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The Great Famine, also known as the Great Hunger (Irish: an Gorta Mór [ənˠ ˈɡɔɾˠt̪ˠə ˈmˠoːɾˠ]), the Famine and the Irish Potato Famine, [1] [2] was a period of mass starvation and disease in Ireland lasting from 1845 to 1852 that constituted a historical social crisis and had a major impact on Irish society and history as a whole. [3]
Epidemics of the 19th century were faced without the medical advances that made 20th-century epidemics much rarer and less lethal. Micro-organisms (viruses and bacteria) had been discovered in the 18th century, but it was not until the late 19th century that the experiments of Lazzaro Spallanzani and Louis Pasteur disproved spontaneous generation conclusively, allowing germ theory and Robert ...
Mary Mallon was born in 1869 in Cookstown, County Tyrone, Ireland.She may have been born with typhoid fever as her mother was infected during pregnancy. [5] [6] [7] In 1884 at the age of 15, she emigrated from Ireland to the United States.
Typhus appeared again in the late 1830s, and yet another major typhus epidemic occurred during the Great Irish Famine between 1846 and 1849. The typhus outbreak along with typhoid fever is said to be responsible for 400,000 deaths. [35] The Irish typhus spread to England, where it was sometimes called "Irish fever" and was noted for its virulence.
An influx of Irish immigrants to New York resulted in a typhus outbreak in 1847, with 80% of the cases reported to have been contracted during the Atlantic crossing, and 20% of the cases resulting from secondary spread in the city. 147 cases were treated at the New York Hospital over a seven-week period. The mortality rate was 11%.
The Irish typhus spread to England, where it was sometimes called "Irish fever" and was noted for its virulence. It killed people of all social classes since lice were endemic and inescapable, but it hit particularly hard in the lower or "unwashed" social strata. It was carried to North America by the many Irish refugees who fled the famine.
The famine of 1740–1741 is different from the Great Famine of the 19th century. By the mid-19th century, potatoes made up a greater portion of Irish diets, with adverse consequences when the crop failed, causing famine from 1845 to 1852. The Great Famine differed by "cause, scale and timing" from the Irish Famine of 1740–1741.
The widespread hunger and starvation is commonly thought to be a cause of political changes during the mid 19th century. The Revolutions of 1848 saw widespread dissatisfaction among European peasants who saw a decline in their standard of living and so, along with other reasons, led many to join revolutions in various countries.