Preview

Diseases was a big killer in World War 2

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
396 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Diseases was a big killer in World War 2
Diseases was a big killer in World War 1 because of the little medicine and medical knowledge. The Anzacs would have experienced many diseases such as influenza, typhoid, trench foot and trench fever.

Trench foot is a disease which makes your foot turn blue or red and makes your foot very numb. It often involves blisters and open sores which allows fungal infections to enter. If the foot is untreated it can result into gangrene. Trench foot is caused by exposure to damp and wet conditions. In this case it was the soldiers walking bare foot in the wet trenches. This was bad for the soldiers because it delayed the time in which they could fight. Trench fever was a serious disease. It resulted in high fever, severe head aches and serious pains in the legs and back. It takes about 5 days for the disease to start taking affect. Recovery takes about a month or two. It was transmitted by body lice. This disease was bad, because of the time that it took to recover. In rare cases people could die from this disease.

Typhoid was a deadly disease that Jim Martin died from. As it quotes in solider boy “Gallipoli’s flies and disease are worse than the Turkish bullets”. Early symptom’s that Jim Martin would have had was a temperature as high as 40 degrees Celsius, sweating and diarrhea. Later on Jim Martin experienced coughing and severe headaches. He would have got this disease from bad hygiene and filthy flies. In solider boy it states “every friggen fly in the world has to come to Gallipoli”. Dying from typhoid is an agonizing death. As you get closer to death your body cannot take in any food or water. Victims get very dehydrated. Death occurs 10 to 30% of infected people.

Lastly influenza killed 40 million people worldwide. The symptoms of influenza are sore throats, headaches, loss of appetite and blood poisoning. A large percentage of people died from this disease, once infected. It takes 3 days for the person to die. Influenza was transmitted by air. It was very bad

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Powerful Essays

    The doctors and nurses treating the wounded did not know about germs and bacteria so as they kept treating patients after patients, most likely never washing their hands, they didn’t know the deadly germs they were spreading. Bloody sponges and bandages were washed in buckets of dirty water and reused. More soldiers died from diseases then the battle fields.4 In general, for about every man who died from the battle fields, two died from disease. In their camps the soldiers were suffering to overcrowding, inadequate waste disposal, starvation and parasitic infestation. All these things could cause diseases like influenza and cholera to spread almost unchecked. Since there was no sort of antibiotic back then, even a minor wound could cause a major infection leaving the soldier dead within…

    • 1520 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Trench foot is a fungal infection caused by the feet being over exposed to damp conditions. Trench foot gets the name from World War I trench warfare, in which the soldiers were constantly in wet and damp conditions. The fungus was caused from sweating, cold, and wet feet not being treated properly and not being taken care of, like changing socks and keeping the feet dry. The symptoms would include the feet slowly going numb and the skin changing to dark or red colors while also rotting off toes and leaving holes in the feet. Amputation was the only treatment for trench foot, it was the only way to rid the body of the fungus. During 1914-1915, over 20,000 men were diagnosed with trench foot. The only way for the men to fight the fungus was to change socks multiple times a day. The soldiers would eventually carry around three pairs of socks with them, and they also were drying their feet every chance they got; the soldiers would also cover their feet in grease to help with the…

    • 1746 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Fra Eline, our comrades on the front lines have other problems than the enemy. It comes in the forms of dysentery, rats, and trench foot. Dysentery makes an average man unable to preform the most basic of tasks. This dysentery is caused by unclean drinking water and rotten meat. The rats are a common infestation in the trenches because they spread lice and are a nuisance to the men.…

    • 69 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Wgu Hat Task 3

    • 2188 Words
    • 9 Pages

    References: Avian Influenza A (H5N1) Infection in Humans (2005). The New England Journal of Medicine. Retrieved November 2, 2012, from, http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMra052211…

    • 2188 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    We don’t have any other pairs of clothes, so we sleep in the same pair of clothes every night. Since we have lice everywhere, we all have to cut our hair short so that it fits in our hats and we even have to scrape the lice off of our hair with the blunt edge of our knives. Our underclothes are always stuck to us from the sweat and the water inside of the trenches. Because our trenches are filled with water, there are a lot of us that have gotten trench foot. Trench foot is when your feet swell up to about two or three times the size of normal feet and they develop gangrene. I could stab my bayonet into my foot and not feel it. Sometimes, if you are lucky enough, the swelling goes down, but you feel the worst pain you have felt in your life. Men are screaming and crying in pain as their legs and feet get amputated. I got lucky, but if I was stuck in that trench for one more day, I fear I would have been too…

    • 399 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    In 1939, the British Foreign Office published a White Paper detailing reports of torturing and killing Jews and political prisoners. It was considered a “propaganda stunt” by the several members of the press . The British began to learn about the Final Solution in June of 1942 when the Daily Telegraph reported that Jews were being taken to concentration camps as part of a plan created by the Nazis. The connection between the Final Solution and crimes against Jews was not made until the liberation of concentration camps. There is still a debate however as to whether or not the British public really believed the stories of Nazi atrocities before 1945.When Eisenhower sent an invitation to Parliament and Congress to come tour Buchenwald concentration…

    • 1505 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Typhoid Fever is a life-threatening illness caused by the bacterium Salmonella Typhi. Annually in the united states 5700 cases are reported. In the majority of the cases reported, the infected were traveling internationally. Typhoid Fever is still very common throughout the world where it is estimated to infect 21.5 million people per year. Even with advanced prevention and treatment Typhoid Fever is still easily contracted and is a threat to all military members while deployed or in a field environment.…

    • 1038 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In April of 1861 when the Civil War began, the medical field was very unsophisticated. Bacteriology was not yet discovered, and doctors were oblivious as to what caused the murderous diseases such as typhoid and dysentery that took the lives of many soldiers.…

    • 979 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The beginning of this pandemic (In the Spring 1918) was fairly mild, the people who did get sick experienced the normal symptoms, and recovered after a few days. But in the fall of the same year a second and extremely contagious wave of this virus appeared. After showing symptoms, patients would die between hours and days. Due to this the average life expectancy in America was reduced by 12 years. The deaths that this pandemic caused have been estimated at 20 - 50 million. But the most unusual aspect of this strain of influenza was that it infected so many young men and women; people who were normally not affected by the…

    • 333 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    I was too inexperienced for the First War. I’m in the trenches between the borders of France and Germany. There were many soldiers lying dead on there. It was so wet, moist, and muddy that I saw many of them with necrosis and gangrene on their feet, due to keeping their foot on the trench’s filthy water. They said that this condition was so painful and agonizing that they were forced to amputate them to end the pain. Luckily, I wasn’t many of the soldiers with this infection. I hope you guys are okay, I might come back home alive til the war ends. Love you mom and…

    • 109 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Poor hygiene in camps causes the disease to spread from soldier to soldier by contaminated food, water, and mosquitos. Fields hospitals treated large amount wounded soldiers which all kept together in unsanitary, poorly ventilated conditions which also contributed to spread of infections. Civil War surgeons did not understand germs, they had to work without knowledge about infections how they were carried and spread, and without drugs to treat it (Oshinsky 97). They performed surgeries without wearing gloves, sterilizing their tools, used bare fingers to inspect wounds, and simply wiped instruments clean using their aprons. The risk from surgery was great, resulting in high death rates from infections.…

    • 1028 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    So, the war begin and as it was raining day by day the water got higher and some of the soldier got trench foot,which is a disease that cause the soldiers to get there feet or legs cut off.…

    • 144 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    HSA 535

    • 1777 Words
    • 8 Pages

    Influenza is a viral infection that harbors on the respiratory system. This infectious disease mostly known as the flu is highly contagious and its symptoms can vary from mild to severe. Depending on the immune system of the individual affected and the strength of the symptoms it can at times lead to death. To understand how to treat it is important for individuals to know and recognize the symptoms. Unlike the common cold, the flu comes on suddenly. Many who have the flu experience some or all of the following symptoms:…

    • 1777 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Tuberculosis was one of the main leading causes of death in the United States in the early 20th century. People who were carriers or affected by the disease were quarantine, isolated from society, and placed in sanatoriums, which later became known as the "waiting room for death." As described by Sheila Rothman, death was a synonym of tuberculosis and was a habitual characteristic of the sanatoriums1. Although people were highly encouraged to go to these establishments, they were not as effective as they made them seem. Even under the best conditions, at least half of all the patients who entered the facilities died within a period of 6 years. Due to the ineffectiveness of these establishments, physicians and scientists started researching…

    • 268 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Spanish Influenza

    • 378 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The Spanish influenza plagued Alaska from 1918 through 1919. The origin of the illness is unknown, but thought to be caused by the overcrowding in many army boot-camps or in the crowded trenches on the battlefields. This deadly strain of influenza was known to cause death in as little as 48 hours, and left thousands in Alaska dead. The first cases were reported in October 1918 and by Halloween there were 200 cases in Ketchikan. Many smaller communities had few medically trained people like nurses or doctors. As a result, other public employees like school teachers and town officials worked medical care alongside volunteers. This was the case in Nome.…

    • 378 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays