Posted on 10/11/2014 9:32:54 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Most assume that Black Death quickly ravaged the fourteenth century western world was a bacterial bubonic plague epidemic caused by flea bites and spread by rats. But the Black Death killed a high proportion of Scandinavians -- and where they lived was too cold for fleas to survive. A modern work gives us a clue into this mystery. The “Biology of Plagues” published by Cambridge University Press analyzed 2,500 years of plagues and concluded that the Black Death was caused by a viral hemorrhagic fever pandemic similar to Ebola. If this view is correct, the future medical and economic impacts from Ebola have been vastly underestimated.
Authors Dr. Susan Scott, a demographer, and Dr. Christopher J. Duncan, a zoologist at the University of Liverpool point out that the Bible used the term “plague” to describe a catchall of afflictions resulting from divine displeasure. The researchers analyzed the “Four Ages of Plague”, including “Plague of Athens” from 430 to 427 BC that killed about a third of the city; “Plague of Justinian” from 542 to 592 AD and killed 10,000 a day in Constantinople; Black Plague from 1337 to 1340 AD that killed a third of Eurasia; and a series of plague outbreaks in Europe from 1350 to 1670 that killed about half a number of city populations....
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
The fear of ebola alone can shut down or slow down public life.
Drone-based delivery is going to be very popular — as long as the drones themselves don’t become a disease carrier.
Black Death Bacterium Identified: Genetic Analysis of Medieval Plague Skeletons Shows Presence of Yersinia Pestis Bacteria
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2773305/posts
Fringe anthropologists (demographer/zoologist?) are trying to cash in on the ebola wave. The major european plagues have been conclusively linked to the yersinia pestis bacterium, and not the tropical african hemoragic fever virus we call ebola. They are two entirely different beasts. The teaser paragraph suggests that their argument is based on the ambiguous term ‘plague’ going back into antiquity. However disease outbreaks were well documented even back then, describing the unmistakable symptoms of plague for the european outbreaks.
Out of Africa, starring Meryl Streep as a coffee plantation owner with the jitters.
Yep. Where there are rats, there are vectors.
Or the plague spread from flea to human and then adapted to spread from human to human.
Roughly every 750 to 1,000 years. I wonder if there's anything else that correlates. Warmer relative to presumed average, cooler, volcanic eruptions, sunspot activity? I recall a few ancient sources making a claim regarding comets being harbingers of plague. Sounds superstitious and maybe it was, or maybe there's something to it.
What’s all on a ship loaded with African slaves? Rats, grain, fleas on rats, dead slaves’ drippings onto grain, rum, water, whatever, run up and down the decks by rats and fleas.
If you were an Ivory Coast slave trader, wouldn’t you put the sicklier folks in your tribe on the slave ships? Get rid of your sick for a few barrels of rum?
I think this is less of a “plague” and more of a distraction.
The whole Ebola scare is BS spread by the media. It is not airborne, you get it by drinking sewage water in Africa. Ebola will never be an epidemic in US for the same reason that cholera will not, modern sanitation will prevent disease from spreading in population. So unless you plan to travel to Africa, and drink from the toilet, you can calm the hell down.
I have a coworker who will not shut up about Ebola and she is 5’4” and must weight 300 pounds. Don’t worry about Ebola, worry about diabetes from the Burger King you eat for lunch you dumb manatee.
Alot simpler than that. Long periods of peace and stability lead to reliable trade networks by land and sea lead to spreading of disease across world. That is why nothing happened in the dark ages but plagues occurred during the Roman Empire and after the renaissance.
Disease free certified producers, warehouses and retailers.
They didn’t call it the ‘Dark Continent’ for nothing.
Well, with the exception of the Justinian Plague in the 6th century.
6th century is still considered a Roman influenced time period despite fall of Rome. Byzantium, which was basically Eastern Roman Empire was still strong and major trade hub (hence Justinian plague), and its trade networks were operational to the fullest before Islam blocked trade with Asia from 7th century until Renaissance.
‘Black death’. Now THAT gets your attention!
“I won’t be coming in today. Believe I picked up a touch of something quite nasty, the plague. Black Death actually.”
Don’t bother calling in dead.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.