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Cocoliztli
The Cocoliztli Epidemic or the Great Pestilence was an outbreak of a mysterious illness characterized by high fevers and bleeding which caused millions of deaths in New Spain during the 16th-century. The Aztec people called it ''cocoliztli'', Nahuatl for pestilence. It ravaged the Mexican highlands in epidemic proportions, resulting in the demographic collapse of some Indigenous populations. Based on the death toll, this outbreak is often referred to as the worst epidemic in the history of Mexico. Subsequent outbreaks continued to baffle both Spanish and native doctors, with little consensus among modern researchers on the pathogenesis. However, recent bacterial genomic studies have suggested that Salmonella, specifically a serotype of ''Salmonella enterica'' known as Paratyphi C, was at least partially responsible for this initial outbreak. Others believe ''cocoliztli'' was caused by an indigenous viral hemorrhagic fever, perhaps exacerbated by the worst droughts to affect that ...
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Viral Hemorrhagic Fever
Viral hemorrhagic fevers (VHFs) are a diverse group of animal and human illnesses in which fever and hemorrhage are caused by a viral infection. VHFs may be caused by five distinct families of RNA viruses: the families ''Filoviridae'', ''Flaviviridae'', ''Rhabdoviridae'', and several member families of the ''Bunyavirales'' order such as '' Arenaviridae'', and ''Hantaviridae''. All types of VHF are characterized by fever and bleeding disorders and all can progress to high fever, shock and death in many cases. Some of the VHF agents cause relatively mild illnesses, such as the Scandinavian '' nephropathia epidemica'' (a hantavirus), while others, such as Ebola virus, can cause severe, life-threatening disease. Signs and symptoms Signs and symptoms of VHFs include (by definition) fever and bleeding: * Flushing of the face and chest, small red or purple spots (petechiae), bleeding, swelling caused by edema, low blood pressure (hypotension), and circulatory shock. * Malaise, muscle ...
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Salmonella
''Salmonella'' is a genus of rod-shaped (bacillus) Gram-negative bacteria of the family Enterobacteriaceae. The two species of ''Salmonella'' are ''Salmonella enterica'' and ''Salmonella bongori''. ''S. enterica'' is the type species and is further divided into six subspecies that include over 2,600 serotypes. ''Salmonella'' was named after Daniel Elmer Salmon (1850–1914), an American veterinary surgeon. ''Salmonella'' species are non-spore-forming, predominantly motile enterobacteria with cell diameters between about 0.7 and 1.5 μm, lengths from 2 to 5 μm, and peritrichous flagella (all around the cell body, allowing them to move). They are chemotrophs, obtaining their energy from oxidation and reduction reactions, using organic sources. They are also facultative anaerobes, capable of generating ATP with oxygen ("aerobically") when it is available, or using other electron acceptors or fermentation ("anaerobically") when oxygen is not available. ''Salmonella'' spe ...
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Salmonella Enterica
''Salmonella enterica'' (formerly ''Salmonella choleraesuis'') is a rod-headed, flagellate, facultative anaerobic, Gram-negative bacterium and a species of the genus ''Salmonella''. A number of its serovars are serious human pathogens. Epidemiology Most cases of salmonellosis are caused by food infected with ''S. enterica'', which often infects cattle and poultry, though other animals such as domestic cats and hamsters have also been shown to be sources of infection in humans. Investigations of vacuum cleaner bags have shown that households can act as a reservoir of the bacterium; this is more likely if the household has contact with an infection source (i.e., members working with cattle or in a veterinary clinic). Raw chicken eggs and goose eggs can harbor ''S. enterica'', initially in the egg whites, although most eggs are not infected. As the egg ages at room temperature, the yolk membrane begins to break down and ''S. enterica'' can spread into the yolk. Refrigeration a ...
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Reducciones
Reductions ( es, reducciones, also called ; , pl. ) were settlements created by Empire of Spain, Spanish rulers and Roman Catholic missionaries in Spanish America and the Spanish East Indies (the Philippines). In Portuguese America, Portuguese-speaking Latin America, such reductions were also called ''aldeias''. The Spanish and Portuguese relocated, Forced displacement, forcibly in many cases, indigenous inhabitants (''Indians'' or ''Indios'') of their Spanish colonization of the Americas, colonies into urban settlements modeled on those in Spain and Portugal. The word "reduction" can be understood wrongly as meaning "to reduce." Rather, the 1611 Spanish dictionary by Sebastián de Covarrubias defines ''reducción'' (reduction) as "to convince, persuade, or to order." The goals of reductions were to concentrate indigenous people into settled communities and to convert the Indians to Christianity and impose European culture. The concentration of the indigenous into towns fac ...
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Encomenderos
The ''encomienda'' () was a Spanish labour system that rewarded conquerors with the labour of conquered non-Christian peoples. The labourers, in theory, were provided with benefits by the conquerors for whom they laboured, including military protection and education. The ''encomienda'' was first established in Spain following the Christian conquest of Moorish territories (known to Christians as the ''Reconquista''), and it was applied on a much larger scale during the Spanish colonization of the Americas and the Spanish Philippines. Conquered peoples were considered vassals of the Spanish monarch. The Crown awarded an ''encomienda'' as a grant to a particular individual. In the conquest era of the early sixteenth century, the grants were considered to be a monopoly on the labour of particular groups of indigenous peoples, held in perpetuity by the grant holder, called the ''encomendero''; following the New Laws of 1542, upon the death of the ''encomendero'', the encomienda en ...
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Toribio De Benavente Motolinia
Toribio of Benavente, O.F.M. (1482, Benavente, Spain – 1565, Mexico City, New Spain), also known as Motolinía, was a Franciscan missionary who was one of the famous Twelve Apostles of Mexico who arrived in New Spain in May 1524. His published writings are a key source for the history and ethnography of the Nahuas of central Mexico in the immediate post-conquest period as well as for the challenges of Christian evangelization. He is probably best known for his attacks on the Dominican defender of the rights of the indigenous peoples, Bartolomé de las Casas, who criticized the Conquest. Though agreeing with Las Casas's criticism of the abuses of the conquistadors, he did not agree with the whole sale condemnation of the Spanish Conquest, as well as his criticisms of the Franciscan practices of baptism en masse of the indigenous people of the new world. Due to these differences he went on to vilify Las Casas. Early life Toribio entered the Franciscan Order at the age of sevent ...
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Bernardino De Sahagún
Bernardino de Sahagún, OFM (; – 5 February 1590) was a Franciscan friar, missionary priest and pioneering ethnographer who participated in the Catholic evangelization of colonial New Spain (now Mexico). Born in Sahagún, Spain, in 1499, he journeyed to New Spain in 1529. He learned Nahuatl and spent more than 50 years in the study of Aztec beliefs, culture and history. Though he was primarily devoted to his missionary task, his extraordinary work documenting indigenous worldview and culture has earned him the title as “the first anthropologist."Arthur J.O. Anderson, "Sahagún: Career and Character" in Bernardino de Sahagún, ''Florentine Codex: The General History of the Things of New Spain, Introductions and Indices'', Arthur J.O. Anderson and Charles Dibble, translators. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press 1982, p. 40.M. León-Portilla, ''Bernardino de Sahagún: The First Anthropologist'' (University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 2002), pp. He also contributed to the ...
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Florentine Codex
The ''Florentine Codex'' is a 16th-century ethnographic research study in Mesoamerica by the Spanish Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún. Sahagún originally titled it: ''La Historia General de las Cosas de Nueva España'' (in English: ''The Universal History of the Things of New Spain''). After a translation mistake, it was given the name ''Historia general de las Cosas de Nueva España''. The best-preserved manuscript is commonly referred to as the ''Florentine Codex'', as the codex is held in the Laurentian Library of Florence, Italy. In partnership with Nahua men who were formerly his students at the Colegio de Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco, Sahagún conducted research, organized evidence, wrote and edited his findings. He worked on this project from 1545 up until his death in 1590. The work consists of 2,400 pages organized into twelve books; more than 2,000 illustrations drawn by native artists provide vivid images of this era. It documents the culture, religious cosmology ( ...
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Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by total area. Its southern and western border with the United States, stretching , is the world's longest binational land border. Canada's capital is Ottawa, and its three largest metropolitan areas are Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. Indigenous peoples have continuously inhabited what is now Canada for thousands of years. Beginning in the 16th century, British and French expeditions explored and later settled along the Atlantic coast. As a consequence of various armed conflicts, France ceded nearly all of its colonies in North America in 1763. In 1867, with the union of three British North American colonies through Confederation, Canada was formed as a federal dominion of four provinces. This began an accretion of provinces an ...
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Virgin Soil Epidemic
Virgin soil epidemic is a term coined by Alfred Crosby, who defined it as epidemics "in which the populations at risk have had no previous contact with the diseases that strike them and are therefore immunologically almost defenseless." His concept is related to that developed by William McNeill, who connected the development of agriculture and more sedentary life with the emergence of new diseases as microbes moved from domestic animals to humans. Virgin soil epidemics have occurred with European colonization, particularly when European explorers and colonists brought diseases to lands they conquered in the Americas, Australia and Pacific Islands. The concept would later be adopted wholesale by Jared Diamond as a central theme in his popular book '' Guns, Germs and Steel'' as an explanation for successful European expansion. When a population has not had contact with a particular pathogen, individuals in that population have not built up any immunity to that organism and so ha ...
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Zoonosis
A zoonosis (; plural zoonoses) or zoonotic disease is an infectious disease of humans caused by a pathogen (an infectious agent, such as a bacterium, virus, parasite or prion) that has jumped from a non-human (usually a vertebrate) to a human. Typically, the first infected human transmits the infectious agent to at least one other human, who, in turn, infects others. Major modern diseases such as Ebola virus disease and salmonellosis are zoonoses. HIV was a zoonotic disease transmitted to humans in the early part of the 20th century, though it has now evolved into a separate human-only disease. Most strains of influenza that infect humans are human diseases, although many strains of bird flu and swine flu are zoonoses; these viruses occasionally recombine with human strains of the flu and can cause pandemics such as the 1918 Spanish flu or the 2009 swine flu. ''Taenia solium'' infection is one of the neglected tropical diseases with public health and veterinary concern in en ...
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