Bubonic plague
From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Bubonic plague is a very deadly disease. Some of the symptoms of this disease are coughing, fever, and black spots on the skin.
People think that the Black Death that killed millions of Europeans in the Middle Ages was bubonic plague, but they are not sure.
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[edit] History
During the 1300s, this epidemic struck parts of Asia, North Africa, and Europe. Almost a third of the people in Europe died of it. Unlike catastrophes that pull communities together, this epidemic was so terrifying that it broke people's trust in one another. Giovanni Boccaccio, an Italian writer of the time, described it: "This scourge had implanted so great a terror in the hearts of men and women that brothers abandoned brothers, uncles their nephews, sisters their brothers, and in many cases wives deserted their husbands. But even worse,... fathers and mothers refused to nurse and assist their own children."[1]
[edit] Transmission
The plague was not just carried by rats as some people assume. The fleas also carried it. It came abroad from Kaffa by the Black Sea. From there the disease started to go new places in 1347. It went to England in 1349. There it killed half of the people in England. 70% of people who got plague died. Pigs are also to blame for the transmission, as the bacteria stayed in their blood system, and when eaten, people caught the plague. This is a reason why so few jews caught the disease.
[edit] Modern history
In the 20th century, some countries did research on the bacteria that causes bubonic plague. They did research to use it for biological warfare.
Samples of this bacteria are carefully controlled. There is much paranoia (fear) about it. Dr. Thomas C. Butler, a US expert in this organism was charged in October 2003 by the FBI with various crimes. This happened after he said he lost samples of Yersinia pestis. This is the bacteria that causes bubonic plague. The FBI did not find the samples. They do not know what happened to them.
[edit] References
- ↑ The decameron / Giovanni Boccaccio ; translated by Mark Musa & Peter Bondanella ; with an introduction by Thomas G. Bergin. ISBN 0-451-52866-2