London

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.

The city was ringing in the year 1900 and things looked bright. San Francisco was both a local hub of industry and a port to ships coming in from the far east. Each of those ships had to pass a health inspection before they docked, of course, but both the passengers and the local businesses pressured the health inspectors to get it out of the way as quickly as possible. They did this even after cases of plague, and mini-epidemics, broke out in China, and then in Hawaii. It was not a surprise to health officials when the first case of plague was reported in Chinatown, but they were surprised by the opposition they faced in even saying the word "plague." Over the next few years, state and local organizations worked against federal health officials, fearing that any reports of plague would damage trade and tourism. When the 1906 earthquake hit, and the rats took over the rubble of the city, the deaths came so fast and thick that there was no denying it anymore. Still, it took years of work before the plague was quelled. By that time, it had started showing up in local squirrels.

Bubonic plague is not a virus, but a bacterial infection. Yersinia pestis lives in fleas, which leave traces of it in the area that they bite. It works its way into the body and multiplies, traveling through the lymphatic system. The swellings that appear at the groin and under the armpits are the painfully swollen lymph nodes. Bubonic plague kills within four days, at which point the fleas desert the body and go to the next victim, taking their bacteria with them. An infected flea doesn't necessarily mean an infected host. Different fleas have different eating techniques, different hosts scratch (driving the bacteria into the wound) or don't scratch, and not all hosts act as ideal carriers for the bacteria. But plague in the wildlife won't stay in the wildlife for long.

The Black Death – The name given to the plague that ravaged Europe between 1347 and 1351. It is said to be the greatest catastrophe experienced by the western world up to that time.

The Black Death came in three forms: The bubonic. The pneumonic. The septicemic.

This particular plague of Black Death started in Italy

Black death skeletons reveal pitiful life of 14th-century Londoners

found evidence of rickets, anaemia, bad teeth and childhood malnutrition.

Black Death, pandemic that ravaged Europe between 1347 and 1351, taking 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, caused by infection with the bacterium Yersinia pestis.

Hence, the origin of modern plague epidemics lies in the medieval period. Other scientific evidence has indicated that the Black Death may have been viral in origin.

A rough estimate is that 25 million people in Europe died from plague during the Black Death.

A Great Plague killed nearly half of the people of Europe during in the fourteenth century. A plague is a widespread illness. The plague was also known as "the Black Death" because of the black spots that formed on the skin of diseased people. The devastation of the plague brought great changes to Europe.

The sickness apparently began in Central Asia. In 1347, Italian merchant ships returned from the Black Sea, one of the links along the trade route between Europe and China. The ships were dirty and infested with rats. Fleas living on the blood of infected rats transferred the disease to the seamen.

Many of the sailors were already dying of the plague as the infected ships returned to port, and within days of an infected ship's arrival, the disease spread from the port cities to the surrounding countryside. The plague reached Spain, France, England and Russia within three years. Although it is impossible to calculate exactly how many people died from the plague, evidence suggests that it claimed the lives of as many as 25 million Europeans.