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Some of Our Past Earthshaking Events

Prelude 

As we counted down toward the year 2000, everyone seemed to be nominating top events which have occurred during the 20th century or even during the years before. At various times, there have been very meaningful earthshaking or very significant events occurring — the top stories for the “media”. This is quite true within the general media, and here in the offices of the Prevention News, it is clear that we are a follower, at least not the leader within the media. 

The first step which we will take with this article is to selectively identify a few of the major events of the earlier centuries, and make our nomination for those key events considered to have been major contributors to the advancement of health promotion and disability prevention (HPDP). 

The Printed Word 

So in that light, we nominate a technological development of German goldsmith Johann Gutenberg as being the invention which had a major impact on the future of HPDP achievements during later centuries. Gutenberg designed a printing system, which in the single year of 1455, enable him to produce 200 Bibles. 

This number of documents was an unheard of volume of “books” ever printed by one establishment before that time. This event resulted in unleashing “an information epidemic” that is still expanding today. 

Before the mid 1500’s, the ability to read and write was extremely limited. Only the very rich or the tiny elites of nobles, or the priests, or the scribes ever developed that treasured skill of being able to recognize and understand (to read) recorded words. 

The documents which did exist during those days were most often generated by hand -- one letter at a time. At the end of the 15th century, this Gutenberg process had resulted in an estimated 500,000 “printed” books being generated. But beware! By the end of the year 1455, a creditor had taken over Gutenberg’s business. 

The Black Plague 

Before Gutenberg’s printing press became a reality, Europe had been subjected to a disease which eventually killed a third of Europe’s inhabitants. The year was 1348. 

The disease had been transmitted by fleas carried by rodents which rode aboard the ships arriving from Asia. But at the time, people had no idea where the disease was coming from. They could not read nor write their observations or their experiences. 

This ailment was commonly known as the black plague, but also was called the bubonic plague, as it resulted in boils forming on the neck, the underarm, and the groin areas. 

People who did not come into contact with the plague, or who had developed immunity to the disease, began to consider the world in a different manner than they used to. This attitude change would result in altering almost everything that came after. 

The Shot In the Arm 

The black plague was not the only plague scarring or killing during this era. Smallpox was at its peak during the 18th century when it killed 60 million Europeans, most of them children. The eradications of this plague can be traced to a cow. 

The name of the person who took a large step to benefit mankind was doctor Edward Jenner. He simply trusted in the popular belief that cowpox would build one’s immunity to smallpox, and conducted some experiments to prove it one way or another. 

The system Jenner defined within his findings has since led to the science of immunology. 

Vaccinations for hepatitis, diphtheria, polio and measles are now in common use and have revolutionized the field of public health. 

The Germ Theory 

It wasn’t that long ago that disease was considered to be caused by EVIL SPIRITS. If you saw any movie involving the French scientist Louis Pasteur, you will recognize that it was less than 150 years when it became “known” that infectious agents can multiply within the human body. 

This pronouncement was followed a few years later, in 1876, by the demonstration of the German scientist Robert Koch that a specific bacillus caused a specific disease. 

The work of Pasteur and Koch soon led to advances in immunology, sanitation, and hygiene that have done more to increase the life span of humans that any other scientific advance of the past 1000 years. 

The Laws of Heredity 

During this same mid-1850 timeframe, an Austrian monk named Gregor Mendel was conducting a series of well documented experiments which led to his defining the basic heredity laws. He had focused on crossbreeding pea plants. 

He published his work during 1866 and then accepted a new assignment as Abbot of his religious order. As was the tendency regarding a lot of scientific efforts of this era, his thesis was not rediscovered until 1900. 

Mendel proposed that the traits of plants are handed down from parent plants to offspring. As a result of his experiments, he demonstrated that this could be predicted mathematically. As we look at it today, the way we currently breed corn is most likely one of the greatest success stories of modern genetics. 

— Finis