The History of Dysentery

Dysentery is a chronic, deteriorating form of diarrhea usually caused by amoeba or other microbes that live in infected feces which causes dehydration, bloody stools or vomit and even death. Dysentery is a problem that affects millions of people worldwide even in 2009, despite the best efforts of governments and medical professionals. Since early civilization, man has struggled with a way to contain dysentery and to prevent its spread, sometimes with mixed results. Understanding the long history of this potentially deadly disease is important to understanding how to address one of the world's oldest problems.

2600 BCE

• In the earliest recorded history of humanity, civilization and dysentery seemed to go hand in hand. About 4,600 years ago, a civilization known as the Mohenjo-Daro sprang up in the Indus valley. Their use of indoor plumbing, including flushing toilets to carry away human waste, made them different from other societies of that time. The Mohenjo-Daro understood that dysentery was spread through human waste contamination and thus getting rid of the offending material cut down on the prevalence of the disease.

440 BCE

• The ancient Greek physician Hippocrates wrote long treatises on the connection between health and hygiene. It was his preference for unemotional scientific observation that allowed him to connect unsanitary conditions to diseases such as dysentery. In fact, the name dysentery is actually a compound of two Greek words meaning "difficult" and "bowels."

1770s

• Dysentery was also known as "campaign fever" because of the often poor sanitary levels present in armies living in the field. General George Washington's army had to deal with several bouts of dysentery, as did the French army a few years later. British military officials, partly to instill a sense of order among soldiers and partly for sanitary reasons, began ordering camps dig lavatories every few days. This led to a decrease in dysentery in British army camps in the late 18th century.

The Civil War

• Dysentery was a problem not only in the camps of both Union and Confederate soldiers, but also in prisoner of war camps. Both sides were typically callous toward prisoners of war, often allowing them to languish in muddy, damp and unsanitary conditions. The result was thousands of soldiers succumbing to the disease over the course of the war.

20th Century

• In 1933 at the Chicago World's Fair, almost 2,000 cases of dysentery were reported, causing almost 100 deaths. The root cause was faulty plumbing in a hotel, which contaminated the water.

  Later, in 1962 another outbreak of dysentery was reported in Berlin, Germany. East Germany was mortified by the sickening of some 28,000 people and ordered public toilets closed in a vain attempt to stop the outbreak. The source of the contamination seems to have been butter imported from China, which had also experienced a large number of dysentery cases earlier that year.

Prevalence

• As of 2009, several developing countries in warm climates are dealing with dysentery; African and South American countries are hardest hit, but dysentery is also present in India, Mexico and Egypt. The main cause is contamination of drinking water by human waste.