Free Republic

As those who follow the gyrations of the stock market are well aware, human beings have a propensity for short-term thinking. They react on impulse to that which is recent; they magnify its significance; and they forget what previous generations learned through bitter experience.To this propensity, the study of history can be an antidote. But all too often historians ransack the past in support of current prejudice.For one who wishes to escape the prison of presentmindedness and gain perspective, there is no substitute for works written regarding circumstances similar to our own at a time our prejudices and predilections...

Click above for a video excerpt from The Ecclesiastical History of Evagrius describing a personal encounter with the dreaded Plague of Justinian. The thought of pandemic troubles many souls these days. It is well to keep in mind that as bad as things may seem with regard to the deaths caused by the COVID-19 virus, we are not even within shouting distance of the type of utter and absolute societal devastation caused by the typical catastrophic historical plague. One of these epic pestilential events was the so-called Plague of Justinian of the mid-to-late 6th century AD. Erupting in AD 542,...

This was the worst outbreak of plague in England since the black death of 1348. London lost roughly 15% of its population. While 68,596 deaths were recorded in the city, the true number was probably over 100,000. Other parts of the country also suffered. The earliest cases of disease occurred in the spring of 1665 in a parish outside the city walls called St Giles-in-the-Fields. The death rate began to rise during the hot summer months and peaked in September when 7,165 Londoners died in one week. Rats carried the fleas that caused the plague. They were attracted by city...

Today, March 9, is the feast day of Saint Frances of Rome. She was an Italian woman who lived in the late 14th and early 15th centuries. A previous post about this amazing saint may be found here. It was claimed that in 40 years of marriage, Saint Frances never once quarreled with her husband. St. Frances was invoked as an intercessor by the people of Rome even centuries after her death. In AD 1656, a ship entered the harbor at Barletta carrying a deadly pathogen—very likely, the Black Plague. The town was immediately infected and the impact was dramatic....

From the beginning of recorded history, 100's of millions have died from epidemics. Some of the most dreaded plagues include: Plague of Pharaoh Akhenaten of Egypt, circa 1350 BC; Philistine Plague after capturing the Ark of God (I Samuel 5-6); Plague of Athens, circa 430 BC, 100,000 deaths; Plague of Antonine, 165 AD, brought back by troops from the Middle East, 5 million deaths; Plague of Justinian, beginning in 541 AD, killing an estimated 100 million, half of the world's known population; Black Death-Bubonic Plague, beginning in 1334, killed an estimated 75 to 200 million; Cocoliztli Plague in Mexico, beginning...

On a hastily built stage before the busy horse market of Strasbourg, scores of people dance to pipes, drums, and horns. The July sun beats down upon them as they hop from leg to leg, spin in circles and whoop loudly. From a distance they might be carnival revellers. But closer inspection reveals a more disquieting scene. Their arms are flailing and their bodies are convulsing spasmodically. Ragged clothes and pinched faces are saturated in sweat. Their eyes are glassy, distant. Blood seeps from swollen feet into leather boots and wooden clogs. These are not revellers but “choreomaniacs”, entirely possessed...

One way to stop countries from polluting the air with lead is to bring back the plague. Research suggests while the infectious and deadly illness known as the Black Death rampaged through Europe and slowed industry, among other side effects, lead disappeared from the air. Scientists analyzed ice samples from a glacier in the Alps along the Swiss-Italian border, looking specifically for lead that would have been deposited from the atmosphere. The study in the journal GeoHealth found between 1349 and 1353 — when the plague was at its peak — “atmospheric lead dropped to undetectable levels.” The Black Death...

Black Death, a mid-fourteenth century plague, killed 30 to 50 per cent of the European population in just five years. The pandemic was caused by the Yersinia pestis bacteria with millions dying from the disease in two major outbreaks. Thousands of years before it wreaked havoc in the second wave of deaths, the bacteria may have been passed around as a harmless microbe. ... Being distinct from all modern forms of plague, the scientists believe they have identified an extinct form of the disease, according to their study reported yesterday in the online journal eLife. ... Marseille was a big...

1500 years ago a pungent world plague nearly exterminated the human race! Thomas Short wrote: “from 562 A.D. a plague raged for 52 years the like of which has never been seen before or since!” Conventional wisdom maintains this worldwide plague began in Ethiopia and was carried by ship-born rats to Europe and beyond. With our new knowledge of bacteria and viruses being carried by vectors far above the Earth this theory of deployment has been questioned. Our pertinent scrutiny asks not only what caused this exterminating plague, with its incredible and unmatched virulence, but whether some parallel catastrophic events...

In the 14th century, a microbe called Yersinia pestis caused an epidemic of plague known as the Black Death that killed off a third or more of the population of Europe. The long-term shortage of workers that followed helped bring about the end of feudalism. Historians and microbiologists alike have searched for decades for the origins of plague. Until now, the first clear evidence of Yersinia pestis infection was the Plague of Justinian in the 6th century, which severely weakened the Byzantine Empire. But in a new study, published on Thursday in the journal Cell, researchers report that the bacterium...

Gene sequencing, from which scientists can gather hereditary data of organisms, has revealed that the Black Death, often referred to as The Plague, which reduced the world’s total population by about 100 million, originated from China over 2000 years ago, scientists from several countries wrote in the medical journal Nature Genetics. Genome sequencing has allowed the researchers to reconstruct plague pandemics from the Black Death to the late 1800s.Black Death and The Plague – the plague is an infectious disease caused by a bacterium called Yersinia pestis. The Black Death is one huge plague event (pandemic) in history. The Black...

New research using ancient DNA has revealed that plague has been endemic in human populations for more than twice as long as previously thought, and that the ancestral plague would have been predominantly spread by human-to-human contact -- until genetic mutations allowed Yersinia pestis (Y. pestis), the bacteria that causes plague, to survive in the gut of fleas. These mutations, which may have occurred near the turn of the 1st millennium BC, gave rise to the bubonic form of plague that spreads at terrifying speed through flea -- and consequently rat -- carriers. The bubonic plague caused the pandemics that...

Dr. Drew Pinsky, a California-based physician who now hosts a talk radio show, correctly predicted the current typhus outbreak in Los Angeles about 18 months ago. Now he is sounding the alarm about a potential outbreak of the bubonic plague in the Los Angeles area, saying that unless conditions change quickly and drastically, Southern California will be dealing with a horrific epidemic. The last outbreak of the bubonic plague, ironically, was in the 1920’s in Los Angeles. Yersinia pestis, the organism that causes the plague, is endemic to the valleys Southern California and comes down through the foothills on squirrels...

Nearly 5000 years ago, a 20-year-old woman was buried in a tomb in Sweden... Now, researchers have discovered what killed her -- Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes plague. The sample is one of the oldest ever found, and it belongs to a previously unknown branch of the Y. pestis evolutionary tree. This newly discovered strain of plague could have caused the collapse of large Stone Age settlements across Europe in what might be the world's first pandemic, researchers on the project say. But other scientists contend there isn't yet enough evidence to prove the case. The newly discovered Neolithic...

The strain identified by the researchers was recovered from individuals in a double burial in the Samara region of Russia, who both had the same strain of the bacterium at death... this strain is the oldest sequenced to date that contains the virulence factors considered characteristic of the bubonic plague, and is ancestral to the strains that caused the Justinian Plague, the Black Death and the 19th century plague epidemics in China... caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis... The disease continues to affect populations around the world today. Despite its historical and modern significance, the origin and age of the...

A provocative new study suggests that medieval plagues spread via fleas and lice on people.Rats have long been blamed for spreading the parasites that transmitted plague throughout medieval Europe and Asia, killing millions of people. Now, a provocative new study has modeled these long-ago outbreaks and suggests that the maligned rodents may not be the culprits after all. The study, published on Monday in the journal PNAS, instead points the finger at human parasites—such as fleas and body lice—for primarily spreading plague bacteria during the Second Pandemic, a series of devastating outbreaks that spanned from the 1300s to the early...

FULL TITLE: DANCING WITH DEATH Plague is spreading because relatives are digging up their Black Death dead and DANCING with the corpses as part of ancient Madagascan ritual called Famadihana =========================================================================== Madagascans have been told to stop the traditional practice of Famadihana - which sees locals dig up deceased relatives and dance with them before they are re-buried. It is feared the ceremony has helped spread an outbreak of pneumonic plague that has left more than 120 dead on the African island It is feared the ceremony has helped spread an outbreak of pneumonic plague that has left more than...

When the Black Death swept through Europe in 1347, it was one of the deadliest disease outbreaks in human history, eventually killing between a third and half of Europeans. Prior work by investigators has traced the cause to plague-carrying fleas borne by rats that jumped ship in trading ports. In addition, historical researchers believe that famine in northern Europe before the plague came ashore may have weakened the population there and set the stage for its devastation. Now, new research using a unique combination of ice-core data and written historical records indicates that the cool, wet weather blamed for the...

Medieval Plague May Explain Resistance to HIV LONDON (Agence de Presse Medicale) - The persistent epidemics of hemorrhagic fever that struck Europe during the Middle Ages provided the selection pressures that have made 10 percent of Europeans resistant to HIV infection, according to a UK study. A mutation called delta-32 in the cellular receptor dubbed CCR5 protects against HIV infection, and is found more often in Europeans than other populations. Scientists have previously suggested that the genetic mutation became common because it protected people against the Black Death or smallpox epidemics, while those with normal CCR5 were wiped out. But...

Not for commercial use. Solely to be used for the educational purposes of research and open discussion. The viruses are out there, and they are out to get us It is possible that the Black Death is not dead and that a new 'bird flu' is another potential mass killer The Canberra Times Section A; Pg 17 February 27, 2003 Thursday Final Edition LATE last month an eight-year-old girl from Hong Kong visiting relatives in southern China fell ill with influenza and was admitted to hospital. A week later she died, and since then her father has died of the...