Something that killed huge numbers of Native Americans raced ahead of European contact, although alcohol and privation increased susceptibility to illness and death from the interchange. Microbes seem to fit the bill.
I am going to have a closer look at NZ history. Will have to seek early sources. Suspect that some of those will be North American but likely European Americans. Would be surprised otherwise although apparently the sweet potato here (Kumara) has genetics that indicate an Americas origin. I really don't know much about American history. Are you talking of pre-Columbus events or post-Columbus ones?
post C through most of the Americas, early ethnographers (priests mostly) wrote about epidemics racing from village to village ahead of European contact. From Puritans to Pizarro. Sweet potato is possibly Polynesian introduction via South America.
What happens when polio is cured? I personally know several people who were cured of polio. They don't use the word "cure". Most still suffer damage from the disease, but the disease is gone.
Modern medicine considers polio to be incurable. But at the same time, they have no definition of polio cured - so they cannot prove cured nor not cured.
What happens when polio is cured? Nothing. Polio, with regards to being cured, is like the common cold, influenza, and COVID. Cures and cured are simply ignored. It's nothing new.
Cured is defined medically and scientifically for an infectious disease cured by killing or removing the infectious cause. Cured is not defined for any other disease or treatment. If an alternative medicine cures an infection, it doesn't count and is not counted. Actually, no cures are counted. We have statistics for disease, but none for cured. Why not? If we counted all cures we might be forced to acknowledge that most cures don't come from medicines. We might even notice the obvious - most cases of disease are easily cured.
Think about infections, for example. We, like all animals always have, get dozens of infections in our lifetime. Most are never even diagnosed by a medical professional, much less treated, muchless cured.
And what about polio? How many cases of polio were trivial? How many were only very short term? How many were easily cured? Whether polio was caused by a virus or a poison, it only makes sense that we would have a wide variation in severity and duration. But... What happened to the cases that were easily cured? They were simply ignored.
Thanks for expanding the debate. The C word is rarely used because the full legal weight of the War on Medical Dissenters is invoked. Devices promising cures will be prosecuted by the FDA, treatments by any arm of the Medical Industrial Military Complex. Doctors diagnose post polio syndrome decades after original infection, and claim shingles as a decades later manifesting of chicken pox, like viral sleeper cells.
Yes, it's not just polio. The only way to "prove" a cure, in our modern medical industrial complex, is to use the word cure in a product research study, and have the product approved by the FDA (or equivalent in other countries). In all other cases - as is easily seen in many books titled "Cure for..." the disclaimer "this product does not ... or cure" must be present. At the same time a most cases of the common cold, influenza, measles, and COVID are easily cured, the authorities claim, almost with pride, "There is no cure for..."
I wonder what 'smallpox blankets' really were.
https://medicine.uq.edu.au/blog/2018/12/history-syringes-and-needles
Something that killed huge numbers of Native Americans raced ahead of European contact, although alcohol and privation increased susceptibility to illness and death from the interchange. Microbes seem to fit the bill.
I am going to have a closer look at NZ history. Will have to seek early sources. Suspect that some of those will be North American but likely European Americans. Would be surprised otherwise although apparently the sweet potato here (Kumara) has genetics that indicate an Americas origin. I really don't know much about American history. Are you talking of pre-Columbus events or post-Columbus ones?
post C through most of the Americas, early ethnographers (priests mostly) wrote about epidemics racing from village to village ahead of European contact. From Puritans to Pizarro. Sweet potato is possibly Polynesian introduction via South America.
Thanks.
Here's something you might not have considered.
What happens when polio is cured? I personally know several people who were cured of polio. They don't use the word "cure". Most still suffer damage from the disease, but the disease is gone.
Modern medicine considers polio to be incurable. But at the same time, they have no definition of polio cured - so they cannot prove cured nor not cured.
What happens when polio is cured? Nothing. Polio, with regards to being cured, is like the common cold, influenza, and COVID. Cures and cured are simply ignored. It's nothing new.
Cured is defined medically and scientifically for an infectious disease cured by killing or removing the infectious cause. Cured is not defined for any other disease or treatment. If an alternative medicine cures an infection, it doesn't count and is not counted. Actually, no cures are counted. We have statistics for disease, but none for cured. Why not? If we counted all cures we might be forced to acknowledge that most cures don't come from medicines. We might even notice the obvious - most cases of disease are easily cured.
Think about infections, for example. We, like all animals always have, get dozens of infections in our lifetime. Most are never even diagnosed by a medical professional, much less treated, muchless cured.
And what about polio? How many cases of polio were trivial? How many were only very short term? How many were easily cured? Whether polio was caused by a virus or a poison, it only makes sense that we would have a wide variation in severity and duration. But... What happened to the cases that were easily cured? They were simply ignored.
To your health, Tracy
Author: A New Theory of Cure
Thanks for expanding the debate. The C word is rarely used because the full legal weight of the War on Medical Dissenters is invoked. Devices promising cures will be prosecuted by the FDA, treatments by any arm of the Medical Industrial Military Complex. Doctors diagnose post polio syndrome decades after original infection, and claim shingles as a decades later manifesting of chicken pox, like viral sleeper cells.
Yes, it's not just polio. The only way to "prove" a cure, in our modern medical industrial complex, is to use the word cure in a product research study, and have the product approved by the FDA (or equivalent in other countries). In all other cases - as is easily seen in many books titled "Cure for..." the disclaimer "this product does not ... or cure" must be present. At the same time a most cases of the common cold, influenza, measles, and COVID are easily cured, the authorities claim, almost with pride, "There is no cure for..."