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The Influenza Pandemic occurred in three waves in the United States throughout 1918 and 1919.

Characteristics 1) Start Suddenly 2) Spread Rapidly 3) People of all ages are affected4) Many people become ill5) The attack rate and death rate is high

The death toll from a yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia hits 100 on this day in 1793. By the time it ended, 5,000 people were dead. Yellow fever, or American plague as it was known at the time, is a viral disease that begins with fever and muscle pain. Next, victims often become jaundiced (hence, the term "yellow" fever), as their liver and kidneys cease to function normally. Some of the afflicted then suffer even worse symptoms. Famous early American Cotton Mather described it as "turning yellow then vomiting and bleeding every way." Internal bleeding in the digestive tract causes bloody vomit. Many victims become delirious before dying. The virus, like malaria, is carried and transferred by mosquitoes. The first yellow fever outbreaks in the United States occurred in late 1690s. Nearly 100 years later, in the late summer of 1793, refugees from a yellow fever epidemic in the Caribbean fled to Philadelphia. Within weeks, people throughout the city were experiencing symptoms. By the middle of October, 100 people were dying from the virus every day. Caring for the victims so strained public services that the local city government collapsed. Philadelphia was also the seat of the United States government at the time, but federal authorities simply evacuated the city in face of the raging epidemic. Eventually, a cold front eliminated Philadelphia's mosquito population and the death toll fell to 20 per day by October 26. Today, a vaccine prevents yellow fever in much of the world, though 20,000 people still die every year from the disease.

Typhoid Mary, byname of Mary Mallon   (born September 23, 1869, Cookstown, County Tyrone, Ireland—died November 11, 1938, North Brother Island, Bronx, New York,

Mary immigrated to the United States in 1883

In army camps and cantonments, in hospitals, and in streets and workplaces across the nation, photographers aimed their lenses and captured a nation struggling to deal with the crisis.

In the fall of 1918, against the tragic backdrop of war and disease,

That said, even a small sample of America and Americans in the midst of the great influenza pandemic of 1918 is a powerful message indeed.

Typhoid fever is common in most parts of the world except in industrialized regions such as the United States, Canada, western Europe, Australia, and Japan.

herefore, if you are traveling to the developing world, you should consider taking precautions. Over the past 10 years, travelers from the United States to Asia, Africa, and Latin America have been especially at risk.

Two basic actions can protect you from typhoid fever: Avoid risky foods and drinks. Get vaccinated against typhoid fever.

Yellow fever and the yellowfever mosquito are thought to have originated in Africa. It was brought to the New World on slave ships in the 1500s. Yellow fever ravaged Europeans in the New World. Buckley (1985) stated, "The West Indies was, quite simply, a deathtrap for whites without immunity to yellow fever." The British were repeatedly stung by the disease in the Caribbean and South America. In 1741, during an expedition to capture Peru and Mexico, British forces were reduced from 27,000 to 7,000 by the dreaded disease they called "black vomit." Coastal towns and hamlets in the United States were particularly vulnerable to the disease in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Even as late as 1878, a yellow fever epidemic struck more than 100 United States towns, killing at least 20,000 people.

Ring around the rosy, A pocket full of posies, Ashes … ashes, We all fall down.

A familiar nursery rhyme that children have recited as a harmless play song for generations

ironically refers to one of Europe's most devastating diseases. The bubonic plague, better known as the “The Black Death,” has existed for thousands of years. The first recorded case of the plague was in China in 224 B.C.E. But the most significant outbreak was in Europe in the mid-fourteenth century. Over a five-year period from 1347 to 1352, 25 million people died. One-third to one-half of the European population was wiped out!

The city was ringing in the year 1900 and things looked bright. San Francisco was both a local hub of industry and a port to ships coming in from the far east. Each of those ships had to pass a health inspection before they docked, of course, but both the passengers and the local businesses pressured the health inspectors to get it out of the way as quickly as possible. They did this even after cases of plague, and mini-epidemics, broke out in China, and then in Hawaii. It was not a surprise to health officials when the first case of plague was reported in Chinatown, but they were surprised by the opposition they faced in even saying the word "plague." Over the next few years, state and local organizations worked against federal health officials, fearing that any reports of plague would damage trade and tourism. When the 1906 earthquake hit, and the rats took over the rubble of the city, the deaths came so fast and thick that there was no denying it anymore. Still, it took years of work before the plague was quelled. By that time, it had started showing up in local squirrels.

Bubonic plague is not a virus, but a bacterial infection. Yersinia pestis lives in fleas, which leave traces of it in the area that they bite. It works its way into the body and multiplies, traveling through the lymphatic system. The swellings that appear at the groin and under the armpits are the painfully swollen lymph nodes. Bubonic plague kills within four days, at which point the fleas desert the body and go to the next victim, taking their bacteria with them. An infected flea doesn't necessarily mean an infected host. Different fleas have different eating techniques, different hosts scratch (driving the bacteria into the wound) or don't scratch, and not all hosts act as ideal carriers for the bacteria. But plague in the wildlife won't stay in the wildlife for long.

Down syndrome occurs when an individual has a full or partial extra copy of chromosome 21. This additional genetic material alters the course of development and causes the characteristics associated with Down syndrome. There are three types of Down syndrome: trisomy 21 (nondisjunction) accounts for 95% of cases, translocation accounts for about 4% and mosaicism accounts for about 1%.    Down syndrome is the most commonly occurring chromosomal condition. One in every 691 babies in the United States is born with Down syndrome. There are more than 400,000 people living with Down syndrome in the United States. Down syndrome occurs in people of all races and economic levels.

In the United States, an estimated 5,700 cases of typhoid fever occur annually, mostly among travelers. An estimated 21 million cases of typhoid fever and 200,000 deaths occur worldwide.

Plague is a bacterial infection found mainly in rodents and their fleas. But via those fleas it can sometimes leap to humans. When it does, the outcome can be horrific, making plague outbreaks the most notorious disease episodes in history.Most infamous of all was the Black Death, a medieval pandemic that swept through Asia and Europe. It reached Europe in the late 1340s, killing an estimated 25 million people. The Black Death lingered on for centuries, particularly in cities. Outbreaks included the Great Plague of London (1665-66), in which one in five residents died.

Plague is a bacterial infection found mainly in ro

Death

Mary Mallon, now known as Typhoid Mary, seemed a healthy woman when a health inspector knocked on her door in 1907, yet she was the cause of several typhoid outbreaks. Since Mary was the first "healthy carrier" of typhoid fever in the United States, she did not understand how someone not sick could spread disease -- so she tried to fight back.