Importancia de la viruela, gastroenteritis aguda y paludismo ... - Oulu

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Industry and commerce were poorly developed in the country, except in the
Ostrobothnian area, where burning and selling tar was an important source of incomes.
In the 18th century the territory that nowadays constitutes Finland was part of the
Swedish kingdom and subordinate to the Swedish laws, as any other province in the
kingdom. Being in the frontier with the Russian empire, it was often scenario of conflicts
and wars.
At the beginning of the study period, Finland was recovering from the ravages of the
Great Wrath and the Lesser Wrath (Russian occupations of Finland). In 1788 begins the
War of King Gustavus III, fought especially in the eastern part of the country and lasting
till 1790.
During 1808-1809, the Finnish War took place, once again between Sweden and
Russia with Finland as a battlefield. As a consequence of this war, Finland was separated
from Sweden and became an autonomous Grand Duchy of the Russian empire until its
independence in 1917.
All these wars were disastrous for the civilian population. The movement of troops
back and forth across the country exposed the population to numerous pathogens,
generating and boosting epidemics of infectious diseases that dramatically raised
mortality.
Actually, during the time prior to the Demographic transition, infectious diseases were
the most important causes of death and the main check of population growth.
Medicine was in a rather primitive stage, prior to the bacteriological era or
bacteriological revolution that arrived at the end of the 19th century.
2 Aims of the study
The existence in Finland, as well as in Sweden, of a register of death causes in the parish
burial records from 1749 onwards, provides a unique frame for the study of the role
played by different diseases in mortality in the past. One of the main aims of this study is
to explore the possibilities of such a material.
Seeing the central role played by infectious diseases in mortality in the past, the
importance and behavior of three of them in 18th and 19th century Finland are analyzed.
Acute gastroenteritis, smallpox and malaria are the causes of death chosen for temporal
and spatial analysis. They were chosen for three main reasons: their important role in
human morbidity and mortality; the various kinds of causal agents related to them:
bacterial, viral and protozoan; and for being representatives of three different means of
transmission (fecal-oral for gastroenteritis, respiratory for smallpox, and through a vector
for malaria).
The first approach to the study is general, in order to assess the weight of these
diseases as causes of death during the whole period analyzed. Several demographic and
epidemiological aspects are considered, such as the age distribution of the deaths and
their seasonality.
The second approach is temporal. The variations of the importance of the diseases
through time are studied in order to determine their behaviour in their short and long term
trends, both analyzed against the historical background.