The Black Death was one of the deadliest epidemics in recorded history. Often referred as bubonic plague because of the sores (buboes) that appeared on the neck and groin of the victims, the disease has a morbid and pervasive history beginning in biblical times and recurring at frightening intervals throughout history to wreak a path of human suffering and death.
The Pale Horse
Ancient references to devastating plagues include an Old Testament account of the Philistines being punished by plague for stealing the Ark of the Covenant. For their misdeeds they were afflicted with mice and "emerods" (thought to mean hemorrhoids or buboes) and nearly all exterminated.
The Plagues of Greece
The first reliably documented outbreak of an epidemic displaying symptoms consistent with that of bubonic plague, was in Athens in 430 B.C. During this time, the Peloponnesian War was being fought between Sparta and Athens and was being documented by the historian Thucydides, who also left a clear description of the symptoms of plague sufferers, both human and animal. Buboes, bleeding, vomiting, disorientation and a horrifying, suffocating death.
The Plague of Justinian
The first clearly recognizable pattern of bubonic plague occurred in A.D. 541 to 542. Called The Plague of Justinian, it is the first known pandemic of its kind on record. This outbreak is thought to have originated in Ethiopia or Egypt and was carried to Constantinople in imported grain aboard large cargo ships which may have been the source of the contagion. At its peak, this outbreak killed 5,000 people in Constantinople daily and eventually eliminated nearly half of the city's inhabitants and up to a quarter of the population of the eastern Mediterranean
The Middle Ages
During the middle of the14th century, the , most certainly an incidence of bubonic plague and arguably the most deadly epidemic, swept through Europe and Asia, killing as many as 250 million people. The more virulent and contagious strains of the disease, pneumonic and septicemic, exacerbated the morbidity of the infection, resulting in the spread of the infection far inland from the coastal cities where it originated.
The Present Day
Until it was discovered that the vector of the disease was infected fleas, carried by the black rat, the terrified populations of stricken areas had no effective means of prevention. The literature of the time, however, was rife with many bizarre and fruitless remedies.
Plague continued to infect various areas in Europe throughout the 15th, 16th and into the 17th century with varying degrees of intensity and fatality. The last great European outbreak was in London in 1665. China suffered a major epidemic in the mid 19th century, which spread into India and killed an estimated 12 million people. The bacteria, Yersinia pestis, responsible for the Black Death is still endemic in certain rodent populations, even in the United States. Scientists are unsure what triggered the massive infestations seen in the past, but modern antibiotics can cure infections, if caught early enough.
Considerations
Mankind has been most fortunate in the past two centuries to have avoided such pandemics. The great flu epidemic of 1918 killed millions of people worldwide, but since that time nothing approaching that magnitude has surfaced. Though the Black Death has clearly been conquered, the threat posed by the H1N1 and H5N1 influenza viruses loom large as potential threats, along with the possibility of other virulent diseases become more readily transmissible.
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