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Bubonic Plague
Please add Geni profiles for those who died of bubonic (or the pneumonic form of) plague, except for the pandemic of 1349, the Black Death, which goes in that project.
Fast Facts
- Also called: black death
- A rare but serious bacterial infection that's transmitted by fleas.
- Very rare
- 5 US cases in 2014
- Treatable by a medical professional
- Spreads by animals or insects
- Requires a medical diagnosis
- Lab tests or imaging always required
- Short-term: resolves within days to weeks
- Critical: consult a doctor for medical advice
- Sources: Mayo Clinic and others.
- Sources: Mayo Clinic and others.
historical impact
From Center for Disease Control
Plague has a remarkable place in history and has had enormous effects on the development of modern civilization. Some scholars have even suggested that the collapse of the Roman Empire may be linked to the spread of plague by Roman soldiers returning home from battle in the Persian Gulf in 165 AD. For centuries, plague represented disaster for people living in Asia, Africa and Europe and because the cause of plague was unknown, plague outbreaks contributed to massive panic in cities and countries where it appeared.
Numerous references in art, literature and monuments attest to the horrors and devastation of past plague epidemics. We now know that plague is caused by a bacterium called Yersinia pestis that often infects small rodents (like rats, mice, and squirrels) and is usually transmitted to humans through the bite of an infected flea. In the past, black rats were the most commonly infected animals and hungry rat fleas would jump from their recently-dead rat hosts to humans, looking for a blood meal. Pneumonic plague, a particular form of plague infection, is instead transmitted through infected droplets in a sick person's cough.
Outbreaks
There have been three major outbreaks of plague. The Plague of Justinian in the 6th and 7th centuries is the first known attack on record, and marks the first firmly recorded pattern of bubonic plague. From historical descriptions, as much as 40% of the population of Constantinople died from the plague. Modern estimates suggest half of Europe's population died as a result of the plague before it disappeared in the 700s. After 750, major epidemic diseases did not appear again in Europe until the Black Death of the 14th century.
The Second pandemic originated in or near China and spread by way of the Silk Road or by ship. It may have reduced world population from an estimated 450 million down to 350–375 million by the year 1400.
The plague returned at intervals with varying virulence and mortality until the early 19th century. In England, for example, the plague returned in 1360-63 killing 20% of Londoners and in 1369 killing 10-15%. In the 17th-century outbreaks were a series of "great plagues": the Great Plague of Seville (1647–52); the Great Plague of London (1665–66); and the Great Plague of Vienna (1679). In its virulent form, after the Great Plague of Marseille in 1720–22, the Great Plague of 1738 (which hit Eastern Europe), and the Russian plague of 1770-1772, it seems to have gradually disappeared from Europe though lingering in Egypt and the Middle East. By the early 19th century, the threat of plague had diminished, but it was quickly replaced by a new disease. The Asiatic cholera was the first of several cholera pandemics to sweep through Asia and Europe during the 19th and 20th centuries.
The Third Pandemic hit China in the 1890s and devastated India, but was largely contained in the east, though becoming endemic in the Western United States. It still causes sporadic outbreaks.
notables
resources
- 10 worst plagues in history
- CDC - plague - History
- Epidemics of the past: bubonic plague
- "A Journal of the Plague Year", by Daniel Defoe
- 1710-1717 two thirds of the Lithuanian population died of plague
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this project is in HistoryLink
