There have been innumerable epidemics of plague throughout history, but it was the pandemics of the 6th, 14th and 20th centuries that have had the most impact on human society, not only in terms of the great mortalities, but also the social, economic and cultural consequences that resulted. The course of development of communities and nations was altered several times. Much has changed to prevent the recurrence of pandemic plague, such as the development of the germ theory and the science of bacteriology, public health measures such as quarantine, and antibiotics such as streptomycin, but plague today is still an important and potentially serious threat to the health of people and animals.
Submit your article The Third Pandemic of The plague re-emerged from its wild rodent reservoir in the remote Chinese province of Yunnan in Author Information. References 1. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Yersinia pestis, the cause of plague, is a recently emerged clone of Yersinia pseudotuberculosis. Proc Natl Acad Sci ; 96 24 : Echenberg M.
Plague Ports. Marriott E. Natural history of plague: perspectives from more than a century of research. Ann Rev Entomol ; Genotyping Orientalis-like Yersinia pestis, and plague pandemics. Emerging Inf Dis ; 10 9 : Raoult D, Drancourt M. Yersinia Pestis and Plague. University of Marseille. Dobson M. Quercus: London, Porter S. The Great Plague. Phoenix Mill, Gloucestershire; Sutton Publishing, In : WHO.
Plague and Other Yersinia Infections. Rosen W. New York: Viking Penguin, Gottfried RS. The Black Death. London: Robert Hale Ltd, Halsall P. Medieval Sourcebook: Procopius: The Plague, Tikhomirov E. Epidemiology and Distribution of Plague. Morony MG. In : Little LK. Plague and the End of Antiquity: The Pandemic of Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Zeigler P. Godalming, Surrey: Bramley Books, Garrison F H.
An Introduction to the History of Medicine. Schreiber W, Mathys FK. Infectio: Infectious Diseases in the History of Medicine. Basle: F. Nohl J. Translated by CH Clarke. Damen M. They know that the bacillus travels from person to person through the air , as well as through the bite of infected fleas and rats.
Both of these pests could be found almost everywhere in medieval Europe, but they were particularly at home aboard ships of all kinds—which is how the deadly plague made its way through one European port city after another. Then it reached Rome and Florence, two cities at the center of an elaborate web of trade routes. Today, this grim sequence of events is terrifying but comprehensible. In the middle of the 14th century, however, there seemed to be no rational explanation for it.
No one knew exactly how the Black Death was transmitted from one patient to another, and no one knew how to prevent or treat it. Physicians relied on crude and unsophisticated techniques such as bloodletting and boil-lancing practices that were dangerous as well as unsanitary and superstitious practices such as burning aromatic herbs and bathing in rosewater or vinegar.
Meanwhile, in a panic, healthy people did all they could to avoid the sick. Doctors refused to see patients; priests refused to administer last rites; and shopkeepers closed their stores.
Many people fled the cities for the countryside, but even there they could not escape the disease: It affected cows, sheep, goats, pigs and chickens as well as people. In fact, so many sheep died that one of the consequences of the Black Death was a European wool shortage. And many people, desperate to save themselves, even abandoned their sick and dying loved ones.
Because they did not understand the biology of the disease, many people believed that the Black Death was a kind of divine punishment—retribution for sins against God such as greed, blasphemy, heresy, fornication and worldliness. Some people believed that the way to do this was to purge their communities of heretics and other troublemakers—so, for example, many thousands of Jews were massacred in and Thousands more fled to the sparsely populated regions of Eastern Europe, where they could be relatively safe from the rampaging mobs in the cities.
Some people coped with the terror and uncertainty of the Black Death epidemic by lashing out at their neighbors; others coped by turning inward and fretting about the condition of their own souls. Some upper-class men joined processions of flagellants that traveled from town to town and engaged in public displays of penance and punishment: They would beat themselves and one another with heavy leather straps studded with sharp pieces of metal while the townspeople looked on.
Then they would move on to the next town and begin the process over again. Though the flagellant movement did provide some comfort to people who felt powerless in the face of inexplicable tragedy, it soon began to worry the Pope, whose authority the flagellants had begun to usurp.
In the face of this papal resistance, the movement disintegrated. The plague never really ended and it returned with a vengeance years later. But officials in the Venetian-controlled port city of Ragusa were able to slow its spread by keeping arriving sailors in isolation until it was clear they were not carrying the disease—creating social distancing that relied on isolation to slow the spread of the disease. This story has been updated.
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