The Manchurian pandemic of pneumonic plague (1910–1911)
Black Death: 75-200M (1334-1353)
The second pandemic of the bubonic plague likely sprang up in north-eastern China, killing maybe five million, fast. It moved west, through India, Syria and Mesopotamia. In 1346 it struck a trading port called Kaffa in the Black Sea.
The eventual weakening of the pandemic was likely due to the practice of quarantining infected people that originated in Venice in the 15th century and is with us to this day. Improved sanitation, personal hygiene, and medical practices also played a role in ultimately slowing the plague's terror march.
The plague is thought to have originated from a tarbagan marmot infected with bacterial pneumonia. Tarbagan marmots were hunted for their fur in Manchuria. It was an airborne spread disease and was incredibly deadly, with a near 100 percent mortality rate.
Pneumonic plague, or lung-based plague, is the most virulent form of plague. Incubation can be as short as 24 hours. Any person with pneumonic plague may transmit the disease via droplets to other humans. Untreated pneumonic plague, if not diagnosed and treated early, can be fatal.
Covid-19 has devastated our world, but there are a few blessings: it very rarely strikes children, and its infection fatality rate — the percentage of those who are infected who die — is much lower than for many other famous plagues. Epidemic diseases like smallpox frequently killed 30 percent of those infected.
Bubonic plague can be fatal if it's not treated. It can create infection throughout the body (septicemic plague) and / or infect your lungs (pneumonic plague.) Without treatment, septicemic plague and pneumonic plague are both fatal.
The miasma theory of contagious disease held that sickness spread through unpleasant aromas. A whiff of 'bad air' could kill you – and the right fragrance just might save your life. A physician wearing a 17th-century plague preventive. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Following on from the discovery of tobacco mosaic virus in 1892 and foot-and-mouth disease virus in 1898, the first 'filterable agent' to be discovered in humans was yellow fever virus in 1901 [1].
In virtually every textbook the Bubonic Plague, which is spread by flea-ridden rats, is named as the culprit behind the chaos. But mounting evidence suggests that an Ebola-like virus was the actual cause of the Black Death and the sporadic outbreaks that occurred in the following 300 years.
No. Bubonic plague killed at least one-third of the population of Europe between 1346 and 1353. But that was before we knew it was caused by the bacterium Yersina pestis. Bubonic plague does still occasionally occur in small flare-ups of a few dozen cases, but we have antibiotics to treat it now.
Cures. The cures in 1665-1666 were similar to those used in the 1348-1349 Black Death outbreak. Bloodletting and purging were widely used, showing that the four humours were still believed to cause disease. Plague doctors wore outfits to protect them from coming into contact with victims.
Two infectious diseases have successfully been eradicated: smallpox in humans, and rinderpest in ruminants. There are four ongoing programs, targeting the human diseases poliomyelitis (polio), yaws, dracunculiasis (Guinea worm), and malaria.
Leprosy (or Hansen's disease) is considered as one of the oldest infectious diseases ever known in human history: it has been the scourge of humanity since antiquity.
The Brain Boot Sector Virus
Brain, the first PC virus, began infecting 5.2" floppy disks in 1986. As Securelist reports, it was the work of two brothers, Basit and Amjad Farooq Alvi, who ran a computer store in Pakistan.
Quite a long time! The first viruses arose before all life. Over time, they adapted to new hosts. The oldest evidence of bacteria is found, for example, in so-called stromatolites, the oldest of which are 3.6 billion years old and were found in Australia.
The Discovery of Giant Viruses
The first giant virus, Acanthamoeba polyphaga mimivirus (APMV), was discovered in 2003 [17]. Its size was unprecedented, being on the scale of small bacteria or archaea cells [18].
Within just hours an individual could be in agony from a number of these symptoms, if not all of them. The Black Plague, in all forms, is a relatively fast death, but an astonishingly painful one.
A decomposing body will typically have a smell of rotting meat with fruity undertones. Exactly what the smell will be like depends on a multitude of factors: The makeup of different bacteria present in the body. Bacterial interactions as the body decomposes.
When someone dies, the body immediately begins the decomposition process and the smell of death can begin. The body will begin to smell due to various gases created by microorganisms during the stages of decomposition.
What is the plague called today? Today we still use the word “plague” to mean illness caused by Yersinia pestis. Usually, we also call it by the specific type of plague it is — bubonic, septicemic or pneumonic.
After the ravages of the disease, surviving Europeans lived longer, a new study finds. An analysis of bones in London cemeteries from before and after the plague reveals that people had a lower risk of dying at any age after the first plague outbreak compared with before.
The first application of antiserum to the treatment of patients is credited to Yersin [5], who used serum developed with the assistance of his Parisian colleagues Calmette, Roux, and Borrel.