Epidemic. A contagious infectious disease that becomes widespread. Epidemics are caused by bacteria, viruses, or other simple microorganisms that are transferred from an infected organism to a healthy one. There are over 1,300 such pathogenetic agents and they are divided into (1) intestinal agents, which cause such diseases as intestinal typhoid, cholera, dysentery, and paratyphoid; (2) blood agents, which cause malaria, European and murine typhus, bubonic plague, and yellow fever; (3) respiratory agents, which cause pneumonia, grippe, smallpox, and diphtheria; and (4) skin agents, which cause diseases such as syphilis, anthrax, mange, and trachoma. Microbiology studies the microorganisms that cause epidemics, while epidemiology studies their incidence, transmission, and control.

The Kyivan Rus’ chronicles refer to a number of epidemics that occurred in Ukraine. They were called airs or pestilences (mory). People of that time already realized that the sick had to be isolated. Later (in the 16th–17th century) various measures were systematically applied to prevent contagious diseases from spreading (the sick were isolated in designated houses, quarantines were imposed on travellers, special hospital wards were reserved for certain diseases, infected articles were burned or disinfected by heating or smoking). In medieval times the most destructive epidemics in Ukraine, as in other European countries, were the bubonic plague, smallpox, and cholera, which killed hundreds of thousands of people. The other common infectious diseases were tuberculosis, syphilis, malaria, and children’s diseases (eg, scarlet fever, diphtheria, chickenpox, and intestinal infections). Large epidemics continued to occur in Ukraine even in the 19th century: smallpox broke out in 1802, 1807, 1810, and 1826, and cholera was rampant in 1830, 1831, 1847, 1853, 1855, and even at the beginning of the 20th century. In 1920, 4.3 million people were infected with typhus. In 1923–4 about 3 million and in 1932–4 about 2 million Ukrainians per year suffered from malaria. Before the Revolution of 1917 about 200,000 people died each year from tuberculosis, and in 1937–40 about 100,000 died annually from the disease.

Today, cholera, typhus, and dysentery epidemics have been almost eliminated in Ukraine. Outbreaks of smallpox or the plague are very rare. The incidence of tuberculosis, malaria, and children’s diseases has been reduced drastically.

Vasyl Pliushch

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 1 (1984).]