However, this study goes beyond the genetic analysis of these remains to make claims about the three known plague pandemics: the Justinianic (541–750), the Black Death, which began in the 1340s, and the third pandemic, usually dated from the start of its spread around the globe from Hong Kong in 1894.
Bubonic plague is an infection spread mostly to humans by infected fleas that travel on rodents. Called the Black Death, it killed millions of Europeans during the Middle Ages. Prevention doesn't include a vaccine, but does involve reducing your exposure to mice, rats, squirrels and other animals that may be infected.
In October 1347, a ship came from the Crimea and Asia and docked in Messina, Sicily. Aboard the ship were not only sailors but rats. The rats brought with them the Black Death, the bubonic plague. Reports that came to Europe about the disease indicated that 20 million people had died in Asia.
The plague killed an estimated 25 million people, almost a third of the continent's population. The Black Death lingered on for centuries, particularly in cities.
Today, modern antibiotics are effective in treating plague. Without prompt treatment, the disease can cause serious illness or death. Presently, human plague infections continue to occur in rural areas in the western United States, but significantly more cases occur in parts of Africa and Asia.
Black Death: 75-200M (1334-1353)
In 1346 it struck a trading port called Kaffa in the Black Sea. Ships from departing Kaffa carried trade goods and also carried rats, who carried fleas, who carried Yersinia Pestis.
The eventual weakening of the pandemic was likely due to the practice of quarantining infected people that originated in Venice in the 15th century and is with us to this day. Improved sanitation, personal hygiene, and medical practices also played a role in ultimately slowing the plague's terror march.
The most famous outbreak, the Black Death, earned its name from a symptom: lymph nodes that became blackened and swollen after bacteria entered through the skin.
The Black Death is believed to have been the result of plague, an infectious fever caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. The disease was likely transmitted from rodents to humans by the bite of infected fleas.
The first wave, called the Black Death in Europe, was from 1347 to 1351.
What is the plague called today? Today we still use the word “plague” to mean illness caused by Yersinia pestis. Usually, we also call it by the specific type of plague it is — bubonic, septicemic or pneumonic.
Antibiotics and supportive therapy are effective against plague if patients are diagnosed in time. Pneumonic plague can be fatal within 18 to 24 hours of disease onset if left untreated, but common antibiotics for enterobacteria (gram negative rods) can effectively cure the disease if they are delivered early.
The 1665–66 epidemic was on a much smaller scale than the earlier Black Death pandemic. It became known afterwards as the "great" plague mainly because it was the last widespread outbreak of bubonic plague in England during the 400-year Second Pandemic.
The Black Death has also been called the Great Mortality, a term derived from medieval chronicles' use of magna mortalitas. This term, along with magna pestilencia (“great pestilence”), was used in the Middle Ages to refer to what we know today as the Black Death as well as to other outbreaks of disease.
Specifically, historians have speculated that the fleas on rats are responsible for the estimated 25 million plague deaths between 1347 and 1351. However, a new study suggests that rats weren't the main carriers of fleas and lice that spread the plague—it was humans.
The 14th-century plague was actually the second large Y. pestis epidemic — the first was the Plague of Justinian in the sixth century, said Mary Fissell, a medical historian at Johns Hopkins University. But the Black Death is the best known and is considered one of the deadliest epidemics in human history.
Finally it spread to north-eastern Russia in 1351; however, the plague largely spared some parts of Europe, including the Kingdom of Poland, isolated parts of Belgium and the Netherlands, Milan and the modern-day France-Spain border.
The first application of antiserum to the treatment of patients is credited to Yersin [5], who used serum developed with the assistance of his Parisian colleagues Calmette, Roux, and Borrel.
The death rate for persons with untreated primary pneumonic plague was reported to be almost 100% (1); the death rate for persons treated for primary pneumonic plague was 50% (1).
Page 410. The Black Death was so extreme that it's surprising even to scientists who are familiar with the general details. The epidemic killed 30 to 50 percent of the entire population of Europe. Between 75 and 200 million people died in a few years' time, starting in 1348 when the plague reached London.
The Black Death (1346-1353)
From 1346 to 1353 an outbreak of the Plague ravaged Europe, Africa, and Asia, with an estimated death toll between 75 and 200 million people.
Dear Readers: Many people believe that cats help prevent the spread of bubonic plague by killing the rats that can harbor the disease. In reality, they can help spread it. This plague, also called the Black Death, is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis.
In the Bible, plagues are an instrument of God's wrath, a punishment for unrighteousness. Think here of the plagues visited on Egypt when Pharaoh refused to let the Hebrews worship God in the desert, or the outbreak of tumors among the Philistines after they captured the Ark of the Covenant.