Every year, as soon as damp and cold autumn sets in, along with inclement weather, most of us catch the flu, or influenza. This is a viral disease, which, despite all the efforts made by people, “steals” from us a whole year from our whole lives.
So why in the fall or at the beginning of a relatively warm winter does the flu “put” us for a couple of weeks in bed? What needs to be done so as not to get sick? Before answering these questions, let's recall what influenza is, the meaning of a word, and where it came from.
What does it mean
The correct name sounds like "influenza", but in the Russian language the irregular form of this word has become fixed - "influenza". From Italian, it came to Russian, as well as to most European languages. There are several hypotheses about how this word happened.
One of them says that medieval scientists and doctors did not manage to find the cause of the disease on earth, and astrologers proposed their own version, according to which the special arrangement of the heavenly bodies can affect people and cause an epidemic. In a direct translation from Italian, influenza means "impact, influence."
Another version is more prosaic. According to her, influenza is an Italian expression shortened to one word - influenza di fredo, which translates as "the influence of the cold." This name was used for all colds and infectious diseases, the occurrence of which was associated with hypothermia of the body. In medicine, this term has firmly entered after the flu pandemic of the late XVIII century.
The most familiar and used name for this disease, “influenza,” was borrowed much later from the French language.
What is this disease
Influenza or influenza is an acute infectious disease affecting the airways of a person, which is part of a large group called acute respiratory viral infections (ARVI). Orthomyxovirus - Myxovirus influenzae causes the disease. Scientists have identified three of its main types, each of which differs significantly in structure from the others: A, B and C. That is why, after having been ill or vaccinated with any of the listed types, you can “pick up” the other and get sick again.
A bit of history
It is not true that flu or influenza is a modern disease. To claim that primitive people hurt them is difficult, since this disease does not leave any structural external damage on the bones and in the human skeleton. However, many written sources indicate that for over 1000 years, humanity has been suffering from such infectious diseases. Academician V.M. Zhdanov claims that at least 13 pandemics and approximately 500 influenza epidemics have occurred during this time.
Such ancient authors as Diophore, Titus Livius and Hippocrates described in sufficient detail such diseases in which patients experienced a sharp increase in temperature, muscle and headache, and unpleasant sensations in the throat. It has been observed that influenza or influenza is a highly contagious disease that spreads rapidly both in individual settlements and in whole countries and continents.
The first documented evidence of an influenza-like epidemic, then called “Italian fever” and spreading to many European countries, dates back to 1580.
The disease received the name "influenza" after the pandemic of 1780-1782. According to another theory of the origin of this name, it was formed from the Latin word influere, translated as “spread, penetrate,” which really reflects the speed of spread and the suddenness of the onset of the disease.
Influenza (influenza) epidemics occurred quite often, but they grew into a global disaster three or four times in a hundred years and were called pandemics.
Epidemics and pandemics of our day
In modern history, the following, most notorious pandemics are distinguished:
- "Spaniard" in the years 1918-1920, caused by the H1N1 virus, claimed approximately 20 million lives;
- the pandemic of 1957-1958, the so-called Asian flu caused by the H2N2 virus, killed about 1 million people;
- caused by the H3N2 strain of Hong Kong influenza 1968-1969 killed about 34,000 people;
- Russian flu 1977-1978.
Some researchers are inclined to classify among them outbreaks in 1997 of “bird” and in 2009 “swine” flu, but most scientists believe that these were epidemics.