Disease

Guinea worm disease (Dracunculiasis) is likely to be the first parasitic disease to be globally eradicated, The treatment, that involves slowly extracting the nematode by wrapping it around a stick, hasn't fundamentally changed since at least 1550 BC as described in an Egyptian medical papyrus

The Persian physician Rhazes (854-925 AD) was widely regarded as the greatest doctor in the world of his time. He was appointed chief of a large hospital in Baghdad, whose site he chose by hanging pieces of meat at various points throughout the city and then choosing the place where the piece of meat was the last one to turn rotten. He thereby recognized a connection between putrefaction and disease.

The first occupational disease ever recorded in medical literature was ‘chimney sweep’s scrotum’. The attributing of scrotal cancer in children to their job as chimney sweeps was made in 1775.

The deadliest disease outbreak in human history originated in the USA in 1918 and killed up to 100 million people worldwide. News of the influenza outbreak went largely unreported due to the Sedition Act and an effort to “keep up morale.”

A nurse treating an influenza patient in Washington, DC in 1918

In 1915 a strange disease known as encephalitis lethargica  Also known as "sleeping sickness" began spreading throughout the world. Nearly five million people were affected, a third of whom died in the acute stages. Many of the survivors were left unable to move or speak, but were conscious and aware. No cure was ever found, and it disappeared by 1926.

Lyme Disease is named after the town of Lyme, Connecticut, where several cases were first discovered in the 1970s.

Only 400 out of the 7000 diseases classified as “rare” have an effective treatment. This fact is recognized during Rare Disease Day, which is held every year on the last day of February. This day also holds an extra special meaning on February 29 – the rarest day of the year.

That a magnesium deficiency either precedes or follows nearly every disease.

During 5,000 years of recorded human history, we have only eradicated one disease — smallpox.

About 75 percent of infectious diseases that occur in humans also affect animals.

Pneumonia kills more children under the age of five than any other disease, claiming a young life every 20 seconds.

Fibromyalgia is a life-altering condition affecting 10 million Americans. The disease is centuries old, yet has no known cause, no diagnostic tests, had no medications until 2007, proper diagnosis averages five years… even the name tells nothing: its Latin/Greek root words are just "joint-muscle-pain."

The longest word in the English language is 45 letters long: "Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis." It is the scientific name for a type of lung disease.