Epidemic Diseases of the Great Famine

Famine can be defined as a failure of food production or distribution, resulting in dramatically increased mortality. In Ireland between 1845 and 1849, general starvation and disease were responsible for more than 1,000,000 excess deaths, most of them attributable to fever, dysentery and smallpox. These three highly contagious diseases, which had long been endemic in ... Read more

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