Plague

The Black Death was a devastating global epidemic of bubonic plague that struck Europe and Asia in the mid-1300s. The plague arrived in Europe in October 1347, when 12 ships from the Black Sea docked at the Sicilian port of Messina. People gathered on the docks were met with a horrifying surprise: Most sailors aboard the ships were dead, and those still alive were gravely ill and covered in black boils that oozed blood and pus. Sicilian authorities hastily ordered the fleet of “death ships” out of the harbor, but it was too late: Over the next five years, the Black Death would kill more than 20 million people in Europe—almost one-third of the continent’s population. How Did the Black Plague Start? Even before the “death ships” pulled into port at Messina, many Europeans had heard rumors about a “Great Pestilence” that was carving a deadly path across the trade routes of the Near and Far East. Indeed, in the early 1340s, the disease had struck China, India, Persia, The plague is thought to have originated in Asia over 2,000 years ago and was likely Symptoms of the Black Plague Europeans were scarcely equipped for the horrible reality of the Black Death. “In men and women alike,” the Italian poet Giovanni Boccaccio wrote, “at the beginning of the malady, certain swellings, either on the groin or under the armpits…waxed to the bigness of a common apple, others to the size of an egg, some more and some less, and these the vulgar named plague-boils.” Blood and pus seeped out of...

Plague is an infectious disease caused by Yersinia pestis bacteria, usually found in small mammals and their fleas. The disease is transmitted between animals via their fleas and, as it is a zoonotic bacterium, it can also transmit from animals to humans. Humans can be contaminated by the bite of infected fleas, through direct contact with infected materials, or by inhalation. Plague can be a very severe disease in people, particularly in its septicaemic and pneumonic forms, with a case-fatality ratio of 30% - 100% if left untreated. Although plague has been responsible for widespread pandemics throughout history, including the so-called Black Death that caused over 50 million deaths in Europe during the fourteenth century, today it can be easily treated with antibiotics and the use of standard preventative measures. Plague is found on all continents except Oceania but most human cases since the 1990s have occurred in Africa. Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar and Peru are the three most endemic countries. People infected with plague usually develop influenza-like symptoms after an incubation period of 3–7 days. Symptoms include fever, chills, aches, weakness, vomiting and nausea. There are 3 main forms of plague. Bubonic plague is the most common and is caused by the bite of an infected flea. The plague bacillus, Y. pestis, enters at the bite and travels to the nearest lymph node to replicate. The lymph node becomes inflamed, tense and painful, and is called a bubo....

Know the investigations of researchers using genomic information to reconstruct the cause and transmission routes of the bubonic plague and the Black Death Plague is an ancient Y. pestis in the teeth of Neolithic farmers in Sweden dated to roughly 4,900 years ago and from analyses of ancient DNA in the teeth of Y. pestis was present in Asia and Europe by between 3000 and 800 bce. It is impossible, however, to verify the true nature of these early outbreaks. The first great plague ce. According to the historian For the next three centuries, outbreaks of plague occurred frequently throughout the continent and the After those last outbreaks, plague seems to have disappeared from Europe, with the exception of an area at the At the time of the plague outbreaks in Europe, the disease was poorly understood from a medical standpoint, as the very concept of an infectious organism was unknown. As late as 1768 the first edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica repeated the commonly held scientific notion that plague was a “pestilential fever” arising from a “poisonous miasma,” or vapour, that had been brought “from eastern countries” and was “swallowed in with the air.” The pestilential poison disturbs all the functions of the body; for unless it be expelled to the external parts, it is certainly fatal. Expulsion of the During the 18th and early part of the 19th century, plague continued to prevail in The third plague pandemic was the last, for it coincided with (and in some cases moti...

Noun The country was hit by a plague of natural disasters that year. There has been a plague of bank robberies in the area. a plague that swept through the tribe in the 1600s Verb Computer viruses plague Internet users. Crime plagues the inner city. Drought and wildfires continue to plague the area. See More Noun In the novel and series, a catastrophic plague kills every male mammal in existence, except for one man and his pet money. — Brittany Bowker, BostonGlobe.com, 25 Apr. 2023 These insects can in turn carry and spread infectious diseases such as anaplasmosis, angiostrongylus, babesiosis, borreliosis, Lyme disease, and the plague. — Bruce Y. Lee, Forbes, 19 Apr. 2023 Poverty, including in wealthy countries like the United States, is a sort of modern plague, killing millions each year with both infectious disease and non-communicable diseases like diabetes, Kennedy argues in the final chapter. — Travis Loller, Fortune Well, 18 Apr. 2023 Rats and bats, with their histories of seeding plagues, are the species most likely to adapt to deforestation. — Caroline Chen, ProPublica, 27 Feb. 2023 These wine glass decorations made of delicate metallic paper reflect motifs representing each of the 10 plagues. — Alesandra Dubin, Good Housekeeping, 21 Feb. 2023 He is disappointed with how major news outlets covered the event and thinks the same sort of criticisms about bias and lack of expert credentials that follow TikTok creators plague mainstream media too. — WIRED, 15 Feb. 2023 ...

Plagues have swept through humanity ever since communities have gathered together in concentrated groups. In this collection of resources, we look at just some of the pandemics that raged throughout Antiquity and the Middle Ages, from the Medieval doctors had no idea about such microscopic organisms as bacteria, and so they were helpless in terms of treatment, and where they might have had the best chance of helping people, in prevention, they were hampered by the level of sanitation which was appalling compared to modern standards. Another helpful strategy would have been to quarantine areas but, as people fled in panic whenever a case of plague broke out, they unknowingly carried the disease with them and spread it even further afield; the rats did the rest. The Black

What Is It? Plague is caused by Yersinia pestis bacteria. It can be a life-threatening infection if not treated promptly. Plague has caused several major epidemics in Europe and Asia over the last 2,000 years. Plague has most famously been called "the Black Death" because it can cause skin sores that form black scabs. A plague epidemic in the 14th century killed more than one-third of the population of Europe within a few years. In some cities, up to 75% of the population died within days, with fever and swollen skin sores. Worldwide, up to 3,000 cases of plague are reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) each year, mostly in Africa, Asia and South America. Plague is primarily an infection of animals including many species of rodents (including mice, rats, ground squirrels, prairie dogs, chipmunks and rabbits). In the United States, it is most commonly transmitted to humans by the bite of an infected rat flea (Xenopsylla species). People are most at risk of infection when they are in areas where these rodents and their fleas are plentiful. Less commonly, humans can become infected in other ways: • When Y. pestis bacteria enter the body through a break in the skin after direct contact with the meat or blood of an infected animal (could happen, for example, when a hunter skins a carcass) • By breathing in droplets of Y. pestis bacteria if a person is in close contact with a human or animal with plague infection of the lungs (pneumonic plague) From scratches or bites ...

Why subscribe? • The ultimate action-packed science and technology magazine bursting with exciting information about the universe • Subscribe today and save an extra 5% with checkout code 'LOVE5' • Engaging articles, amazing illustrations & exclusive interviews • Issues delivered straight to your door or device You’ve seen them before: mysterious figures, clad from head to toe in oiled leather, wearing goggles and beaked masks. The plague doctor costume looks like a cross between a steampunk crow and the Grim Reaper, and has come to represent both the terrors of the Black Death and the foreignness of medieval medicine. However, the beak mask costume first appeared much later than the middle ages, some three centuries after the Black Death first struck in the 1340s. There may have been a few doctors in the 17th and 18th centuries who wore the outfit, including the iconic beak mask, but most medieval and early modern physicians who studied and treated Related: Save 50% on All About History magazine this Black Friday Why did plague doctors wear beak masks? According to Michel Tibayrenc's book "Encyclopedia of Infectious Diseases" (John Wiley & Sons, 2007), the first mention of the famous plague doctor costume is found in a mid-17th century work written by Charles de Lorme, a royal physician in the service of King Louis XIII of France. De Lorme wrote that during a 1619 plague outbreak in Paris, he developed an outfit made entirely of Moroccan goat leather, including boots, bre...