From Live Science:
Did Ebola Strike Ancient Athens?
Could the first recorded Ebola outbreak have occurred not in Africa less than 40 years ago, but rather, more than 2,400 years ago, in ancient Greece? That's what one professor of infectious diseases and history now suggests.
Most researchers say that the first outbreak of Ebola happened in 1976, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (then known as Zaire). In the current outbreak of the virus in West Africa — which began in early 2014 in West Africa, and is the largest outbreak of Ebola to date — more than 27,000 people have been infected and nearly 11,200 people have died, according to the World Health Organization.
However, the Ebola virus is apparently quite old; previous research discovered remnants of identical Ebola DNA in several different species of rodents, including the mouse and the Norway rat. This led scientists to speculate that Ebola infected the ancestors of these species at least 20 million years ago.
The Plague of Athens:
In the new paper, Kazanjian suggests that an Ebola virus may have been the culprit in the infamous Plague of Athens, a five-year epidemic that began in 430 B.C., whose cause has long been a matter of conjecture among physicians and historians. The famed historian Thucydides, who chronicled the Peloponnesian War between the rival city-states of Athens and Sparta, was not only an eyewitness to the Athenian disease, but also contracted it himself and survived.
And:
The Athenian illness, also called Thucydides syndrome, began with an abrupt onset of fever, headache, fatigue, and pain in the stomach and extremities, accompanied by furious vomiting. Those who survived after seven days of illness also experienced severe diarrhea. Additional symptoms included reddened eyes, hiccups and bleeding from the mouth. Stricken individuals also sometimes experienced cough, seizures, confusion, rashes, pustules, ulcers, and even loss of fingers and toes, possibly due to gangrene.
As the disease progressed in those afflicted, Thucydides noted that people became so dehydrated that some plunged themselves into wells in futile attempts to quench their unceasing thirst. The disease often ended in death, typically by day seven to nine of the illness. Medical treatment was useless against the disease's severity and bleak outcome.
Sounds like a classic hemorrhagic fever if not Ebola specifically. No knowledge of sanitation so it would be transmitted a lot more freely through casual content. The R-naught would have been through the roof where Ebola today is around 1.5 to 2.5 overall.
Tip of the hat to Irons in the Fire for the link.
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