What the Romans really did for us!!

[Conal]

Romans to blame for HIV


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7596532.stm

Ouch hock:

[Ioannes_Ahenobarbus]

Yikes...that is a bit of a stretch, I'm not convinced. Interesting though.

[Endre Fodstad]

The last time, it was the Black Death. Meh.

[M. Demetrius]

But wait, in Rome Total War, it always says plague and pestilence is caused undoubtedly by "Celts and other barbarians". How could it be Rome's fault, then?

Now I'm confused.

[Robert Vermaat]

So Roman rule left its citizens with a higher vulnerability for HIV?
How?
If it were Roman genes, Italy should be a HIV hotspot. But it isn't.
And how about Africa and the Middle East? the article only mentions the apparent differences between European areas.

Maybe it wasn't Romans. Maybe it was Latin.

[A_Volpe]

Oh, so let's blame everything on the Romans

and not things like poor sanitation, health considerations, hygene and such that was part of the early medieval era, esspecially with living deep in the cities where sanitation, drainage and sewers were really not what they could have been if the technology survived from Rome as well as Greece (ie aquedcuts, running water, et cetera). Guess the "Renaissance" wasn't a "rebirth" of 'everything' :roll:

And wasn't the bubonic plague caused by infected fleas, carried on rats, carried by open trade to [India]?

:?

[SigniferOne]

Romans to blame for the gene. Some freak accident in the 1980s is what's to blame for HIV.

[M. Demetrius]

No one is responsible, or "to blame", for their own genetics.

If the article is true (and it's just one study, right? It could just as easily be false, as there might have been some other contributory genetic or environmental factor) then perhaps one could say that the disease travelled along with the Romans, a medical hitchhiker unwittingly introduced to the new colony, as it were. But as was previously stated, they probably didn't even know about the disease that caused the end product condition of being susceptible to a disease/condition that was unknown in their day.

Roman science was arguably among the most developed of the times, but they did not have the ability to determine that a susceptibility to something to which they were immune could damage the indigenous population of Britain fourteen to twenty centuries later. If they had, they would probably have just shrugged and gone on about their business, prating about the superiority of Rome, etc., etc.

[A_Volpe]

Demetrius

I agree, compared to medical technology and knowledge in the Middle ages, Rome and Greece were the most advanced in the world. Heck, I'd go on to say Rome and Greece remained the most medically advanced until the 1880's or so. (In Western Civ at least - I gather Middle East and China had better medical knowledge during European medieval period)

Granted the Roman view of cleanliness and hygene were a little different than what we today would classify as "clean" - Romans understood cleanliness was a good thing, oiling and bathing, but how disease spread, I think they were not too keen of.

It's really easy to understand the 'mentality' with something like germs, bacteria, virus - You can't "see" it, so how would you know it exists if you've never seen it? You see people cough, sneeze - and then maybe you get sick - so there's certainly "something" in the air, fowl air, "bad" air, so maybe spice it up with incense or outside for 'fresh' air.

If that's your level of understanding, it all makes sense to me how they got to their conclusions about disease - Just as we modern people "know better" or, "know more" about disease once we were able to "see" it microscopically and understand how it affects the body.

But it's not fair/not right to "blame" older cultures and peoples for their lack of understanding or knowledge on something. Just as it's not fair to blame Europeans for spreading [smallpox] inadvertently among native peoples in the Americas. ~ Really, how would Europeans know if the natives were 'immune' or just susceptible to diseases Europeans dealt with regularly; and vice versa, having never been there before?

anyways...

[M. Demetrius]

Well, the Europeans in some situations (my ancestors on that side) spread smallpox deliberately in a few instances by giving blankets to Indians (my ancestors on the other side) which had been used by smallpox victims. The idea was, indeed, to kill off the tribes they encountered in some areas of what would become the US. Biological warfare in the 16th-17th centuries.

Even then, though, they didn't fully understand what were the causes, they just knew that if you survived the disease you would not get it again. There were other diseases they brought with them, and they had little resistance to many diseases that were common here. It's pretty expectable, when a new area is reached that there may be new diseases. H.G. Wells in War of the Worlds, anyone?

[Tarbicus]

If you take the Roman military's acute awareness of where to place a camp in relation to health hazards, and the camp doctor being on charge of food, I'd say they were very hygienic.

Malaria - Mal Aria - Bad air. Technically correct when you think of mosquitoes as being airborne, especially as they knew it also had something to do with stagnant water :wink: :wink: