There is a researcher (on threads here) that makes a compelling case that the Bubonic Plague was actually Ebola, after examining the texts of the physicians and survivors.
I guess I’ve missed those comments. The buboes of bubonic plague seemed like a big deal to the people in the 14th century. The artwork of the time shows buboes as a stylistic marker for plague infection. I’m not sure ebola presents like that.
Just plain wrong. Cases of Plague still occur on occasion today. It is a bacterial illness easily treated with antibiotics if caught soon enough. Ebola is viral.
I would like to know the qualifications of this researcher! Ebola is a virus. It has been established for many years that bubonic plague is caused by a bacterium Yersinea pestis. It is transmitted by the bite of the rat flea whereas Ebola is transmitted by contact with blood or body fluids from an infected person. Bubonic plague is named for the swollen lymph nodes (bubos) that occur in the early stages of the disease. What caused the devastation during the Black Death was the progression of that form of the disease into the form known as pneumonic plague that can be transmitted rapidly from person to person through aerosol inhalation.
I found an article that summarized the book nicely, but there is a problem with the theory. At the time that the book came to print, the research on the mass graves from Black Death was sketchy at best.
Five years later a very serious project was set up to hunt for Plague in multiple different regions across the world. And they found it.
It is conclusive that Black Death was Plague.
HOWEVER, what I found interesting were the reasons that the authors thought it was Ebola (or something like that). The Black Death did not move like Plague. It didn’t have all of the same characteristics of the Plague that we know today.
And there’s a reason for that. There were three different strains of Plague that caused the epidemic. Slight genetic variations exist between those three strains and what we have now.
The bad part is that the Black Death did behave, in many ways, like Ebola as it moved through a population. (Rates of transmission, length of the infectious stage, some of the symptoms were similar to some hemorrhagic fevers, etc)
From what I’ve read, Ebola has a very good chance of following the patterns of the Black Death.
More likely, the similarities between The bubonic/pneumonic plague, the Spanish (1918) flu, and Ebola involve cytokine storms, where the body's immune system turns against the body itself. This would account for rapid onset and death.