Influence is the effect of stars or an infectious disease

Every year, as soon as the damp and cold autumn comes, along with inclement weather, most of us overtake the flu, or the flu. This is a viral disease, which, despite all the efforts made by people, "steals" from us a whole year from all life. So why exactly in the autumn or at the beginning of a relatively warm winter we are "laid" for a couple of weeks in bed with the flu? What you need to do to not get sick? Before answering these questions, let's remember what is the inflation, the meaning of the word and where it came from.

What does it mean?

The correct name sounds like an "influenza", but in the Russian language the wrong form of the word "influenza" was fixed. From Italian it came in Russian, and also in most European languages. There are several hypotheses about how this word happened.

One of them says that medieval scientists and doctors could not find the cause of the onset of the disease on earth, and astrologers offered their version, according to which the special location of the heavenly bodies can affect people and cause an epidemic. In a direct translation from the Italian language influenza means "impact, influence."

Another version is more prosaic. According to her, the influenza is a shortened to one word Italian expression - influenza di fredo, which translates as "the influence of cold." This name was used for all cold and infectious diseases, the occurrence of which was associated with the body's hypothermia. In medicine, the term was firmly established after the influenza pandemic of the late 18th century.

The most familiar and used name for this disease "influenza" was much later borrowed from the French language.

What is this disease?

Influenza or influenza is an acute infectious disease that enters the vast group, called acute respiratory viral infections (ARVI). The disease causes orthomixovirus - Myxovirus influenzae. Scientists have identified three of its main types, each of which differs significantly in its structure from the others: A, B and C. That is why, having had a pain or having been vaccinated against any of the listed types, one can "pick up" another and get sick again.

A bit of history

It is not correct to consider that influenza or influenza is a modern disease. To argue that primitive people were ill for them is difficult, since this disease does not leave any structural external damage on bones and in the human skeleton. However, many written sources testify that for more than 1000 years humanity has suffered from such infectious diseases. Academician V.M. Zhdanov claims that during this time there were at least 13 pandemics and about 500 epidemics of influenza.

Such ancient authors as Diofor, Titus Livius and Hippocrates described in 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 very contagious disease that spreads quickly in both individual communities and exciting whole countries and continents.

The first documentary evidence of the influenza-like epidemic, then called the "Italian fever" and embraced many European countries, dates back to 1580.

The name "influenza" disease got 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 appearance of the disease.

Influenza epidemics arose quite often, but they grew into a global disaster three to four times in a hundred years and were called pandemics.

Epidemics and pandemics of our days

In modern history, there are the following, the most notorious pandemics:

• "Spaniard" in 1918-1920, caused by the H1N1 virus, killed roughly 20 million lives;
• The 1957-1958 pandemic, the so-called Asian influenza caused by the H2N2 virus, claimed the lives of about 1 million people;
• The H3N2 strain of the 1968-1969 Hong Kong flu killed about 34,000 people;
• The Russian flu of 1977-1978.

Some researchers are inclined to classify them as outbreaks in 1997 of "avian" and in 2009 "swine flu", however, most scientists believe that these were epidemics.