New York City Plague cases?

WABC ^ | 11/06/2002 | abc local

[CedarDave]

Go here for information:

University of New Mexico Hospital Information on Plague and Plague Prevention. Note especially prevention suggestion #3 which is important for New Mexico, but not necessarily other areas of the country (except maybe trailer parks in Mississippi).

[Persuasion]

My question is, why were they teaching kids such sick nursery rhymes!?

[exnavy]

Wow, I never realized that is where that rhyme originated. I don't think I'll ever look at nursery rhymes quite the same again.

I'm betting that the senators from that state have something to do with these cases of plague.

[sadimgnik]

Virtually all nursery rhymes are either allegories or 'training songs' as it were.

Its not particularly well presented, but for a good outline of some, take a look at http://www.wowessays.com/dbase/ad1/aym107.shtml

Note, the website's analysis of ring-a-ring-a-rosey uses the British / Australian variant, which goes atishoo atishoo we all fall down, and also has a claim that it could in fact be a hindu chant in any case. take a look.

Sadim

[areafiftyone]

Looks like it might not spread if they have them isolated. These people got it from Rats in their area where they lived in San Jose, New Mexico. Looks like the rats in New York city are innoncent!! ;-) All the rats where they lived in San Jose tested positive for the Plague. Hopefully they contained this. We don't need that in this country now.

[AnAmericanMother]

Actually, scholarly investigation has shown that the stories about "Ring Around the Rosey" being connected to the plague are without foundation (other than coincidence and speculation).

William Baring-Gould's Annotated Mother Goose used the Oxford English Dictionary's method of searching for the first known publication or provenance of the traditional nursery rhymes. The first known publication of this rhyme is in Kate Greenaway's 1881 Mother Goose. It does not appear in Gammer Gurton's Garland (1784), Mother Goose's Melody (1760), Nurse Truelove (1755), or Tommy Thumb's Song Book (ca. 1744), all fairly extensive collections of traditional nursery rhymes both innocuous and scary.

So it's fun to speculate, but there's no historical foundation for this little bit of legend.

[Snowy]

I keep hearing on TV that it cannot be spread from human to human. Well, then, why are the people in isolation? Hmmm?? I can understand one person getting it, but what are the chanced of both people getting it at the same time if it can't be spread from person to person?

[Snowy]

Plague can spread two ways, the first through the bites from fleas carried by rats or other rodents...

Oh come one. The 'rats have had a tough couple of days. Most don't have fleas.... Oh, wait. Are you referring to the two-legged or four-legged rats?

[Dec31,1999]

Thanks for the link to the essay on the origin of nursery rhymes. It was quite interesting!