Case study: Yersinia pestis
December 6th, 2007
During the last weeks I unfortunatelly glanced with absence of postings - sorry for that. Due to plenty of work to be done and deadlines to be kept, there was really no spare time for blogging anymore. So now that I have a bit more time at hand, I do what I like most.
Read, watch and ,,absorb'' information about all kind of topics.
By coincidence I stumbled across a documentary about the Yersinia pestis or better known as the ,,Great Plague'' outbreak around 1665 in London. Its a pretty serious topic actually and has even relevance up to today.
(Wikipedia)
I constantly try to refresh my knowledge or to learn something new (which doesn't always need to be around a Computer Science) and here was a good chance to learn more about the Bubonic-, pneumonic- (airborne) or septicemic (blood poisoning) plague.
Beside that fact that this gruesome sickness is a nightmare there are many facts which can at least be learned from it. The main causes for the many casualties in London were:
- As a preventive measure against a new plague outbreak the year before nearly 40.000 dogs and 80.000 cats were killed as it was believed that they were transmitting the disease. This was a deadly misassessment as the real cause were the fleas and the rats.
- As soon as somebody got sick, the whole family got locked up together with them for at least 40 days. This caused most of the healty family members to get sick too.
- Nearly no plague hospitals were created for London at that time - only 2 were built and they only had space for around 900 people. That was less than <1% of the infected population. This situation was different on the continent, which greatly helped.
- The lack of hygene and the terrible housing situations of the poor greatly contributed to the disaster. Hunger and malnurishment also greatly decreased the strength of the people to withstand sicknesses.
- All people were imprisoned in the city and could not pass outside unless they had a ,,certificate of health''. This law cost especially the lifes of poor people who could not afford such a certificate.
- Uncertainty what the actual cause for the plague was caused many weird potions and cures to emerge. This reached from opiate cocktails to drink, arsenic metals to put on the skin, burning of infected skin, smoking and chewing of tabacco up to burning of special herbs. One other craze was that other serious sicknesses can prevent infection of the plague (so many people actually tried to get seriously sick).
- ....
Throughout history there were three great plagues. The first one also known as the Black death took a toll of over one to two third of europes population around 1340 (worldwide about 85 Mio. people). The second one in the 16th and 17th century in London, Marseille, Vienna and Moscow killing again million casualties. The lastest mass plague was during the 19th and early 20th century taking 12 Million deaths.
Interestingly in the discussion what transmitted it there are quite many theories ranging from the already mentioned ,,blood clot blocked fleas'' to brown and black rats. Origins of this bactieria currently seem to be pointing towards central asia where apparently the first sicknesses occured.
Reading into the medical signs and symptoms makes me just sick. Ranging from fever, headaches, painful aches, nausea, cough, blood-tingled skin spots to much much more.
From all this history now back to a more modern viewpoint. The lastest outbreak was in 1997.. So much for you thinking I am just a history nut.
The scary fact is that since the second world war we had something to effectively fight it but now it seems that the strains out there seem to get multi-drug resistant (PDF). The one from 1997 in Madagascar showed that behavior at least to two of the five possible medications.
Here is another article about this incident.
(Wikipedia)
This quote from the above link summarizes it easily:
Human plague is considered to be a re-emerging disease. From 1980 to 1994, 18739 cases of plague occurred worldwide, and 1853 deaths were reported to the WHO by 24 countries in Africa, the Americas, and Asia.
This article is not ment to be complete in any sense, it is just my way of writing down some insights I learned so far. Especially current occurances and multi-drug resistancy of some strains give me a cold shiver and a dreadful reminder of our more and more useless antibiotics (yes, even the new stuff, but thats another story).
Stay healty and informed !
Comments about this article and pointers to more information are highly welcome. 1 comments »