Among these, half appeared in epidemic form in Oregon during the first century of contact, from the late 1700s through the mid-1800s. The most deadly were smallpox, malaria, viral influenza, yellow fever, measles, typhus, bubonic plague, typhoid fever, cholera, and pertussis (whooping cough). The list of diseases introduced to the New World is long, and nearly all that could be supported in a temperate environment appeared in present-day Oregon. The interhemispheric disease exchange resulted in what has been called the "greatest demographic disaster in human history." Millions died. When the new diseases spread to the Americas and to peoples who had never experienced them before, the results were dramatic and sometimes catastrophic. In the Old World, epidemic crowd diseases had evolved along with the earliest civilizations, but they had no equivalents in the New World. One of the most profound and far-reaching effects of that exchange concerned microorganisms and the diseases they caused. In 1972, historian Alfred Crosby introduced the term Columbian Exchange to refer to the interchange of plants, animals, bacteria, and peoples that occurred between the Old World (Eurasia and Africa) and the New World (the Americas and Australia) following the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the Americas in 1492.
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