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jacklynn jackson

The 1918 Influenza Pandemic - 4 views

  • In the fall of 1918 the Great War in Europe was winding down and peace was on the horizon.
  • The Americans had joined in the fight, bringing the Allies closer to victory against the Germans. Deep within the trenches these men lived through some of the most brutal conditions of life, which it seemed could not be any worse. Then, in pockets across the globe, something erupted that seemed as benign as the common cold. The influenza of that season, however, was far more than a cold. In the two years that this scourge ravaged the earth, a fifth of the world's population was infected. The flu was most deadly for people ages 20 to 40. This pattern of morbidity was unusual for influenza which is usually a killer of the elderly and young children. It infected 28% of all Americans (Tice). An estimated 675,000 Americans died of influenza during the pandemic, ten times as many as in the world war. Of the U.S. soldiers who died in Europe, half of them fell to the influenza virus and not to the enemy (Deseret News). An estimated 43,000 servicemen mobilized for WWI died of influenza (Crosby). 1918 would go down as unforgettable year of suffering and death and yet of peace. As noted in the Journal of the American Medical Association final edition of 1918:
  • The influenza pandemic circled the globe. Most of humanity felt the effects of this strain of the influenza virus. It spread following the path of its human car
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  • The effect of the influenza epidemic was so severe that the average life span in the US was depressed by 10 years. The influenza virus had a profound virulence, with a mortality rate at 2.5% compared to the previous influenza epidemics, which were less than 0.1%. The death rate for 15 to 34-year-olds of influenza and pneumonia were 20 times higher in 1918 than in previous years (Taubenberger). People were struck with illness on the street and died rapid deaths. One anectode shared of 1918 was of four women playing bridge together late into the night. Overnight, three of the women died from influenza (Hoagg). Others told stories of people on their way to work suddenly developing the flu and dying within hours (Henig). One physician writes that patients with seemingly ordinary influenza would rapidly "develop the most viscous type of pneumonia that has ever been seen" and later when cyanosis appeared in the patients, "it is simply a struggle for air until they suffocate," (Grist, 1979). Another physician recalls that the influenza patients "died struggling to clear their airways of a blood-tinged froth that sometimes gushed from their nose and mouth," (Starr, 1976). The physicians of the time were helpless against this powerful agent of influenza. In 1918 children would skip rope to the rhyme (Crawford):
  • The origins of this influenza variant is not precisely known. It is thought to have originated in China in a rare genetic shift of the influenza virus. The recombination of its surface proteins created a virus novel to almost everyone and a loss of herd immunity. Recently the virus has been reconstructed from the tissue of a dead soldier and is now being genetically characterized. The name of Spanish Flu came from the early affliction and large mortalities in Spain (BMJ,10/19/1918) where it allegedly killed 8 million in May (BMJ, 7/13/1918). However, a first wave of influenza appeared early in the spring of 1918 in Kansas and in military camps throughout the US. Few noticed the epidemic in the midst of the war. Wilson had just given his 14 point address. There was virtually no response or acknowledgment to the epidemics in March and April in the military camps. It was unfortunate that no steps were taken to prepare for the usual recrudescence of the virulent influenza strain in the winter. The lack of action was later criticized when the epidemic could not be ignored in the winter of 1918 (BMJ, 1918). These first epidemics at training camps were a sign of what was coming in greater magnitude in the fall and winter of 1918 to the entire world.
  • The influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 killed more people than the Great War, known today as World War I (WWI), at somewhere between 20 and 40 million people. It has been cited as the most devastating epidemic in recorded world history. More people died of influenza in a single year than in four-years of the Black Death Bubonic Plague from 1347 to 1351. Known as "Spanish Flu" or "La Grippe" the influenza of 1918-1919 was a global disaster.
  • The influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 killed more people than the Great War, known today as World War I (WWI), at somewhere between 20 and 40 million people. It has been cited as the most devastating epidemic in recorded world history. More people died of influenza in a single year than in four-years of the Black Death Bubonic Plague from 1347 to 1351. Known as "Spanish Flu" or "La Grippe" the influenza of 1918-1919 was a global disaster.
  • The influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 killed more people than the Great War, known today as World War I (WWI), at somewhere between 20 and 40 million people. It has been cited as the most devastating epidemic in recorded world history. More people died of influenza in a single year than in four-years of the Black Death Bubonic Plague from 1347 to 1351. Known as "Spanish Flu" or "La Grippe" the influenza of 1918-1919 was a global disaster.
  • The war brought the virus back into the US for the second wave of the epidemic. It first arrived in Boston in September of 1918 through the port busy with war shipments of machinery and supplies. The war also enabled the virus to spread and diffuse. Men across the nation were mobilizing to join the military and the cause. As they came together, they brought the virus with them and to those they contacted. The virus killed almost 200,00 in October of 1918 alone. In November 11 of 1918 the end of the war enabled a resurgence. As people celebrated Armistice Day with parades and large partiess, a complete disaster from the public health standpoint, a rebirth of the epidemic occurred in some cities. The flu that winter was beyond imagination as millions were infected and thousands died. Just as the war had effected the course of influenza, influenza affected the war. Entire fleets were ill with the disease and men on the front were too sick to fight. The flu was devastating to both sides, killing more men than their own weapons could
  • The pandemic affected everyone. With one-quarter of the US and one-fifth of the world infected with the influenza, it was impossible to escape from the illness. Even President Woodrow Wilson suffered from the flu in early 1919 while negotiating the crucial treaty of Versailles to end the World War (Tice). Those who were lucky enough to avoid infection had to deal with the public health ordinances to restrain the spread of the disease. The public health departments distributed gauze masks to be worn in public. Stores could not hold sales, funerals were limited to 15 minutes. Some towns required a signed certificate to enter and railroads would not accept passengers without them. Those who ignored the flu ordinances had to pay steep fines enforced by extra officers (Deseret News). Bodies pilled up as the massive deaths of the epidemic ensued. Besides the lack of health care workers and medical supplies, there was a shortage of coffins, morticians and gravediggers (Knox). The conditions in 1918 were not so far removed from the Black Death in the era of the bubonic plague of the Middle Ages.
  • In 1918-19 this deadly influenza pandemic erupted during the final stages of World War I. Nations were already attempting to deal with the effects and costs of the war. Propaganda campaigns and war restrictions and rations had been implemented by governments. Nationalism pervaded as people accepted government authority. This allowed the public health departments to easily step in and implement their restrictive measures. The war also gave science greater importance as governments relied on scientists, now armed with the new germ theory and the development of antiseptic surgery, to design vaccines and reduce mortalities of disease and battle wounds. Their new technologies could preserve the men on the front and ultimately save the world. These conditions created by World War I, together with the current social attitudes and ideas, led to the relatively calm response of the public and application of scientific ideas. People allowed for strict measures and loss of freedom during the war as they submitted to the needs of the nation ahead of their personal needs. They had accepted the limitations placed with rationing and drafting. The responses of the public health officials reflected the new allegiance to science and the wartime society. The medical and scientific communities had developed new theories and applied them to prevention, diagnostics and treatment of the influenza patients.
  • The influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 killed more people than the Great War, known today as World War I (WWI), at somewhere between 20 and 40 million people. It has been cited as the most devastating epidemic in recorded world history. More people died of influenza in a single year than in four-years of the Black Death Bubonic Plague from 1347 to 1351.
  • The effect of the influenza epidemic was so severe that the average life span in the US was depressed by 10 years.
  • "The 1918 has gone: a year momentous as the termination of the most cruel war in the annals of the human race; a year which marked, the end at least for a time, of man's destruction of man; unfortunately a year in which developed a most fatal infectious disease causing the death of hundreds of thousands of human beings. Medical science for four and one-half years devoted itself to putting men on the firing line and keeping them there. Now it must turn with its whole might to combating the greatest enemy of all--infectious disease," (12/28/1918).
  • I had a little bird, Its name was Enza. I opened the window, And in-flu-enza.
  • riers, along trade routes and shipping lines. Outbreaks swept through North America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Brazil and the South Pacific (Taubenberger). In India the mortality rate was extremely high at around 50 deaths from influenza per 1,000 people (Brown).
  • With the military patients coming home from the war with battle wounds and mustard gas burns, hospital facilities and staff were taxed to the limit. This created a shortage of physicians, especially in the civilian sector as many had been lost for service with the military. Since the medical practitioners were away with the troops, only the medical students were left to care for the sick. Third and forth year classes were closed and the students assigned jobs as interns or nurses (Starr,1976). One article noted that "depletion has been carried to such an extent that the practitioners are brought very near the breaking point," (BMJ, 11/2/1918). The shortage was further confounded by the added loss of physicians to the epidemic. In the U.S., the Red Cross had to recruit more volunteers to contribute to the new cause at home of fighting the influenza epidemic. To respond with the fullest utilization of nurses, volunteers and medical supplies, the Red Cross created a National Committee on Influenza. It was involved in both military and civilian sectors to mobilize all forces to fight Spanish influenza (Crosby, 1989). In some areas of the US, the nursing shortage was so acute that the Red Cross had to ask local businesses to allow workers to have the day off if they volunteer in the hospitals at night (Deseret News). Emergency hospitals were created to take in the patients from the US and those arriving sick from overseas.
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    the influenza
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    influenza facts  
Bethany Carter

Open Collections Program: Contagion, The Yellow Fever Epidemic in Philadelphia, 1793 - 1 views

  • Yellow fever is known for bringing on a characteristic yellow tinge to the eyes and skin, and for the terrible “black vomit” caused by bleeding into the stomach. Known today to be spread by infected mosquitoes, yellow fever was long believed to be a miasmatic disease originating in rotting vegetable matter and other putrefying filth, and most believed the fever to be contagious.
    • Caden Lewis
       
      Good Information for History of Yellow Fever.
  • The Yellow Fever Epidemic in Philadelphia, 1793
  • The first major American yellow fever epidemic hit Philadelphia in July 1793 and peaked during the first weeks of October.
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  • As the population fled or died, few were left to attend to nursing and burying duties. Rush, who believed that blacks were immune to yellow fever, asked members of the African Society to come forward and care for to the sick and the dead. Absalom Jones and Richard Allen, two free black men, volunteered. In a few weeks Jones, Allen and others were bleeding hundreds of people a day under Rush’s direction, as well as nursing patients and carrying coffins.
  • Their efforts, though praised by Rush, were scorned by the white public as being profiteering and extortionist. In response, Jones and Allen published their own description of their experiences.
  • About two months into the epidemic, however, Rush was proven wrong and blacks began to fall ill, dying from yellow fever at about the same rate as whites.
  • The Bush Hill Hospital, which housed the sick poor, was desperately understaffed. When Philadelphia’s mayor asked the public for help, a French-born merchant from Santo Domingo named Stephen Girard stepped up and recommended his compatriot, Dr. Jean Devèze, to head the hospital. Devèze refused to believe that yellow fever was contagious and he disapproved of Rush’s aggressive treatments. Devèze later became a world authority on yellow fever.
  • The first major American yellow fever epidemic hit Philadelphia in July 1793 and peaked during the first weeks of October. Philadelphia, then the nation’s capital, was the most cosmopolitan city in the United States. Two thousand free blacks lived there, as well as many recent white French-speaking arrivals from the colony of Santo Domingo, who were fleeing from a slave rebellion. Major Revolutionary political figures lived there, and in the first week of September, Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Madison that everyone who could escape the city was doing so. The epidemic depopulated Philadelphia: 5,000 out of a population of 45,000 died, and chronicler Mathew Carey estimated that another 17,000 fled.
    • Bethany Carter
       
      Yellow Fever Epidemic, 1793
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    good website for yellow fever 
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    the first epidemic in the USA 1793.
Trinity Oslin

Influenza in 1918: An Epidemic in Images - 1 views

  • In army camps and cantonments, in hospitals, and in streets and workplaces across the nation, photographers aimed their lenses and captured a nation struggling to deal with the crisis.
  • In the fall of 1918, against the tragic backdrop of war and disease,
  • That said, even a small sample of America and Americans in the midst of the great influenza pandemic of 1918 is a powerful message indeed.
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  • Some four million men were mobilized in the U.S. Armed Forces. Training camps and stations were often overcrowded. Soldiers and sailors routinely were packed on to passenger trains and sent to training stations and bases around the nation
  • When influenza struck the United States in the fall of 1918, it almost universally appeared in military populations before hitting civilian communities. Medical officers attempted to contain the epidemic through a host of measures, including nasal-pharyngeal sprays for all troops, quarantine of new arrivals, and isolation of cases in camp hospitals or special emergency
  • As the influenza epidemic raged, scientists and physicians struggled to isolate the causative microbe and to develop an effective vaccine against it.
  • Quacks and naysayers, on the other hand, advocated a host of alternatives such as raw onions rubbed on the chest, creosote baths, and the consumption of large quantities of brown sugar. Some—including several city health officers—claimed that a clean heart, clean bowels, or warm feet were all that was needed to stave off influenza.
  • Health officers, mayors, and city councils ordered theaters, movie houses, dance halls, saloons, schools, churches, and other places of public gathering to close for the duration of the epidemic.
  • In the three decades after 1890, nearly 24 million immigrants arrived on the shores of the United States
  • Seattle saw a drastic drop-off in the number of marriage license applications during the epidemic (although, interestingly, the number of divorce filings increased).5
  • World War I did not just affect soldiers, sailors, and Marines. On the home front, civilians were expected to contribute to the war effort as well by self-rationing food, fabric, gasoline, and other goods, and by purchasing Liberty bonds.
  • people in close proximity to one another. In the East, where the deadly fall wave
  • American Red Cross, the Visiting Nurse Association, the Blue Circle Nurses, the Public Health Nurses, and others played a vital role during the influenza epidemic, providing nursing care to the ill, staffing emergency hospitals, organizing volunteers, coordinating relief efforts, assembling gauze face masks, and operating ambulances. Communities across the nation were overwhelmed by the
  • magnitude of the crisis,
  • Local courts, on the other hand, had more flexibility in how they met the crisis
  • The 1918 influenza pandemic took a horrible toll of death and destruction in the United States
Gage DuVall

The Pennsylvania Center for the Book - Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793 - 1 views

  • It was the summer of 1793 and a ghastly epidemic of Yellow fever gripped the largest city of America and the nation’s capital. Samuel Breck, a newly arrived merchant to Philadelphia and later instructor to the blind, observed “the horrors of this memorable affliction were extensive and heart rending.” Samuel Breck estimated that the number of deaths in 1793 by yellow fever was more than four thousand. Modern scholars estimate the number to be closer to five thousand, a tenth of the capital’s fifty thousand residents. However, twenty thousand people, including Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and much of the federal government had fled the city to escape the fever thereby making proportion of deaths among those who remained quite high. What could cause such a devastating epidemic to occur on Pennsylvania soil?
  • Yellow fever is an acute, infectious, hemorrhagic (bleeding) viral disease transmitted by the bite of a female mosquito native to tropical and subtropical regions of South America and Africa. However, it wasn’t discovered that Yellow Fever was transmitted by mosquitoes until 1881. At the time, Yellow Fever was a well known illness that affected sailors who travelled to the Caribbean and Africa characterized by disquieting color changes including yellow eyes and skin, purple blotches under the skin from internal bleeding and hemorrhages, and black stools and vomit, all of which were accompanied by a high fever.
  • In 1793, people of the French Caribbean colony of Saint Domingue (now Haiti) were fleeing a revolution from France and thousands of infected individuals landed at the Philadelphia docks. This combined with the dry, hot summer and low water tables of 1793 created the perfect breeding grounds for mosquitoes and the spread of Yellow Fever.
    • Caden Lewis
       
      Good facts of the History of Yellow fever
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  • African Americans played a vital role in the epidemic of 1793. Rush pleaded for the help of Philadelphia’s free black community, believing that African Americans were immune to the disease. African Americans worked tirelessly with the sick and dying as nurses, cart drivers, coffin makers, and grave diggers. Absalom Jones and Richard Allen, religious leaders who would later go on to found the first black churches of Philadelphia, African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, and African Methodist Episcopal Church, respectively, described their experience as volunteers in 1793: “at this time the dread that prevailed over people’s minds was so general, that it was a rare instance to see one neighbor visit another, and even friends when they met in the streets were afraid of each other, much less would they admit into their houses.” This was not the only horror that Absalom Jones and Richard Allen observed. They observed horrendous behavior from the fearful citizens of Philadelphia: “[Many white people]…have acted in a manner that would make humanity shudder.” Despite Dr. Rush’s theory, 240 African Americans died of Yellow Fever.
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    the helpers of the virus.
Madison Groves

WHO | Yellow fever - 2 views

  • Yellow fever
  • Yellow fever (YF) is a viral haemorrhagic fever transmitted by infected mosquitoes. Yellow fever can be recognized from historic texts stretching back 400 years. Infection causes a wide spectrum of disease, from mild symptoms to severe illness and death. The "yellow" in the name is explained by the jaundice that affects some patients, causing yellow eyes and yellow skin. There are three types of transmission cycle: sylvatic, intermediate and urban. All three cycles exist in Africa, but in South America, only sylvatic and urban yellow fever occur.
  • Sylvatic (or jungle) yellow fever occurs in tropical rainforests where monkeys, infected by sylvatic mosquitoes, pass the virus onto other mosquitoes that feed on them; these mosquitoes, in turn bite and infect humans entering the forest. This produces sporadic cases, the majority of which are often young men working in the forest e.g. logging. The intermediate cycle of yellow fever transmission occurs in humid or semi-humid savannahs of Africa, and can produce small-scale epidemics in rural villages. Semi-domestic mosquitoes infect both monkey and human hosts and increased contact between man and infected mosquito leads to disease. This is the most common type of outbreak seen in recent decades in Africa. Urban yellow fever results in large explosive epidemics when travellers from rural areas introduce the virus into areas with high human population density. Domestic mosquitoes, most notably Aedes aegypti, carry the virus from person to person. These outbreaks tend to spread outwards from one source to cover a wide area. Yellow fever can be prevented by vaccination. In order to protect people living in areas at high risk of yellow fever transmission, WHO's dual strategy for prevention of yellow fever epidemics relies on preventive mass immunization campaigns followed by infant routine immunization. Yellow fever causes epidemics that can affect 20% of the population. When epidemics occur in unvaccinated populations, case-fatality rates may exceed 50%. No treatment beyond supportive care exists. For more information
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  • WHO fact sheet Disease Outbreak News: yellow fever International travel and health: yellow fever International Health Regulations (IHR)
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    Some Good facts on how Yellow Fever is spread.
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    yellow fever
jace givens

Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 1 views

  • Between the College's advisory on August 25 and the death of Dr. Hutchinson from yellow fever on September 7, panic spread throughout the city; more people fled. Between August 1 and September 7, 456 people died in the city. On September 8, 42 deaths were reported.[18] An estimated 20,000 people left the city through September, including national leaders.[9] The daily death to
  • l remained above 30 until October 26. The worst 7-day period was between October 7 and 13, when 711 deaths were reported.[18]
  • During the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 5000 or more people were listed in the official register of deaths between August 1 and November 9. The vast majority of them died of yellow fever, making the epidemic in the city of 50,000 people one of the most severe in United States' history. By the end of September, 20,000 people had fled the city. The mortality rate peaked in October, before frost finally killed the mosquitoes and brought an end to the epidemic in November. Doctors tried a variety of treatments, but knew neither the origin of the fever nor that it was transmitted by mosquitoes (which was not verified until the late nineteenth century).
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    panic of yellow fever
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    how yellow fever started 
Madison Groves

yellow fever -- Britannica School - 3 views

  • Paul I. Howell, MPH; Prof. Frank Hadley Collins/Centers for Disease Control and...Paul I. Howell, MPH; Prof. Frank Hadley Collins/Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) (Image Number: 9534)An infectious disease, yellow fever infects humans, all species of monkeys, and certain other small mammals. The virus is transmitted from animals to humans and among humans by several species of mosquitoes. Yellow fever is one of the great epidemic diseases of the tropical world, and in earlier centuries it was one of the great plagues of the New World. At one time the tropical and subtropical regions of
  • After the bite of the infecting mosquito, there is an incubation period of several days while the virus multiplies within the body. The onset of symptoms is then abrupt, with headache, backache, rapidly rising fever, nausea, and vomiting. Jaundice (yellowing of the skin and eyes) is a common sign in persons and gives rise to the name yellow fever. This acute stage lasts two or three days, after which the patient either begins to recover or gets worse. Death may occur six or seven days after the onset of symptoms.
  • The yellow fever patient’s recovery is long, but, when it does occur, it is complete and is accompanied by a lifelong immunity.
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  • Many persons may experience only a mild infection that lasts a few days.
  • no specific treatment for those with yellow fever beyond good nursing and supportive care.
  • The disease, however, is completely preventable. People can be rendered immune to the virus through vaccination, and outbreaks can be contained by eliminating or controlling mosquito populations.
  • Nevertheless, the disease is still present in tropical Africa and South America, where access to vaccine is sometimes lacking.
  • There is no specific treatment for those with yellow fever beyond good nursing and supportive care. The disease, however, is completely preventable. People can be rendered immune to the virus through vaccination, and outbreaks can be contained by eliminating or controlling mosquito populations. Thanks to such measures, the great yellow fever epidemics of the late 19th and early 20th centuries are no more. Nevertheless, the disease is still present in tropical Africa and South America, where access to vaccine is sometimes lacking
  • An infectious disease, yellow fever infects humans, all species of monkeys, and certain other small mammals. The virus is transmitted from animals to humans and among humans by several species of
  • An infectious disease, yellow fever infects humans, all species of monkeys, and certain other small mammals. The virus is transmitted from animals to humans and among humans by several species of mosquitoes. Yellow fever is one of the great epidemic diseases of the tropical world, and in earlier centuries it was one of the great plagues of the New World. At one time the tropical and subtropical regions of the Americas were subjected to devastating epidemics, and serious outbreaks occurred not only as far north as Philadelphia, New York, and Boston but also as far away as Spain, France, England, and Italy.
  • tious disease, yellow fever infects humans, all species of monkeys, and certain other small mammals. The virus is transmitted from animals to humans and among humans by several species of
    • Madison Groves
       
      i had no idea it was spread by a mosquito
Summer Rae

The Pennsylvania Gazette: The Flu of 1918 - 0 views

  •  In Pennsylvania, the influenza epidemic began almost unnoticed in the middle of September. First a few cases, and then the numbers began to rise rapidly. Worried state health authorities decided to add influenza to the list of reportable diseases. Their concern increased when 75,000 cases were reported statewide. The worst was still ahead.
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    When the epidemic started
Josie Crossland

Typhoid Mary - 0 views

  • IT WAS AUGUST 27, 1906, when at the rented summer home of Charles Henry Warren and family in Oyster Bay, Long Island, the Warrens' young daughter became ill with what was diagnosed as typhoid fever. The same week, five more persons began showing symptoms: Mrs. Warren, a second daughter, two maids, and the gardener. The relatively affluent town of Oyster Bay had never had an outbreak of typhoid before. A popular vacation spot for wealthy urban New Yorkers, it was best known for hosting President Theodore Roosevelt during the summer. The house the Warrens had taken for the season stood on high ground, overlooking the bay, and the circumstances of its occupants were impeccable — a wealthy banker, his family and their servants, living in fairly luxurious style.
  •     The Warren family were not the type of people thought likely to contract typhoid — an illness widely associated with poverty and filth. Charles Warren was the president of the Lincoln Bank. They were the sort of folks who could afford to rent a nice big summer home on affluent Long Island (as well as hire a cook, servants, and gardener to keep things tidy). Rich people just didn't get typhoid — especially in Oyster Bay — and predictably, there was concern in the area that the town would become a less desirabl
  • e resort should it be seen as teeming with the disease.
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  •     George Thompson, the owner of the house, was particularly worried, concerned that no well-to-do New Yorkers would be of a mind to rent his home the following season if it was associated with disease. The house was very large, and expensive to run. Thompson himself, though the owner of four other homes, could not afford to live there. If the house lay vacant, it would mean disaster. Desperate, he called in experts to track down the source of the contagion, hoping it came from outside the property and eager for someone to prove it.     Drinking water was analyzed. The single indoor toilet, the cesspool, manure pit, and outhouse were all examined and ultimately rejected as the possible source of infection.
  •     Dairy products were inspected.     An old woman who lived on the beach was considered a likely suspect. She had offered the family clams for sale, and these were scrutinized minutely, but no one else in th
  • e town who had eaten shellfish from the same source had fallen ill.
  •     Thompson, unsatisfied with the inconclusive results from local health authorities on the scene and from his hired experts, reached out to friends in New York City, looking for someone, anyone, to help him with his embarrassing problem.     Salvation didn't exactly ride in on a white horse. Nor was Dr. George Soper hero material exactly. Dr. Soper was not even in fact a medical doctor. He was a sanitary engineer — as one newspaper described him: `a doctor to sick cities.'     Called into the fray, he took the train out to Oyster Bay from the city and set immediately to work. After reviewing the findings of the first medical men on the scene, as well as those of earlier experts who had scrutinized the drinking water, trash and sewage, he began questioning members of the household, inquiring about visitors, ultimately receiving a comprehensive list going back an impressive ten years. To the best of his ability, Soper examined the medical histories of each of these individuals, eventually ruling all of them out as possible sources.
  •     Soper now uncovered `other episodes', as he called them. Provocatively, there was a two-year period for which there were no records available at all for Ms. Mallon's employment — the period between the Gilsey family incident and Mary's arrival in Oyster Bay.     The two-year blank was tantalizing to Soper. Where had Mary been? Who had she been cooking for? She must have been cooking somewhere ... The sanitary engineer's mind teemed with disturbing images. He no doubt pictured the cook stirring soup in some unknown and very busy cellar kitchen, barehanded, unknowing, infecting untold multitudes of solid citizens with potentially deadly bacilli.     Dr. Soper's breathless, self-serving, yet ultimately unreliable accounts to newspapers give a sense of how excited he was, how exhilarated by the thrill of the chase and the tantalizing prospect of being onto something really important. At first he had anticipated a case that might last only a few weeks — a little sea air, a few bowls of steamers, some resolution, and back to the city — but now he found himself further drawn into a quest which had already occupied him for a full four months. The Warrens were long gone — back home with the other summer renters. The weather had turned colder, the house now stood empty.
  •     He went over the facts of the case as they had presented themselves to him. Here he had an unexplained outbreak of typhoid in an area where no typhoid of any kind had been previously. The home was immaculate, clean from top to bottom. All other possible sources of infection had been examined and ruled out. The only new element introduced into the household had been a cook. The cook handled food, which all the afflicted members of the household had eaten. The disease broke out, and the cook was now gone. Had she left under different circumstances, say, the disappearance of a diamond necklace, the cops — or any investigator — would have been looking very hard in her direction.     Soper got a description of the suspect: a woman of about forty, tall, with a buxom build, blond hair, blue eyes, and a firm mouth and jaw. It was remarked that she was `a pretty good cook', though she was observed by some interviewees in retrospect as bein
  • `not particularly clean' in her work habits and `difficult to talk to'.     Writing later, Soper describes what he did next:
  •     This was frustrating. Things usually went pretty quickly in cases like this. Feces in the water supply, contaminated milk, a sickly visitor, and case closed. Not so at the Thompson house. Soper began to `walk the cat backward' in search of an answer.     Typhoid's incubation period was known to be ten to fourteen days long, so he focused on a time on or before August 20. Soper was intrigued by the news that on the fourth of the month, the Warrens had seen fit to change cooks. More significantly, the new cook, a Mary Mallon, was now missing, having left without notice or explanation some three weeks after the sickness began.     A missing cook! It was the kind of lead that criminal investigators find almost too easy, too good to be true; evidence of a kind that prosecutors like to present to jurors as indicating `guilty knowledge', the kind of red flag that Miss Marple or Hercule Poirot would disregard automatically as being just too obvious. Look at it: A murder or some other felony is committed in a household or place of business, and someone who used to be there is suddenly no longer there. It doesn't take an investigative mastermind to deduce who to go looking for first. It was circumstantial evidence of the most provocative kind, and Soper was well acquainted with the old saw about circumstantial evidence: `It's like finding a goldfish in your milk. It doesn't prove anything — but it's mighty suspicious'.
  •     Carriers were a very hot concept in the new world of epidemiology, a theory unproven in the United States. In Germany, however, the respected bacteriologist Dr. Robert Koch had recently investigated repeated outbreaks of typhoid in a Strasbourg bakeshop. The bakery was clean. The water supply was uncorrupted. Yet well-heeled customers were getting sick. Dr. Koch questioned the proprietor and found that she had, years earlier, contracted typhoid, but had survived the experience and was now, seemingly, fully recovered. After testing her, Koch found that even though she was devoid of symptoms and to all outward appearances a healthy person capable of working and going about her tasks like everyone else, she was in fact still teeming with typhoid germs, exuding them through her bowel movements and spreading them with improperly cleaned hands. This was a revolutionary discovery, and news of it had found its way to New York, where it was discussed with interest. Soper had read the transcript of a speech Koch had given on the subject a couple of years previous.     Dr. Soper had learned of seemingly clean and affluent homes in Mary Mallon's past being struck with typhoid after her employment. Now he was confronted with similar circumstances in yet another place she had worked. Given that no human carrier such as Koch's bakery proprietor had ever been identified in America, Soper was suddenly very, very interested in getting his hands on the mysterious Mary Mallon.
  •     That she was evidently not interested in being found only piqued the good doctor's interest to even greater pitch:
  •     At this point, Soper already seems to have formed in his mind a picture of Mary as some kind of Moriarty-esque nemesis, an elusive and crafty adversary with the answer to all his questions, but always just out of reach.     He wanted her badly. His day-to-day work, by this time, had become closer to a detective's than a microbe-hunter's, interviewing witnesses, poring over records. He felt good. He was going to make his bones with this case. He foresaw himself as the poster boy for epidemiologists and health professionals, an honored and much-sought-after speaker at all the medical societies, a hero to the afflicted, a newspaper personality, idol to generations of aspiring sanitary engineers.     Furthermore, he knew that his work was important. Typhoid was lethal and, especially in 1906 and 1907, no joke.
  •     These were boom times. It was a new century and a new world that Soper lived in. The 1900 Chicago World's Fair had once and for all convinced Americans that they lived in a great country, a major world power, on a par — at least — with the European monarchies. Any inferiority complex New Yorkers and Americans might once have felt was rapidly disappearing in the light of an increasingly powerful, worldwide naval presence, a national construction explosion, the emergence of a newly affluent and pleasure-seeking middle class, the recent developments of subway systems, mass-produced automobiles, a tunnel under the Hudson River, new entertainments, libraries, an exuberantly sensationalistic press, and the warm glow of having recently drubbed the Spanish in Cuba and the Philippines. Great strides had been made in the fighting of disease and the word `epidemic' was now an embarrassment to a city. An earlier epidemic of typhoid and cholera had had New York and Philadelphia pointing fingers at one another, each claiming the other was responsible for the outbreak, both mortified that something so closely associated with the squalor of the old world would be blamed on their fair metropolis.     Soper's description of an earlier experience with a typhoid epidemic gives a flavor of what a man in his position saw as his responsibility, of what he perceived himself to be up against:
  • These were the stakes as Soper saw them. Confusion, suspicion, contagion, neighbor pitted against neighbor, panic in the streets, and ultimately, chaos and death.     Epidemics — especially unexplained ones — tended to bring out the worst in people, and the `carrier' theory, however fearful its implications, was far preferable to some of the alternatives. In the past citizens thought to be contagious — particularly if they were members of the minority or underclass — had hardly been taken to the bosom of their communities. Instead the usual outcome was for mob rule to win out. It was not unheard of for those thought to be infected to be run out of town on a rail or set adrift in the Long Island Sound — often at the point of a gun — or worse still. As Soper saw it, he needed a quick and tidy solution to the Oyster Bay problem.     Looking at pictures of Soper — a serious, narrow-faced, whippetlike man with a neat mustache and a receding hairline — one gets the impression of not so much the dogged detective he might have liked to see himself as, but of a timid, fastidious scientist, a man ensconced in reasoned practice and methodology. That he might have been racist, sexist, and far too influenced by the prejudices of his class — as has been suggested by revisionist accounts — a flawed, ambitious fellow who looked for the first likely Irish woman he could clap the manacles on — does not present itself through photography. Nor do we get much of that from his work later in life: tomes with titles such as: The Air and Ventilation of Subways (1908), Modern Methods of Street Cleaning
  • (1909), Further Studies of European Methods of Street Cleaning and Waste Disposal With Suggestions (1930), and of course, what proved his masterwork, the story for which he became best known, the pamphlet with a title like a Victorian detective story's The Curious Case of Typhoid Mary (1939).     George Soper looks from his photographs not to be a nice guy. He looks like someone who was bullied in high school, a nerd, a geek, an apple-polishing dirt-wonk with an unseemly interest in filth and how to make it go away.     It was not for a good many more months, not until March of 1907, that Soper finally came face to face with Mary Mallon. It was then that reports reached him that a family on Park Avenue in New York City had been stricken with typhoid. Two cases had initially been reported. A maid was ill, and a daughter of the people who owned the house, a beautiful young woman in her twenties, was lying on her deathbed. The family were reportedly beside themselves with grief. The girl died two days later, and soon the nurse who had attended her became str
  • icken as well.     The details of the case as they reached Soper were indeed tragic, another example of bad things happening to people to whom bad things are not supposed to happen; but what particularly excited Soper, got that Sherlock Holmes mojo working again, was the news that there was a new cook fitting the description of Mary Mallon still employed by the stricken family.
  •     The cook in question, and indeed it was Mary Mallon, did not quite share the good doctor's enthusiasm. She showed true displeasure when Soper, who rushed over to the Park Avenue address immediately upon receiving the news, suddenly showed up at her job, accusing her in no uncertain terms of causing the typhoid which right then was draining the life from one member of her employer's family.
  •     To his dismay, Mary did not see Soper as the answer to some long-troubling question about the series of odd and unpleasant coincidences that had long followed her. He stood an accuser, and she reacted thus, and her reaction seems to have come as a complete surprise to him.     Here, at this first meeting between pursuer and pursued, is where things began to go terribly wrong — at least for Mary Mallon and any future she might have had. What was said here, and how it was said, would set the tone for everything that happened after.
Darien Fuller

Different Types of Flu: Types A, B, C, and Bird Flu - 0 views

  • What Are the Different Types of Flu?There are three types of flu viruses: A, B, and C. Type A and B cause the annual influenza epidemics that have up to 20% of the population sniffling, aching, coughing, and running high fevers. Type C also causes flu; however, type C flu symptoms are much less severe.The flu is linked to between 3,000 and 49,000 deaths and 200,000 hospitalizations each year in the United States. The seasonal flu vaccine was created to try to avert these epidemics.
  • What Is Type A Flu Virus?Type A flu or influenza A viruses are capable of infecting animals, although it is more common for people to suffer the ailments associated with this type of flu. Wild birds commonly act as the hosts for this flu virus.Type A flu virus is constantly changing and is generally responsible for the large flu epidemics. The influenza A2 virus (and other variants of influenza) is spread by people who are already infected. The most common flu hot spots are those surfaces that an infected person has touched and rooms where he has been recently, especially areas where he has been sneezing.
  • What Is Type B Flu Virus?Unlike type A flu viruses, type B flu is found only in humans. Type B flu may cause a less severe reaction than type A flu virus, but occasionally, type B flu can still be extremely harmful. Influenza type B viruses are not classified by subtype and do not cause pandemics.
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  • How Is Type C Flu Virus Different From the Others?Influenza C viruses are also found in people. They are, however, milder than either type A or B. People generally do not become very ill from the influenza type C viruses. Type C flu viruses do not cause epidemics.
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    different types of flu
Chance Brown

Smallpox Epidemic, 1885 - Pointe-à-Callière - 0 views

  • The result: 9,600 people came down with smallpox in 1885 in the administrative territory of Montréal, and 3,234 of them died. Out of a total population of about 167,000, some 2% of Montrealers perished. That’s not to mention the victims in neighbouring municipalities, including the village of Saint-Jean-Baptiste, where the smallpox epidemic was most deadly.
    • Chance Brown
       
      Total death toll of the smallpox epidemic in Montreal 1885
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    Smallpox information about montreal in the 1800s
presley spoonemore

The Influenza Epidemic of 1918 - 1 views

  • World War I claimed an estimated 16 million lives. The influenza epidemi
  • c that swept the world in 1918 killed an estimated 50 million people. One
  • it had killed more people than any other illness in recorded history.
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  • "three-day fever,"
  • Victims recovered after a few days. When the disease surfaced again that fall, it was far more severe
  • could not identify this disease which was striking so fast and so viciously, eluding treatment and defying control
  • victims died within hours
Gage DuVall

Yellow Fever Epidemics - 0 views

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    Yellow Fever epidemic
Madison Groves

Yellow fever breaks out in Philadelphia - History.com This Day in History - 10/11/1793 - 1 views

  • The death toll from a yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia hits 100 on this day in 1793. By the time it ended, 5,000 people were dead. Yellow fever, or American plague as it was known at the time, is a viral disease that begins with fever and muscle pain. Next, victims often become jaundiced (hence, the term "yellow" fever), as their liver and kidneys cease to function normally. Some of the afflicted then suffer even worse symptoms. Famous early American Cotton Mather described it as "turning yellow then vomiting and bleeding every way." Internal bleeding in the digestive tract causes bloody vomit. Many victims become delirious before dying. The virus, like malaria, is carried and transferred by mosquitoes. The first yellow fever outbreaks in the United States occurred in late 1690s. Nearly 100 years later, in the late summer of 1793, refugees from a yellow fever epidemic in the Caribbean fled to Philadelphia. Within weeks, people throughout the city were experiencing symptoms. By the middle of October, 100 people were dying from the virus every day. Caring for the victims so strained public services that the local city government collapsed. Philadelphia was also the seat of the United States government at the time, but federal authorities simply evacuated the city in face of the raging epidemic. Eventually, a cold front eliminated Philadelphia's mosquito population and the death toll fell to 20 per day by October 26. Today, a vaccine prevents yellow fever in much of the world, though 20,000 people still die every year from the disease.
jace givens

yellow fever | FactMonster.com - 0 views

  • yellow fever, acute infectious disease endemic in tropical Africa and many areas of South America. Epidemics have extended into subtropical and temperate regions during warm seasons. In 1878 a severe outbreak in the Mississippi Valley killed about 20,000; the last epidemic in the United States occurred in New Orleans in 1905. Yellow fever is caused by a virus transmitted by the bite of the female Aedes aegypti mosquito, which breeds in stagnant water near human habitations. A form of the disease called sylvan or jungle yellow fever is transmitted in tropical jungles by other species of mosquitoes that live in trees. Other primates are susceptible to the disease and function as a reservoir of the virus.
  • At the end of the 19th cent., yellow fever was highly prevalent in the Caribbean, and a way of controlling it had to be found before construction of the Panama Canal could be undertaken. In 1900 an American commission headed by Walter Reed and including James Carroll, Jesse Lazear, and Arístides Agramonte gathered in the U.S. Army's Camp Columbia in Cuba. Through their experiments—one of which severely sickened Carroll and killed Lazear—they proved the theory of C. J. Finlay that yellow fever was a mosquito-borne infection. Within the next few years, W. C. Gorgas, an army physician and sanitation expert, succeeded in controlling the disease in the Panama Canal Zone and other areas in that part of the world by mosquito-eradication measures. The later development of an immunizing vaccine (work on which won Max Theiler a Nobel Prize) and strict quarantine measures against ships, planes, and passengers coming from known or suspected yellow-fever areas further aided control of the disease.
  • Yellow fever begins suddenly after an incubation period of three to five days. In mild cases only fever and headache may be present. The severe form of the disease commences with fever, chills, bleeding into the skin, rapid heartbeat, headache, back pains, and extreme prostration. Nausea, vomiting, and constipation are common. Jaundice usually appears on the second or third day. After the third day the symptoms recede, only to return with increased severity in the final stage, during which there is a marked tendency to hemorrhage internally; the characteristic "coffee ground" vomitus contains blood. The patient then lapses into delirium and coma, often followed by death. During epidemics the fatality rate was often as high as 85%. Although the disease still occurs, it is usually confined to sporadic outbreaks.
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    FACT MONSTER
Chance Brown

Epidemics of the Past: Smallpox: 12,000 Years of Terror | Infoplease.com - 0 views

  • Athens was the only Greek city hit by the epidemic, but Rome and several Egyptian cities were affected. Smallpox then traveled along the trade routes from Carthage.
  • The idea of intentionally inoculating healthy people to protect them against smallpox dates back to China in the sixth century. Chinese physicians ground dried scabs from smallpox victims along with musk and applied the mixture to the noses of healthy people.
  • The global campaign against smallpox ended in 1979 just two years after Maalin's case. Two additional cases of smallpox occurred in Birmingham, England, in 1978, after the virus escaped from a laboratory. There has not been a case reported in more than 25 years.
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  • The incubation period for smallpox is 8 to 17 days, with people usually getting sick 10 to 12 days after infection. Symptoms start with malaise, fever, rigors, vomiting, headache, and backache. The trademark smallpox rash appears after two to four days, first on the face and arms and later on the legs, quickly progressing to red spots, called papules and eventually to large blisters, called pustular vesicles, which are more abundant on the arms and face. Although full-blown smallpox is unique and easy to identify, earlier stages of the rash could be mistaken for chickenpox. When fatal, death occurs within the first or second week of the illness.
  • Several years ago, Ken Alibek, a former deputy director of the Soviet Union's civilian bioweapons program, indicated that the former Soviet government had developed a program to produce smallpox virus in large quantities and adapt it for use in bombs and intercontinental ballistic missiles.
  • By international agreement, the main stores of smallpox virus from the Cold War superpowers are kept securely at the CDC's headquarters in Atlanta and at a similar institute in Moscow.
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    good information about smallpox
a-a-ron butler

Plague - Symptoms, Diagnosis, Treatment of Plague - NY Times Health Information - 0 views

  • Plague is caused by the bacteria Yersinia pestis. Rodents, such as rats, carry the disease. It is spread by their fleas.
  • People can get the plague when they are bitten by a flea that carries the plague bacteria from an infected rodent. In rare cases, you may get the disease when handling an infected animal.
  • plague lung infection called pneumonic plague can spread from human to human
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  • Today, plague is rare in the United States, but it has been known to occur in parts of California, Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico
  • in Europe, massive plague epidemics killed millions of people. Plague can still be found in Africa, Asia, and South America.
  • someone with pneumonic plague coughs, tiny droplets carrying the bacteria move through the air. Anyone who breathes in these particles may catch the disease. An epidemic may be started this way.
  • Pneumonic plague symptoms appear suddenly, typically 2 - 3 days after exposure. They include: Cough Difficulty breathing Fever Frothy, bloody sputum Pain in the chest when you breathe deeply Severe cough Septicemic plague may cause death even before its symptoms occur. Symptoms can include: Abdominal pain Bleeding due to blood clotting problems Diarrhea Fever Nausea Vomiting
  • Bubonic plague symptoms appear suddenly, usually after 2 - 5 days of exposure to the bacteria. Symptoms include: Chills Fever General ill feeling (malaise) Headache Muscle pain Seizures Smooth, painful lymph gland swelling called a bubo Commonly found in the groin, but may occur in the armpits or neck, most often at the site of the infection (bite or scratch) Pain may occur in the area before the swelling appears
  • Bubonic plague -- an infection of the lymph nodes Pneumonic plague -- an infection of the lungs Septicemic plague -- an infection of the blood
  • Tests that may be done include:
  • Blood culture Culture of lymph node aspirate (fluid taken from an affected lymph node or bubo) Sputum culture
  • People with the plague need immediate treatment. If treatment is not received within 24 hours of when the first symptoms occur, death may occur.
  • Antibiotics such as streptomycin, gentamicin, doxycycline, or ciprofloxacin are used to treat plague
  • Oxygen, intravenous fluids, and respiratory support usually are also needed.
  • Patients with pneumonic plague should be strictly isolated from caregivers and other patients. People who have had contact with anyone infected by pneumonic plague should be watched carefully and given antibiotics as a preventive measure.
  • Without treatment, about 50% of people with bubonic plague die. Almost all people with pneumonic plague die if not treated. Treatment reduces the death rate to 50%
  • Rat control and watching for the disease in the wild rodent population are the main measures used to control the risk of epidemics. A vaccination is available for high-risk workers, but its effectiveness is not clearly established
Jacob Morrison

plague -- Britannica School - 0 views

  • Caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, plague is an infectious disease that occurs mainly in rodents, such as rats and squirrels. It can be transmitted from rodents to humans by the bite of a flea from an infected animal. Plague was the cause of some of the most-devastating epidemics in history, including the Black Death of the 14th century.
  • Caused
    • Jacob Morrison
       
      Caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, plague is an infectious disease that occurs mainly in rodents, such as rats and squirrels. It can be transmitted from rodents to humans by the bite of a flea from an infected animal. Plague was the cause of some of the most-devastating epidemics in history, including the Black Death of the 14th century.
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    Black Death description
Bethany Carter

yellow fever -- Britannica School - 0 views

  • An infectious disease, yellow fever infects humans, all species of monkeys, and certain other small mammals. The virus is transmitted from animals to humans and among humans by several species of mosquitoes. Yellow fever is one of the great epidemic diseases of the tropical world, and in earlier centuries it was one of the great plagues of the New World. At one time the tropical and subtropical regions of the Americas were subjected to devastating epidemics, and serious outbreaks occurred not only as far north as Philadelphia, New York, and Boston but also as far away as Spain, France, England, and Italy.
  • An infectious disease, yellow fever infects humans, all species of monkeys, and certain other small mammals. The virus is transmitted from animals to humans and among humans by several species of mosquitoes.
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    Yellow Fever Article
jacob fulfer

Black Death -- Britannica School - 1 views

  • Between 1347 and 1351 a great epidemic known as the Black Death ravaged Europe. This pandemic took a proportionately greater toll of life than any other known epidemic or war up to that time. The Black Death is widely believed to have been the result of plague that was caused by infection with the bacterium Yersinia pestis. Most scientists think that this bacterium was passed from infected rodents to humans through the bite of fleas.
  • Plague is an infectious fever that takes three forms in humans: bubonic; pneumonic, and septicemic. The bubonic type is the mildest, accounting today for virtually no deaths and in the past killing about half of its victims. It is named for one of the disease’s characteristics, the formation of buboes, or inflamed lymph glands. Pneumonic plague attacks the lungs and is often fatal in three or four days without treatment. In septicemic plague, bacteria overwhelm the bloodstream and often cause death within 24 hours, before other symptoms have a chance to develop. It is believed that the Black Death was a combination of bubonic and pneumonic plague. The pandemic was called the Black Death because of the black spots that appeared on the skin of many victims.
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    Plague is an infectious fever that takes three forms in humans: bubonic; pneumonic, and septicemic. The bubonic type is the mildest, accounting today for virtually no deaths and in the past killing about half of its victims.
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    explains all about the black plague
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