English | ISBN: 1615303219 | 2011 | EPUB | 205 pages | 4,7 MB

Today it is widely known that certain diseases are contagious, whereas others are not, and that a specific malady may be a ruesult of where an individual lives or works, of what a person eats or drinks, or of the genes he or she inherited. This understanding of illness first emerged, along with other advances in human culture in ancient Greece, when perople began to formulate scientific theories about the origins of disease. One of the first to recognize that air, water, and the environment can all be sources of sickness was Greek physician Hippocrates, who lived in the 5th to 4th centuries BCE. The people of the ancient world and the Middle Ages suffered periodically from epidemics of highly contagious illnesses, such as leprosy and smallpox, which afflicted large portions of Earth's population. Today, with the benefit of advanced medical knowledge and systems of public health care, the devastation seems unimaginable. But centuries age, there was little knowlege of how to stop contagion. Some of the first advancements included the establishment of hospitals the development of quarantine (isolation) for infected patients and the improvement of sanitation.