The jacál, with its thatched roof and cut limb walls covered with mud, is quite comfortable: air flows freely, and the dirt floors keep the interior cooler than the outside. However, spiders, snakes, and another marauder, the mosquito, could turn your life upside down. Yellow Fever, was transmitted during this time by mosquitoes and ticks to humans. In the period between 1817 and 1905, 41,000 people died in New Orleans alone. Fully half of those infected died within seven to ten days, probably while the family was trying to figure out what was wrong with their loved one.There has been no outbreak since 1905 in the United States, though this disease is still quite active in Africa, Central, and South America.

Yellow Fever symptoms included headaches, muscle pain, nausea, vomiting, and fatigue. A victim’s skin and eyes would sometime turn yellow.

Now imagine you walk into Shorty’s Cantina in 1830’s San Antonio after a long day of cattle rustling or water carrying. You walk up to the bar and slide in next to others standing and seated there. Someone coughs, another slaps you on the back, smiles in your face and says he’s glad to see you. Unbeknownst to the patrons of Shorty’s, the Smallpox Virus was likely spreading by certain infected individuals talking, coughing, or sneezing in close proximity to you and others. Smallpox was responsible for killing three to five hundred million people in the 1900’s! Although a vaccine had been developed in the late eighteen hundreds, it wasn’t widely administered. By 1980, the World Health Assembly declared Smallpox eradicated, the last U.S. outbreak having occurred in 1949. This was the first and only time that a country was able to completely wipe out a human disease by the name of Smallpox. As you can imagine, it takes a concerted effort!

Smallpox symptoms included blisters or small pustules on the skin that would eventually dry up and leave permanent scars. This disease could easily become deadly if given the opportunity to spread to other organs, thereby causing secondary infections.

Interestingly, the Smallpox virus can survive in dead tissues, having been found in the ancient Egyptian pharaoh Ramses V’s tomb. So far, no live viruses have been found, but when some Smallpox scabs turned up on a 19th century mummy, the Centers for Disease Control were on the scene immediately! (www.vox.com/2014)

In this blog post, I’ve described Smallpox and Yellow Fever: Two Viral Culprits of the 1800’s.

Viruses are stealthy predators; they cause infections by entering and multiplying inside the host’s healthy cells.

Bacteria are warriors; they are single cells that can survive on their own, inside or outside the body.

In the 1800’s it was difficult to know what caused a person’s illness because viral and bacterial infections caused similar symptoms. Pictured above is a small pox virus that has climbed inside a healthy cell to do its work.

Stay tuned for my next post: Bacterial diseases of 1800’s San Antonio.