History According to Chinese medical literature, mumps was recorded as far back as 640 B.C. The Greek physician Hippocrates documented an outbreak on the island of Thasos in approximately 410 B.C. and provided a fuller description of the disease in the first book of Epidemics in the Corpus Hippocraticum. In modern times, the disease was first described scientifically in 1790 by British physician Robert Hamilton in Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. During the First World War, mumps was one of the most debilitating diseases among soldiers. In 1934, the etiology of the disease, the mumps virus, was discovered by Claude D. Johnson and Ernest William Goodpasture. They found that rhesus macaques exposed to saliva taken from humans in the early stages of the disease developed mumps. Furthermore, they showed that mumps could then be transferred to children via filtered and sterilized, bacteria-less preparations of macerated monkey parotid tissue, showing that it was a viral disease.
History According to Chinese medical literature mumps was recorded as far back as 640 BC The Greek physician Hippocrates documented an outbreak on the island of Thasos in approximately 410 BC and provided a fuller description of the disease in the first book of Epidemics in the Corpus Hippocraticum In modern times the disease was first described scientifically in 1790 by British physician Robert Hamilton in Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh During the First World War mumps was one of the most debilitating diseases among soldiers In 1934 the etiology of the disease the mumps virus was discovered by Claude D Johnson and Ernest William Goodpasture They found that rhesus macaques exposed to saliva taken from humans in the early stages of the disease developed mumps Furthermore they showed that mumps could then be transferred to children via filtered and sterilized bacteria-less preparations of macerated monkey parotid tissue showing that it was a viral disease