Diseases

Cholera

Cholera is a severe infectious. The symptoms of cholera are diarrhea and the loss of water and salts in the stool. In severe cholera, the patient develops violent diarrhea with characteristic “rice-water stools,” vomiting, thirst, muscle cramps, and sometimes circulatory collapse. Death can occur as quickly as a few hours after the onset of symptoms.  The only way a person can be infected is from food or water contaminated by bacteria from the stools of cholera patients. Prevention of the disease is therefore a matter of sanitation.

Dysentery

Dysentery is an acute or chronic disease of the large intestine of humans, characterized by frequent passage of small, watery stools, often containing blood and mucus, accompanied by severe abdominal cramps. Ulceration of the walls of the intestine may occur. Although many severe cases of diarrhea have been called dysentery, the word properly refers to a disease caused by either a specific amoeba, Entamoeba histolytica, or a bacillus that infects the colon.
Dysentery is caused more by unsanitary conditions than by heat.  It is most commonly spread by water or contaminated, uncooked food or from carriers. Flies may carry the cysts to spread the amoeba from the feces of infected persons to food.

Small Pox

Smallpox is a highly contagious viral disease that is often fatal. The disease is chiefly characterized by a skin rash that develops on the face, chest, back, and limbs. Over the course of a week the rash develops into pustular (pus-filled) pimples resembling boils. In extreme cases the pustular pimples run together—usually an indication of a fatal infection. Death may result from a secondary bacterial infection of the pustules, from cell damage caused by the viral infection, or from heart attack or shock. In the latter stages of nonfatal cases, smallpox pustules become crusted, often leaving the survivor with permanent, pitted scars.

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