Epidemic Disease And Society In The Period Of Republic Of China In Anhui Province

Wars were frequent during the period of the Republic of China,,the concurrenct and various natural disasters severely affected people’s production and life.One disasters often led to another secondary disasters,The untimely disaster relief and the poor hygienic condition eazily resulted in epidemics.The epidemic is different from other natural disasters.It is more harmful and influences wider districts.During the Republic of China,there were epidemics every year and every where,but large-scale outbreaks were rare.Through the study of the epidemic diseases in Anhui during the Republic of China,we can see that the epidemic diseases in space was almost evenly distributed at that time.The frequency of epidemic occurrence in the area of northern Anhui,middle Anhui and southern Anhui was generally the same.Due to the lack of some records,we do not know some epidemics clearly.In general,however,there were epidemic diseases in Anhui Province every year then,sometimes one kind of disease occurred and sometimes many kinds of diseases broken out simultaneously.The epidemic mainly occurred in the summer and autumn in the season.The types of epidemics were relatively plentiful then in Anhui,covering almost all the legal infectious diseases that time in China.Other infectious diseases were mainly kalaheria and schistosomiasis.The causes of the diseases were varied some were influenced by the natural environment Such as floods,droughts and geopolitical factors;The social environment such as traffic,war,people’s lifestyles and so on also has an impact.In terms of the epidemic handling,the government is in the leading department,all sectors of society and the public itself are as supplementary parts of the government relief.The government sent doctors to allocate fund and drugs,set up temporary epidemic prevention agencies,implemented traffic control to controll the spread of epidemics at the first time when epidemics occurred and then ordered the public security to assist.Social groups and the gentry first donated money and drugs when faced with the epidemics.Then reported the epidemics development to local government and asked for treatment.But there are also some discordant phenomena in the treatment of epidemics.Some unscrupulous gentry and merchant,for example,adopt superstitious means to cause patients to miss the best time for treatment and cause their deaths.Some caught these opportunities to monopolize medicines,resulting in drug prices rising.People often resort to superstitious means or traditional prescription in the process of self-help due to their own understanding and economic reasons.The outbreak of the epidemic,on the one hand,poses a serious social harm,the death of a large-scale young and middle-aged labor force will inevitably affect the economic development.At the deepest level,the outbreak of the epidemic often causes psychological panic for public,thus resulting in social unrest.On the other hand,Outbreaks often promote the progress of social health care.As a result,the government and the public attach importance to the development of health management.During the period of Republic of China,the Anhui government conducted many health campaigns to prevent the outbreak of the epidemics,like organizing various walks of life in the community to clean up the streets,rectifying water sources and reform Toilet,and putting out the pests and achieved good results.In short,the health and epidemic prevention has been developed and people’s health awareness has also been raised in the course of disease prevention and control in Anhui Province during the period of Republic of China.