Through the Ages: Man's Fight Against Unseen Foes Quiz

Answer: G. H. Armauer Hansen

Hansen isolated the bacteria, and helped curb the disease in his home country. Leprosy is now commonly known as 'Hansen's Disease'. Because the disease takes so long to show, and because of the poor medical conditions in Third World countries, leprosy has not yet been eradicated.

Schweitzer won the Nobel Peace Prize for his medical work in western Africa, Bäckman was a Swedish chef and Kamprad was the founder of IKEA.

Answer: Paul Erlich

Syphilis, a sexually transmitted disease, is caused by Treponema pallidum, which is unusual by being a spiral shaped bacterium. Also unusually, this organism has never been able to be cultured; its identification is based on a special technique called dark ground microscopy. Untreated, as it was when first described around the turn of the fifteenth century, it was a devastating disease progressing through several distinct phases before causing death. Syphilis was treated by salvarsan.

This treatment was devised by Paul Erlich in 1910, which preceded the Antibiotic Era by 30 years. Since the discovery of penicillin, it has been used to treat syphilis since the 1940s and is still effective today.

The exact origin of syphilis is unknown. One theory is that Columbus' sailors bought the disease back with them from the Americas.

Another theory is that the infection was already in Europe which coincided with the time of Columbus' voyages.

Answer: A mixture of herbs were made into a tea which was drunk boiling hot

In the middle ages there was no cure. People used to walk around with flowers near or in their nose believing this would keep away the infection. This is thought to be the basis of the nursery rhyme "Ring a Ring of Roses". People carved crosses into the front doors of their homes and added "Lord have mercy on us". In Pistoia in Italy, an originally bubonic plague free city, a form of quarantine was instigated where woollen and linen items could not be bought into the city, no bodies could be buried within city limits and no-one could visit an area which already had the disease. It did not work.

Bubonic Plague is essentially a disease of the lymph glands. After a bite from a flea infected with the Yersina bacterium (this was not known at the time), the bacterium would congregate and multiply in the nearest lymph node in the thigh, groin, armpit or neck. The disease rapidly progresses to high fevers, gangrene of the extremities, continuous vomiting of blood, pain, aching limbs and extreme fatigue. Today treatment with appropriate antibiotics reduces mortality to less than 5 percent.

Answer: Smallpox

Jenner (1749-1823) acted on the observation that people who had cowpox, a much less dangerous disease, did not get smallpox. To prove his hypothesis, he injected a patient with the cowpox disease, and thereafter with smallpox. The patient did not get the full-blown deadly disease, and Jenner realised that the cowpox had created a resistance to the much more dangerous smallpox. This was the first instance of vaccination.

Alopecia could hardly be considered dangerous, as it is merely a type of baldness.

Answer: Streptomycin

TB is still with us today, but is slowly being conquered. Selman Waksman's observations on the power of the antibiotic, streptomycin, heralded a different way of tackling the killer disease. Many remedies for consumption, the other name for tuberculosis, were suggested over the centuries, including wearing a beard, putting seaweed under your pillow, sea voyages that led to seasickness, resulting in vomiting the pestilence out of the system. None of these worked. Today, coordinated courses of drugs are used.

However in the 1990s, antibiotic resistance appeared in some strains of the tuberculosis bacterium. Soon multi-resistance appeared and there was conjecture that there would be a time in the not too distant future where tuberculosis would be untreatable with antibiotics.This increase in antibiotic resistance has since plateaued.

It is still a major public health concern in most parts of the world. Insulin is used to treat diabetes, and Champix is to help people quit smoking. Olive oil is used for cooking, and can help tone the skin, but it will not cure TB.

Answer: He removed the handle from the well

In 1854, the germ theory of disease had not been proven. Snow proved his idea by checking the number of cholera incidents of the Broad Street families against other families not using that particular well. Removing the handle from the well was enough to stop the epidemic. Years later researchers found that the well had been dug only three feet from a cesspit containing the nappies of a baby who had died from cholera.

Answer: Albert Sabin

With increased outbreaks and epidemics in the early 20th century polio became one of the most feared children's disease. Because of this many scientists' research projects were set up to urgently produce a vaccine. Hilary Koprowski developed the first oral vaccine (using weakened virus) and Albert Sabin (1906 - 1993) improved an oral vaccine (OPV) which is used today (mainly due to safety- it uses a killed virus in the vaccine). William Hammon was involved in research using gamma globulin to halt the infection. Bjørn Ibsen built intensive respiratory centres to assist in the treatment of the disease (These were the precursors of Intensive Care Units)

Answer: Louis Pasteur and Emile Roux

Pasteur and Roux developed a vaccine from infected rabbits, being harvested from their nerve endings and then dried for over five days. This vaccine stemmed the numbers of deaths from rabies if the vaccination was given soon after being bitten. Today there is a safer vaccine, which when coupled to immediate wound washing, administration of a Human Rabies Immunoglobulin and periodic vaccinations offers a good chance of remaining asymptomatic.

A person can be affected by rabies if bitten by an animal with the disease. Most rabies cases come from dog bites and measures have been put into place to immunize pets and farm animals against the disease. Worldwide there are still high numbers (around 55,000) per year, mostly in Africa and Asia.

Answer: Dr Ernest Campbell

Dr Ernest Campbell was the physician to three of the attendees of the convention and he linked the fact that all three died after attending the conference and the three people had similar symptoms. Dr Campbell alerted the Department of Health who headed the investigation.
Legionnaires disease affects the lungs caused by Legionella bacteria. It was found that the bacteria is airborne and comes from sources of contaminated water such as air conditioners, coolers, water systems and humidifiers and not passed on by personal touch or contact. One of the reason's why it could not be treated well initially was because the causative organism (Legionella pneumophilia - never isolated before) could not bee see on Gram Stain or grown on routine culture. It was only when a different counter-stain was used in a gram stain that the bacteria became "visible". The disease is now treated with a combination of antibiotics if the disease is diagnosed in the early stages. In Brisbane Australia, two patients from an outbreak in a major hospital died from Legionnaires' disease in 2013.
The other three Doctors, listed as answer options, were TV characters.

Answer: A combination of drugs collectively called antiretrovirals

HIV/AIDS is a new disease being traced back to West Africa in the early 20th century. It was detected in the USA in 1981 and the causative agent was identified soon after. Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) causes Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome, which in its simplest form is a disease where white blood cells that normally kill microorganisms (which cause infectious diseases) are killed themselves, leaving the person vulnerable to infectious agents, and hence causing death due to people with infections being unable to fight them. In the 1980s, those people who tested HIV positive nearly always died within a few years.

In 2009 over 30 million people had died from AIDS and over 30 million people globally were living with HIV. There is no cure or vaccine, however extensive treatment with multiple medications can delay conversion from HIV+ (Infection) to AIDS (Symptomatic) and facilitate a near normal life expectancy. HAART (High activity antiretrovirals treatment)has changed AIDS from an acutely fatal disease to a chronic public health problem though there is a stigma associated with HIV/AIDS that persists well into the 21st century.