AvianBirdsFlu.com: key facts about Avian Influenza commonly called Bird Flu that created world health crises rivaled only by Plague and HIV.
Home Page News Virus Pandemic Vaccine Sympotms Links H5N1 Strain Forum	Flu has been known for several millennia Flu (influenza) has been known for several millennia. Description of an illness with flu-like symptoms can be found in the works of Hippocrates (he described an epidemic that broke out in 412 B.C.). The first flu epidemic was supposedly described by a Roman historian Titus Livius. It happened in 212 B.C. In the 16th century, John Keys, a famous English doctor (also known by his Latinized name, Johannes Caius), was the first to provide a detailed description of the pathogenic mechanism of flu (or “Sweating Sickness,” as he labeled it). He even suggested a treatment—bed rest and doing nothing that can cause perspiration. Keys supposed that the “sweating sickness” affected one as a result of eating certain types of food. Historian Michael Oldstone, the author of a large-scale research “Viruses, Plagues, and History,” notes that Keys’ views were not original. In Europe, flu had long been known as “Italian fever.” Italy was considered to be the warmest country in Europe, so the fever-stricken assumed that the disease came from the Apennines. In Germany, it was noticed that all epidemics began in cold time of the year and concluded that the reason were pickles—vegetables, fish, etc.—which made up the major part of a winter ration for Germans. The 16th century Europe faced at least two major flu epidemics—one in 1510 and the other on in 1580. At that time the disease became known as “influenza” (“influenza di freddo” in Italian means “the influence of cold”). The other name for the disease appeared in the 20th century—“grippe” comes from the English word “grip” (or “grippe” in French), which has the same meaning. Europe faced flu pandemics about 3–4 times a century (for example, such epidemics broke out in 1173, 1580, 1675, 1729, 1742, 1781, 1831, 1857, and 1874). Flu was treated like a common cold, meaning that a sick person was given lots of liquids to drink, honey and healing herbs. However, a number of researchers (for example, Rian Balfour, a famous medicine historian) do not tend to think that all of the above listed epidemics were flu epidemics, as there are no facts to prove that the disease with those given symptoms was caused by flu viruses. They consider the first “real” epidemic to be that of 1781, which affected two thirds of the population of Rome and three quarters—of the British Isles. The epidemic spread to Africa and America, where it lasted up to 1789. Afterwards, epidemics broke out permanently, with frightening frequency. For example, in 1889 the “Russian flu” spread to Europe from Russia and from there—to the rest of the world. Russia, in its turn, got it from Central Asia, from where the virus spread over all the other continents. It was the most terrible epidemic of the 19th century, with a death toll of 750 thousand people. At the time, there was no cure for flues, and the doctors could only speculate about the cause of the disease. The breakthrough in medicine happened due to the research done by the French scientist Louis Pasteur and the German scientist Robert Koch, who discovered a direct connection between microorganisms and infectious diseases. In 1892, the German microbiologist Richard Pfeiffer, who was trying to analyze the cause of the flu epidemic, which struck Germany in 1890, isolated a bacterium from the phlegm of the sick and dubbed it “Bacillus influenzae”. For two decades, the bacterium was considered the main cause of flu. The invalidity of this theory became clear only in 1918-1919, when it was discovered that Bacillus influenzae emerges only in few people that have flu. A hypothesis was then suggested, that the bacterium is accountable for the progression of pneumonic complications, often occurring as a result of flu. The point of view that prevailed was that the flu causative agent is miniscule in size, as it was impossible be detect with the existing filters (this was experimentally proven by the French scientists Nicolle and Lebailly in 1918). One of the reasons for that was lack of adequate equipment. The situation changed only in the 1930’s, when more powerful microscopes were invented (however, it wasn’t possible to see the virus until the 1950’s after the invention of an electron microscope). In 1931, American scientist Richard Shope, while studying the diseases of swine, found out that, in a number of cases, their causative agent was a virus (viruses were first described in 1898, and in the 1910’s it was proven that viruses cause some diseases in humans). Two years later, British scientists Wilson Smith, Christopher Andrews and Patrick Ladlow isolated the virus that causes flu in humans (dubbed Mixovirus influenza, it was an A type virus, accountable for most of the pandemics and also capable of affecting animals and birds). Over the next decade and a half, two types of viruses were discovered: B type flu viruses (Thomas Frances, 1940; this type affects only humans and causes mild forms of flu) and C type viruses (Richard Talo, 1947; this is the least dangerous type of virus). In 1940, an important discovery was made—that the flu virus can be cultivated in chicken embryos (this, in particular, allowed to carry out the first vaccinations in 1946). However, the bacteriological theory was too popular at the time. For a long while, viruses were perceived as analogues of bacteria, only of a very small size. The attitude in the scientific community changed only in the late 1940’s, and in 1946 and 1947 some works were published that proved that viruses are, in themselves, powerful causative agents of diseases, and their mechanism of action differs from that of the bacteria fundamentally. Geoffrey Zubay, author of the research titled “Agents of Bioterrorism,” considers that flu virus can be potentially turned into a terrible weapon of biological warfare. Flu virus has two features that make it a potential biological weapon—it is easy to produce and spread. The only obstacle that can prevent scientists from developing a bi