TED Cast Study BUBONIC - 1 views
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Between 1339 and 1351 AD, a pandemic of plague traveled from China to Europe, known in Western history as The Black Death
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The Black Death was actually a combination of three different types of plague: bubonic, pneumonic, and septicaemic, with bubonic being the most common
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The initial symptom is a blackish pustule forming over the point of the bite, followed by swollen lymph nodes near that bite.
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bruise-like purple blotches, called buboes, on the victim's skin. It is from this word, buboe, that the bubonic plague takes its name. The hemorrhaging causes an intoxication of the nervous system, which produces neurological and psychological disorders, including insomnia, delirium, and stupor
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Septicaemic plague is, like the bubonic plague, carried by insects. Its distinguishing feature is its rapidity - death occurs within a day of infection, even before buboes have had time to form. This form of the plague is the rarest rare, but is almost always fatal
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victims suffer a sharp drop in body temperature, which is followed by sever coughing and discharge of a bloody sputum
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bacteria normally resides in Central Asia, Yunan China, Arabia, East Africa, and limited areas of Iran and Libya.
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Their spread to Europe from these areas has always been through global commerce - trade which carried with it plague- bearing rats and fleas.
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From China, the plague is known to have been carried along the Silk Road into Central Asia, where there are records of outbreaks in 1339.