Rebecca Waters – the Threats of the Past, Today

You’d be forgiven for thinking that in the modern day; diseases of the past are no longer a concern. After all, in the last century the advances we have made in medicine and understanding in regards to pathogens, have meant that some once deadly diseases such as smallpox have been all but eliminated.
However, our lifestyles and attitudes towards diseases and vaccinations have also changed and this means that some of the conditions we may no longer consider to be a threat are poised to make a comeback.
Dickensian diseases today
The very mention of something like typhoid or scarlet fever is likely to conjure images in your mind of the grim streets of Victorian London, where soot and mist hangs in the air and whooping cough echoes out of the slums. However, though these diseases seem more suitably placed within the pages of Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist rather than the modern day, they are actually in threat of making a marked return.
But why is this happening? The first thing to remember is that these diseases never fully disappeared to begin with. It’s easy to look at statistics and believe that these diseases are suddenly appearing out of nowhere, but the fact remains that it’s actually our ability and methods to fight off these diseases that’s changing, not necessarily the presence of the pathogens themselves.