Chapter 7

Disease In Transit

In reading about Silk Roads it is disheartening to learn about how many lives were ended because of the diseases killed many people. So many say that history repeats itself and I strongly believe that it does and that many people continue to die from diseases that have no cure or that the culture itself does not accept modern medicine.

"Beyond goods and cultures, diseases too traveled the trade routes of Eurasia, and with devastating consequences. Each of the major population centers of the AfroEurasian world had developed characteristic disease patterns, mechanisms for dealing with them, and ins one cases immunity to them. But when contact among human communities occurred, people were exposed to unfamiliar diseases for which they had little immunity or few effective methods of coping."