plague
tsmith | June 23, 2016[Obvious warning is obvious: potential spoilers for A Song of Ice and Fire novels/Game of Thrones TV series below].
While no one will claim that George R.R. Martin's epic series, "A Song of Ice and Fire," is historically accurate, there are a number of historical parallels that can be drawn from the characters and plotline--particularly from medieval Europe. While most of those relate to epic battles or former monarchs or other royalty, another of Martin's characters, so to speak, is the disease greyscale (1).
Greyscale is a contagious disease that seems to come in at least two distinct forms…
tsmith | February 18, 2013I have a post up today at the Scientific American Guest blog, discussing how an earthquake and denial led to prairie dog plague. It details an outbreak of plague in Victorian San Francisco--the first time plague hit the United States--and the many downstream consequences of that outbreak (which began in 1900 and wasn't really contained until 1908). While the story is over at SciAm, here I wanted to talk more about why the outbreak became such a public health disaster.
The outbreak was first recognized by Dr. Joseph Kinyoun, a bacteriologist who had been, until his transfer to San Francisco,…
kbonham | September 10, 2012[This fall, I'm teaching a course at Emerson College called "Plagues and Pandemics." I'll be periodically posting the contents of my lectures and my experiences as a first time college instructor]
Lecture 1
That was a scene from Monty Python's Holy Grail, demonstrating the lighter side of the plague. Who knew there was a lighter side of plague? Of course the darker side is easier to envision. This is a graph showing estimated human population over the last millenium. That enormous dip during around 1350 is not a result of people having less babies - as much as 10-20% of the entire human…
kbonham | August 28, 2012
For the past 3 years, I've had the opportunity to spend a week in a house on a beautiful lake in Vermont. Usually, this week is a chance to completely unplug. I take some photos, buy a bunch of books from Northshire and read them, and lounge around. On this past trip however, I received and e-mail that was equal parts wonderful, exciting and terrifying, offering me an opportunity to teach a course at Emerson College.
The course is SC-214 - Plagues and Pandemics. From the catalogue:
Infectious diseases are a leading worldwide cause of human death. This course will describe and discuss the…
mpendergrast | June 21, 2010Mark Pendergrast writes: To kick off this book club discussion of Inside the Outbreaks, I thought I would explain briefly how I came to write the book and then suggest some possible topics for discussion.
The origin of the book goes back to an email I got in 2004 from my old high school and college friend, Andy Vernon, who wrote that I should consider writing the history of the EIS. I emailed back to say that I was honored, but what was the EIS? I had never heard of it. I knew Andy worked on tuberculosis at the CDC, but I didn't know that he had been a state-based EIS officer from 1978…
edyong | February 21, 2009
When people say that every cloud has a silver lining, they probably aren't thinking about herpes at the time. Herpes may be unpleasant, but the viruses that cause it and related diseases could have a bright side. In mice at least, they provide resistance against bacteria, including the bubonic plague.
Herpes is one of a number of itchy, blistering diseases, caused by the group of viruses aptly-named herpesviruses. Eight members infect humans and cause a range of illnesses including glandular fever, chickenpox, shingles and, of course, herpes itself.
Almost everyone gets infected by one of…
retrospectacle | January 17, 2008The plague was unbelievably deadly and disastrous in Europe during the 1300-1700s, but it is somewhat more surprising that the plague still claims a number of lives across the modern world. Even more surprising is that the number of cases has been slightly rising over the past few decades.
In the midst of my 'Plague Blogging,' an interesting paper was published in PLoS Medicine entitled "Plague: Past, Present, Future" which is chock full of information about the ancient, and modern plague. For example, thousands of people (even a dozen or so in the USA) still die from the plague, a bacterial…
retrospectacle | January 14, 2008Its sad serendipity that I found out that an Arizona-based biologist working for the National Park Service, named Eric York, likely died of plague a few months ago. Fatalities due to modern-day plague (caused by the bacteria Y. pestis) are extremely rare, especially in America. I'm not even sure when the last death from plague in America was, although according to the CDC there are on average of 2800 plague cases worldwide and 13 of those are in the USA. Only 1 in 7 of plague cases in the USA are fatal.
It is suspected that York acquired the plague when performing a necropsy on a mountain…
retrospectacle | January 11, 2008
This is a continuation of the first part in a series about what caused the Black Death in 12th-17th century Europe, and part of Plague Week here at Retro, which is looking like it might become Plague Fortnight.
The first appearance of the Black Death in Europe was sometime in the 14th century, however major bouts of Plague recurred almost every generation until the 1700s when sanitation improved dramatically. Rare "modern-day" bouts of the plague still occur occasionally in livestock and people, but the invention and standardization of anti-bacterial drugs drastically improved the chance to…
retrospectacle | January 8, 2008This week is plague week at Retrospectacle, and every day I will be posting something about the Black Plague.
Now that you've read my introduction to the Black Plague replete with its cause (both real and imagined), I wanted to write a bit about what 'Plague doctors' in 16th century Europe wore in an attempt to stave off being infected themselves. While perhaps having some small effect to prevent infection, the odd costumes surely had a large effect on scaring their patients. However, the intention of the extreme costume was to prevent the doctor from coming into contact with 'miasmas' (bad…
retrospectacle | January 7, 2008This week is plague week at Retrospectacle, and every day I will be posting something about the Black Plague.
The Black Plague was responsible for wiping out 1/3 of the population of Europe during the 1300s, and is considered one of the worst (is not THE worst) pandemic in recorded history. The plague was particularly feared due to its high infectiveness, low chance for survival, and ability to wipe out entire villages in a matter of weeks. Once infected, a patient died in a matter of days amidst much agony. The names for the Black Plague (in the 1300s) included the "Great Pestilence," the…