Although the WHO recently declared that the COVID-19 pandemic is “coming to an end” and the US President says it is over in the United States, the disease will have caused millions of deaths around the world, including nearly 17,000 in Quebec. But the Spanish flu remains, for the moment, the worst health scourge to have hit Quebec. Other deadly infections have also claimed thousands of victims and decimated entire families over time. A brief overview of the worst contagious diseases that Quebec has experienced.
“The Spanish flu is the worst pandemic in our history,” explains Denis Goulet, specialist in the history of medicine in Quebec.
It is a devastating disease transmitted by soldiers returning from the front, in Europe, at the end of the First World War and which caused 14,000 deaths in Quebec out of a population of just over 2 million inhabitants, in addition to the after-effects on the survivors.
The virus attacked the lungs and left the most vulnerable no chance. Comparable to the plague in the 14th century, this pandemic caused 50 million deaths worldwide.
“I was faced with a terrible disease,” reports Dr. Albert Cholette in Brief history of epidemics in Quebecthe latest book by Mr. Goulet.
“The patients turned blue, they could no longer breathe. […] I happened to see 50 cases a day, and sometimes four, five or six patients in the same family […] ; I came back the next day, and two or three of them were dead. »
After a few reports in Spain (hence its name), the first cases were reported in the United States and then in Canada in September 1918.
It was in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, in Montérégie, that the first cases appeared, and the virus spread throughout the province.
Smallpox, cholera and typhus
Long before this pandemic, other contagious diseases struck the Quebec population: smallpox in 1640, cholera in 1832, followed by typhus in 1947. AIDS (1981) and COVID (2019) are only the most recent.
“All epidemiologists expected a new pandemic; the only question was: when? says the historian, who is also a graduate in epidemiology.
A major role in history
For microbiologist-infectiologist Karl Weiss, of the Jewish Hospital of Montreal, epidemics have played a major role in world history.
“The Black Death which killed a third of the population of Europe from 1349 to 1351 triggered many social and technical changes. They enabled Europe to set out to conquer the oceans and the world in the 15th century. »
From the beginning of the colony, the First Nations were decimated by infectious diseases from Europe. The Hurons, for example, lost almost half their population in a few decades.
And in the 19th century, ships full of Irish immigrants fleeing potato disease famine were infected with cholera and then typhus.
We have created mandatory quarantine sites like in Grosse-Île, north of Quebec, to accommodate them.
Thousands of people were forced to stop there to avoid contamination of the mainland.
Hygiene and vaccines
Illustration of the book Brief history of epidemics in Quebec, by Denis Goulet
Advertisement in the newspaper L’Action catholique of October 17, 1918, in the midst of an influenza epidemic.
What will enable the health authorities to control infections will not be so much the development of medicine as the implementation of hygiene measures.
“We owe a lot to researchers at the Institut Pasteur in Paris and their colleagues who discovered sterilization measures to curb contamination,” explains Mr. Goulet.
In Quebec, it was Dr. Armand Frappier who innovated in the 1930s. He set up the first milestones in microbiology and traveled across Canada with the tuberculosis vaccine, saving thousands of lives.
Pandemic, epidemic, endemic: what’s the difference?
- A endemic is characterized by the “persistence of an infectious disease within a population or region”.
- A epidemic refers to the rapid spread of an infectious and contagious disease in a given region.
- The pandemic is an epidemic that affects several countries.
Other infectious diseases
Illustration of the book Brief history of epidemics in Quebec, by Denis Goulet
Friedrich Graetz’s Grim Reaper (1883) illustrates the arrival of cholera in British ships.
Quebec has suffered several waves of infection throughout its history. Some, like smallpox, have disappeared thanks to the vigilance of public health authorities and the improvement of hygiene conditions. Others, thought to have disappeared, suddenly reappear. This is the case of tuberculosis, which wreaked havoc in the 20th century before disappearing and then resurfacing recently. Influenza viruses, on the other hand, have never disappeared from the landscape. Here are the main diseases that have marked our history.
Smallpox 17th-19th centuries
The number of deaths is undetermined during the first wave. There is a mass extermination among the First Nations. There were nearly 6,000 deaths in Quebec in 1885.
The symptoms are similar to those of the flu (fever, fatigue, headache, body aches, abdominal pain) and appear 12 days after contamination.
Smallpox was eradicated in the 1970s through vaccination.
Cholera 1832, 1834, 1849
A disaster for humanity that occurs in several waves. In Quebec, there were 3,000 deaths in six months, in 1832.
The symptom is acute diarrhea caused by a bacillus in water and food. the Carrick, which landed at Quebec on June 3, 1832, is said to have brought the infection. Some 42 of the 193 passengers died of cholera.
The epidemic decreases with the improvement of hygiene conditions, without disappearing.
Typhus 1847
“Unprecedented humanitarian crisis”, according to historian Denis Goulet, the typhus epidemic of 1847 broke out in ships arriving from Ireland.
“Ship fever” is transmitted by fleas. Some 5,000 deaths caused by typhus are recorded at sea and 3,300 in Grosse-Île, near Quebec, where infected people are forced to isolate themselves.
spanish flu 1918
She has been nicknamed “the great killer”; it killed at least 14,000 people in Quebec. It is caused by the H1N1 virus.
It causes the same symptoms as those of the seasonal flu (fever, muscle aches), but also attacks the immune system.
The sick, weakened, die of various affections.
Tuberculosis 1867
Nicknamed the “white plague”, this endemic will wreak havoc for a century (it was the leading cause of death in Canada in 1867).
It will be almost eradicated at the turn of the 20th century thanks, in particular, to the BCG vaccine developed at the Pasteur Institute.
The pathogen attacks any part of the body, from bones to the brain, but mainly affects the lungs.
Typhoid fever 1800-1927
It is caused by bacteria called Salmonella typhi carried by contaminated milk, water and food.
In two main waves a century apart, it killed at least 500 people in Quebec.
It is becoming very rare in developed countries due to improved hygiene conditions and the invention of antibiotics.
Poliomyelitis 1946
Caused by a gastrointestinal virus, poliovirus. Symptoms: fever, intestinal disorders, sometimes paralysis. The disease is present in Quebec, but becomes epidemic in 1946, causing 115 deaths and 1612 victims of paralysis.
Asian flus 1957-1959 ; 1968 (Hong Kong) ; SARS 2002 ; H1N1 2010
The flu is caused by viruses. They infect many patients in Quebec (undetermined number), but cause few deaths.
But some strains are more virulent. The 1957 flu, in particular, caused 7,000 deaths in Canada. Symptoms are fever, headache and body aches. Vaccines combat seasonal variants.
Like 1981
Caused by a virus, acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) attacks the immune system of the infected person. They become vulnerable to lung diseases such as pneumonia or Karposi’s syndrome.
Flu and STBBIs
Caused by H1N1 viruses that cannot be eradicated, seasonal flu still causes 290,000 to 650,000 deaths per year according to the WHO. We protect ourselves with the vaccine that targets the annual variant and by washing our hands.
As for sexually transmitted and blood-borne infections (syphilis, gonorrhea, chlamydia, human papilloma virus, etc.), they have always been part of human history.
A century and a half of antivaccines
Illustration of the book Brief history of epidemics in Quebec, by Denis Goulet
Opponents of mandatory vaccination campaigns did not emerge with the first vaccines administered in December 2020 against COVID-19.
Riots broke out in Quebec when it was sought to protect the population against smallpox, at the end of the 19th century.
In Montreal, in September 1875, no fewer than 3,000 people demonstrated against vaccination.
The rumor ran that “the vaccine is more dangerous than smallpox”, recalls Denis Goulet, the author of the book Brief history of epidemics in Quebec.
even a doctor
The most active antivaccines were found even within the medical community.
For example, Dr. Joseph Emery-Coderre, a professor at the Montreal School of Medicine and Surgery, had formed a League Against Vaccination to “oppose by all legal means the operation of the current vaccination law” .
Members who resisted the vaccinators were protected by the League, which pledged to defend them in court.
Chaotic beginnings
It must be said that the beginnings of vaccination were chaotic.
The practice was first applied without a clear understanding of the mechanics.
And it was found, as today, that vaccinated people could contract the disease.
Hesitant, the authorities had preferred to apply proven measures such as quarantine and disinfection of homes.