Оглавление
Irwin W. Sherman. Twelve Diseases that Changed Our World
Twelve Diseases That Changed Our World
Contents
Preface
1 The Legacy of Disease: Porphyria and Hemophilia
Porphyria. Madness in the monarchy
Gene failure
The curse of the British royal family
Hemophilia. Blood will tell
“Catching” hemophilia
Death of the House of Romanov
The Spanish royal family bleeds out
The influence of hemophilia during World War II
Consequences
2 The Irish Potato Blight
Politics and the Great Hunger
Bite of Blight
The Great Hunger’s Cause
Consequences
3 Cholera
Cause
Containment
Quarantine
The Legend and Legacy of Florence Nightingale
Cure
Consequences
4 Smallpox: the Speckled Monster
Smallpox Spreads
Cause
“Catching” Smallpox
Control by Variolation, Eradication by Vaccination
How vaccination works
How immunity works
Attenuation and immunization
Consequences
5 Bubonic Plague
Cause
Control by Quarantine
Concerns Past
Concerns Present
Consequences
6 Syphilis: the Great Pox
Origins
Clinical Signs
“Catching” the Great Pox
Chemotherapy
Resistance
Syphilis and the Social Reformers
Today's Concerns
Control
Consequences
7 Tuberculosis: the People's Plague
Origins
Discovery
The Disease
Prelude to Prevention
“Catching” TB
Controlling Consumption
Antibiotics to the Rescue
A Vaccine for TB
Consequences
8 Malaria
Origins
The Disease
“Catching” Malaria
Control
Chemotherapy
The Elusive Malaria Vaccine
Consequences
9 Yellow Fever: the Saffron Scourge
The Disease
Origins
Failure To Control and the Louisiana Purchase
“Catching” Yellow Fever
Successful Control and Construction of the Panama Canal
A Vaccine
Consequences
10 The Great Influenza
Cause
Drifting and Shifting Thwart Control
Pandemics and Pathogenicity
Control
Consequences
11 AIDS: the 21st Century Plague
Cause
A Crippled Immune System
Inherited Resistance
“Catching” HIV
From Pan to Pandemic
Chemotherapy
Failure To Control
Control by Behavior
The Social Context
Consequences
Epilogue
Notes
Chapter 1. The Legacy of Disease: Porphyria and Hemophilia
Chapter 2. The Irish Potato Blight
Chapter 3. Cholera
Chapter 4. Smallpox: the Speckled Monster
Chapter 5. Bubonic Plague
Chapter 6. Syphilis: the Great Pox
Chapter 7. Tuberculosis: the People's Plague
Chapter 8. Malaria
Chapter 9. Yellow Fever: the Saffron Scourge
Chapter 10. The Great Influenza
Chapter 11. HIV: the 21st Century Plague
Epilogue
Index
Отрывок из книги
Irwin W. Sherman
ASM Press
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The disease that Queen Victoria passed on to her offspring was hemophilia or “bleeders' disease.” Hemophilia (literally “love of blood”) involves a failure of the blood to clot within a normal time. The defect is caused by a missing protein in the plasma, the liquid part of the blood, which is necessary for clot formation. Normal blood may take 5 to 15 min to clot, but in persons with hemophilia (hemophiliacs) the process may take hours or even days. The danger for a person with hemophilia is that even a small wound or bruise may lead to severe and uncontrolled internal bleeding and death.
Without clot formation, the blood flows freely from a wound until the circulatory system collapses—the afflicted person hemorrhages to death. Blood clotting is a complex affair involving a cascade of protein-protein interactions that converts a soluble protein of blood plasma, fibrinogen, into insoluble protein fibers of fibrin. The clotting cascade is like the Mother Goose rhyme “This is the house that Jack built”: This is the cat, that killed the rat, that ate the malt, that lay in the house that Jack built. In the clotting cascade: This is the break in the skin, so factor VIII can begin, converting prothrombin to thrombin; when thrombin converts fibrinogen to fibrin, the cross-linked result produces clottin'.
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