Every year, as soon as the wet and cold autumn sets in, along with inclement weather, most of us are overtaken by the flu, or influenza. This is a viral disease that, despite all the efforts made by people, "steals" from us a whole year from our whole life.
So why is it in the fall or at the beginning of a relatively warm winter that the flu “puts” us to bed for a couple of weeks? What should be done to avoid getting sick? Before answering these questions, let's remember what inflation is, the meaning of the word and where it came from.
What does it mean
The correct name sounds like "influenza", but in Russian the wrong form of this word has been fixed - "influence". From Italian it came to Russian, as well as to most European languages. There are several hypotheses about how this word came about.
One of them says that medieval scientists and healers failed to find the cause of the disease on earth, and astrologers offered their own version, according to which the special arrangement of heavenly bodies canaffect people and cause an epidemic. In direct translation from Italian, influenza means “impact, influence.”
Another version is more prosaic. According to her, influenza is an Italian expression reduced to one word - influenza di fredo, which translates as "the influence of the cold." This name was used for all colds and infectious diseases, the occurrence of which was associated with hypothermia of the body. This term became firmly established in medicine after the influenza pandemic of the late 18th century.
The most familiar and used name for this disease, "flu", was borrowed much later from French.
What is this disease
Influenza or influenza is an acute infectious disease affecting the human respiratory tract, which is part of a large group called acute respiratory viral infections (ARVI). The disease is caused by orthomyxovirus - Myxovirus influenzae. Scientists have identified three main types of it, each of which differs significantly in its structure from the others: A, B and C. That is why, having been ill or vaccinated against any of the listed types, you can “catch” another and get sick again.
A bit of history
It is wrong to assume that the flu or influenza is a modern disease. It is difficult to argue that primitive people suffered from it, since this disease does not leave any structural external damage on the bones and in the human skeleton. However, many written sourcestestify to the fact that for more than 1000 years mankind has been suffering from such infectious diseases. Academician V. M. Zhdanov claims that during this time there were at least 13 pandemics and approximately 500 influenza epidemics.
Such ancient authors as Diophorus, Titus Livius and Hippocrates described such diseases in sufficient detail, in which patients experienced a sharp increase in temperature, muscle and headache, discomfort in the throat. It has been observed that influenza or influenza is a highly contagious disease that spreads rapidly both in individual settlements and in entire countries and continents.
The first documented evidence of a flu-like epidemic, then called the "Italian fever" and engulfing many European countries, refers to 1580.
The name "influence" the disease received after the pandemic of 1780-1782. According to another theory of the origin of this name, it was formed from the Latin word influere, translated as "spread, penetrate", which really reflects the speed of spread and the suddenness of the onset of the disease.
Epidemics of influenza (influenza) occurred quite often, but they developed into a worldwide disaster three or four times in a hundred years and were called pandemics.
Epidemics and pandemics of our days
In modern history, the following are the most infamous pandemics:
- "Spanish flu" in 1918-1920, caused by the H1N1 virus, claimed about 20 millionhuman lives;
- pandemic of 1957-1958, the so-called Asian flu, caused by the H2N2 virus, claimed the lives of about 1 million people;
- Hong Kong influenza of 1968-1969 caused by the H3N2 strain killed about 34,000 people;
- Russian flu 1977-1978.
Some researchers tend to include the 1997 bird flu and 2009 swine flu outbreaks as well, but most scientists believe they were epidemics.
