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presley spoonemore

U.S. government`s billion dollar stockpile of flu medicine may have little ...: Student... - 0 views

  • Today a new study suggests that the U.S. government`s billion dollar stockpile of flu medicine may have little effect in a pandemic. The government amassed enough flu medicine for sixty-five million people and the risk can be high. The outbreak of 1918, for example, killed more than six hundred thousand Americans. Doctor Jon LaPook has been looking into this new study.
Summer Rae

Mouse Study Reveals New Clues about Virulence of 1918 Influenza Virus - 1 views

  • The first comprehensive analysis of an animal’s immune response to the 1918 influenza virus provides new insights into the killer flu, report federally supported scientists in an article appearing online today in the journal Nature. Key among these insights, they found that the 1918 virus triggers a hyperactive immune response that may contribute to the lethality of the virus.  Furthermore, their results suggest that it is the combination of all eight of the 1918 flu virus genes interacting synergistically that accounts for the exceptional virulence of this virus.
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    About how Influenza could have been spread by rats.
Adam Bell

Spanish flu mystery: Why don't scientists understand the 1918 flu even after digging up... - 1 views

  • Ninety-five years ago in the little town of Brevig Mission, Alaska, a deadly new virus called Spanish influenza struck quickly and brutally. It killed 90 percent of the town’s Inuit population, leaving scores of corpses that few survivors were willing to touch.
  • The miners arrived in Brevig Mission shortly after the medical calamity, tossed the victims into a pit two meters deep, and covered them with permafrost.
  • The flu victims remained untouched until 1951, when a team of scientists dug up the bodies, cracked open four cadavers’ rib cages, scooped out chunks of their lungs, and studied the tissue in a lab.
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  • Spanish influenza killed about 50 million people (estimates vary), including 675,000 in the United States, and up to 40 percent of the world’s population was stricken with the flu.
  • Nearly 50 years later, scientists dug up another victim from the same site, this time a better preserved, mostly frozen, obese woman, and successfully extracted viral RNA. In 2005, a team of scientists finally completed the project, sequencing the full genome of the viral RNA. But they still don’t know exactly why it caused the Spanish flu pandemic.   
  • Horrifying as the flu was, its reign of terror was mercifully brief: By late 1919, the flu had largely disappeared. Although its survivors and their children faced lifelong health problems, those dark years were largely struck from cultural memory.
  • Scientists, however, never forgot the mysterious pandemic, and research into the 1918 flu experienced something of a renaissance in recent years. In addition to the exhumed Inuit, scientists have studied the organs of flu-suffering soldiers, including a long-forgotten piece of lung tissue stored at a military pathology institute in Washington.
Chad Davidson

Scientists unlock evolution of cholera | McMaster Daily News - 0 views

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    A news article about scientists using an intestine from an 1849 Cholera outbreak to study how cholera has evolved.
Dylan Hicks

The Black Death - What You Need to Know About the Plague of the 14th Century - 1 views

  • What the Black Death Was When historians refer to "The Black Death," they mean the specific outbreak of plague that took place in Europe in the mid-14th century. The Black Death came to Europe in October of 1347, spread swiftly through most of Europe by the end of 1349 and on to Scandinavia and Russia in the 1350s. It returned several times throughout the rest of the century.
  • Traditionally, the disease that most scholars believe struck Europe was "Plague." Best known as bubonic plague for the "buboes" (lumps) that formed on the victims' bodies, Plague also took pneumonic and septicemic forms. Other diseases have been postulated by scientists, and some scholars believe that there was a pandemic of several diseases; but currently the theory of Plague (in all its varieties) still holds among most historians.
  • Where the Black Death Started Thus far, no one has been able to identify the point of origin of the Black Death with any precision. It started somewhere in Asia, possibly in China, possibly at Lake Issyk-Kul in central Asia.
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  • How the Black Death Spread Bubonic Plague was spread by the fleas who lived on plague-infected rats, and such rats were ubiquitous on trading ships. Pneumonic Plague could spread with a sneeze and jump from person to person with terrifying speed. Septicemic Plague spread through contact with open sores. Through these methods of con
  • tagion, the Black Death spread via trade routes from Asia to Italy, and thence throughout Europe.
  • Death Tolls It is estimated that approximately 20 million people died in Europe from the Black Death. This is about one-third of the population. Many cities lost more than 40% of their residents, Paris lost half, and Venice, Hamburg and Bremen are estimated to have lost at least 60% of their populations.
  • What Medieval People Believed Caused the Plague The most common assumption was that God was punishing mankind for its sins. There were also those who believed in demonic dogs, and in Scandinavia, the superstition of the Pest Maiden was popular. Some people accused the Jews of poisoning wells; the result was a horrific persecution of Jews that the papacy was hard-put to stop. Scholars attempted a more scientific view, but they were hampered by the fact that the microscope wouldn't be invented for several centuries. The University of Paris conducted a study, the Paris Consilium, which, after serious investigation, ascribed the plague to a combination of earthquakes and astrological forces.
  • How People Reacted to the Black Death Fear and hysteria were the most common reactions. People fled the cities in panic, abandoning their families. Noble acts by doctors and priests were overshadowed by those who refused to treat their patients or give last rites to plague victims. Convinced the end was near, some sank into wild debauchery; others prayed for salvation. Flagellants went from one town to another, parading through the streets and whipping themselves to demonstrate their penitence.
Dusty Soles

Clues to Typhoid Mary Mystery: Student Research Center - powered by EBSCOhost - 0 views

  • The article focuses on the study conducted by Denise M. Monack and colleagues at Standford University medical school which examines the association of Salmonella typhi and typhoid outbreaks in New York through a woman named Mary Mallon, also famous as Typhoid Mary.
    • Dusty Soles
       
      wow look at a few of these words
jace givens

100 Years: The Rockefeller Foundation | Yellow Fever · Health - 0 views

  • In 1915 the International Health Division (IHD) made the research and eradication of yellow fever and malaria its top priorities. While the organization achieved success in both campaigns, its yellow fever initiative yielded the clearest positive results. Before World War II, the IHD expended half of its budget on yellow fever programs, which culminated in the development of a successful yellow fever vaccine. This funding also contributed to the building of a wide and effective network of research laboratories, as well as the development of important scientific careers through support for individual fellowships. 
  • Mosquito transmission as the cause of yellow fever was first proposed by Carlos Finlay in 1881 and proven by Major Walter Reed of the US Army in 1900. This discovery led General William C. Gorgas to implement anti-mosquito measures while supervising the building of the Panama Canal; earlier attempts at construction had failed partly because of the prevalence of yellow fever among workers.  Once the canal was completed, many public health experts feared that increased international travel and shipping would lead to a sudden expansion of the disease.
  • Concern about the spread of yellow fever prompted Rockefeller Foundation (RF) interest in eradicating yellow fever. After Gorgas’ success in mosquito control in Panama, the RF recruited him in 1916 to chair the newly formed Yellow Fever Commission and to direct its efforts in eradication. Gorgas focused on vector control. He aimed to destroy mosquito breeding grounds in key communities, or “seedbeds,” where the aedes aegypti mosquitoes lived alongside a non-immune population. The first successful IHD campaign in yellow fever eradication took place in Guayaquil, Ecuador.
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  • Health » Yellow Fever Yellow Fever
  • More ambitious projects were to follow. One of the most significant campaigns began in 1923 when the Brazilian Government requested IHD assistance in its efforts to eradicate yellow fever. For the next 17 years the IHD took the lead role in this campaign and even after the Brazilian Government took charge of the program in 1940, the IHD remained involved, contributing major support towards the cost of field work and lab tests
  • Although its early work in yellow fever was concentrated in South America, the IHD began to redirect a large portion of its funding to Africa in 1929. In that year the agency established its first African research laboratory in Lagos, Nigeria, and created the West Africa Yellow Fever Commission
  • His death was mourned by the medical community, who viewed him as a “martyr to science.”[3] Noguchi was one of six RF researchers who died while studying yellow fever, a statistic that almost caused IHD Director Frederick F. Russell to abandon the campaign against the disease. 
  • During World War II, the RF was asked to coordinate the vaccination of American and British military personnel.  However, in 1942, outbreaks of jaundice were reported among some military personnel who had been vaccinated with 17D. In total 8 million doses of vaccine had been administered to soldiers, 80,000 of whom developed jaundice, resulting in 81 deaths. Further research revealed that the cases occurred in soldiers injected with particular batches of the vaccine that had been tainted by infected human blood. Vaccinations were halted until a new vaccine containing no human serum could be produced. [5]
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     great facts about yellow fever
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    good site to go to
Jacob Morrison

Debating Death and Disease: Student Research Center - powered by EBSCOhost - 0 views

    • Jacob Morrison
       
      Intriguingly, just as the Black Death had a significant impact on European society, so its study has had a major impact on medieval historiography, leading to a series of dramatic debates, in particular over the identity of the disease. The debate was largely sparked by Samuel Cohn, who threw doubt on the long-held belief that the cause of the Black Death was bubonic plague in The Black Death Transformed: Disease and Culture in Early Renaissance Europe (2002). In 2010 DNA analysis by an international team of scientists identified Yersinia pestis, the pathogen responsible for plague, in medieval burial sites in five European countries (see the online article, S. Haensch, R. Bianucci, et al, 'Distinct clones of Yersinia pestis caused by the Black Death' These findings have now been absorbed by the historical community, as can be seen in articles in the recent volume edited by Linda Clark and Carole Radcliffe, 'Society in an Age of Plague' in The Fifteenth Century, XII (2013), but it has been questioned how far these very local findings can be generalized - and so the debate continues.
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.
katelyn dunn

Facts About Smallpox Disease - 0 views

  • Smallpox, if used as a weapon, would be a serious threat because: it is spread through the air when an infected person breathes, talks, laughs, or coughs it can also be spread by infected clothing or bed linens it can spread in any climate or season there is no treatment or cure few doctors would know smallpox if they saw it people who survive it are left with ugly scars on their bodies or face, and some become blind 30% or more of people who contract smallpox die Smallpox devastated the American population in the 1700s (see Elizabeth Fenn's book, Pox Americana, for the details). Anyone who knows about it fears it. Once a few cases were reported in the media there would be widespread concern, even pan
  • What is being done about a possible outbreak Since the last case of smallpox occurred in 1977 in Somalia, scientists have had to rely on research that was done before then, plus their best educated guesses, when trying to plan for an outbreak. Here's what we know, and what is being done:
  • 1. People vaccinated many years ago may not be immune. Vaccination gives immunity to a disease, but not forever; scientists generally agree that full immunity only lasts 3-5 years. After that, it begins to fade. A study published in 1972 showed a death rate of 11% for people vaccinated more than 20 years prior to exposure to smallpox. Scientists do know that if someone is exposed to smallpox, giving the person the vaccine within 4 days reduces the severity of the disease or even prevents him/her from getting it.
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  • 2. National Smallpox Preparedness Program In December 2002 a U.S. National Smallpox Preparedness Program was initiated to protect Americans against smallpox, should it be used as a biological weapon. Smallpox Response Teams are to be formed in communities throughout the country. Teams members, including health care workers, firefighters, police, and volunteers, are vaccinated against smallpox and thus could respond to an outbreak without contracting the disease. The Department of Defense also began vaccinating military and civilian personnel deployed to high-risk areas. During January 24-December 31, 2003, smallpox vaccine was administered to 39,213 civilian health-care and public health workers throughout the U.S. More than 1 million military and support personnel have also received the smallpox vaccination since December 2002.
  • 3. CDC Smallpox Response Plan and Guidelines The CDC has developed a Smallpox Response Plan and Guidelines. The plan outlines strategies which would guide the public health response to a smallpox outbreak at the federal, state, and local levels. The CDC states that smallpox vaccine is not available for members of the general public at present. However, in the event of an outbreak, the agency states there is enough smallpox vaccine stockpiled to vaccinate every person in the United States.
  • 4. Educating health care providers about vaccination An added consideration is that training doctors and nurses how to administer smallpox vaccine properly and recognize a successful reaction to the vaccine (a sore at the injection site) will be an ongoing process. Smallpox is not given in a single shot (injection) like other vaccinations. There is a special technique used called multiple puncture vaccination. Health care providers must also teach those who are vaccinated about symptoms that may occur, and how to take care of the sore at the vaccination site.
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    all things smallpoxs!!!!
Megan Sherwin

Everything you know about the Black Death is wrong - 0 views

  • In the autumn of 1348, a central Asian sickness arrived in London and quickly dispatched 60 percent of the city’s population. Within a decade, in what’s believed to be the worst human calamity of all time, something like 25 million Europeans were dead. And when they died, the secrets of their demise disappeared with them. Until now. On Sunday, London scientists who’d studied 25 skeletons discovered in a new rail line announced that those bones held traces of the black death. Most of the ensuing coverage focused on an unrelated theory that the disease wasn’t likely spread by rats’ fleas, as has been taught in every high school in the West, but had perhaps been airborne.
    • Megan Sherwin
       
      Hmmm... read this and see if the title is true.
  • London
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  • Expert Tim Brooks, who’s unrelated to this current finding, theorizes the disease was pneumonic – not bubonic – meaning that coughing and sneezing likely spread the sickness. Then rampant malnutrition perhaps widened its swath.
  • Everything you know about the Black Death is wrong
a-a-ron butler

Can We Stop Blaming Rats for the Black Death? - History in the Headlines - 0 views

  • In October 2010, a group of European scientists claimed to have settled the debate by using DNA analysis to implicate Yersinia pestis in the outbreak. But their study did not encompass pre-1348 graves, so it is possible that the bacterium was present but not the actual killer, said Sloane. “On balance, I am suggesting we need to be more scientific and do more work before claiming we have solved the mystery,” he explained.
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