Histories of the plague are based on the belief that we can locate epidemia in the related sources and classify them according to present-day medical categories. This article rests upon the assumption that present day medical discourse which is based upon laboratory observation is totally incompatible with history which lacks analogous techniques in constructing its own discourse. It explores t...

Yersinia pestis is the etiological agent of bubonic and pneumonic plague, diseases which have caused over 200 milllion human deaths in the past. Plague still occurs throughout the world today, though for reasons that are not fully understood pandemics of disease do not develop from these outbreaks. Antibiotic treatment of bubonic plague is usually effective, but pneumonic plague is difficult to...

Rodent populations particularly those that live in close proximity to man constitute a perennial and often severe threat to man's health as reservoirs and often as direct sources of infection for a wide variety of viral, rickettsial, and bacterial disease producing agents. The following will discuss the place of rodent population reduction for the control of plague, a bacterial disease of roden...

The HIV/AIDS pandemic continues to plague the world. Evaluation of oral health status is important at every stage in the management of HIV disease. Oral health services and professionals can contribute effectively to the control of HIV/AIDS through health education, patient care, infection control and surveillance. Dental professionals have an important task of determining accurate diagnosis of...

The major objective of this work has been to learn the effect of plague toxin on several enzymatic systems in vitro. The availability of purified preparations of plague toxin (Ajl et al., 1955) permitted us to carry out these investigations. In this report, experiments are described in which purified plague toxin has been added to actively respiring cell-free extracts and crude mouse liver homo...

The Black Death, originating in Asia, arrived in the Mediterranean harbors of Europe in 1347 CE, via the land and sea trade routes of the ancient Silk Road system. This epidemic marked the start of the second plague pandemic, which lasted in Europe until the early 19th century. This pandemic is generally understood as the consequence of a singular introduction of Yersinia pestis, after which th...

In central Asia, the great gerbil (Rhombomys opimus) is the main host for the bacterium Yersinia pestis, the cause of bubonic plague. In order to prevent plague outbreaks, monitoring of the great gerbil has been carried out in Kazakhstan since the late 1940s. We use the resulting data to demonstrate that climate forcing synchronizes the dynamics of gerbils over large geographical areas. As it i...

Plague has received much attention because it may be used as a weapon by terrorists. Intentionally released aerosols of Yersinia pestis would cause pneumonic plague. In order to prepare for such an event, it is important, particularly for medical personnel and first responders, to form a realistic idea of the risk of person-to-person spread of infection. Historical accounts and contemporary exp...

Plague is an ancient, serious, infectious disease which is still endemic in regions of the modern world and is a potential biothreat agent. This paper discusses the natural history of the bacterium and its evolution into a flea-vectored bacterium able to transmit bubonic plague. It reviews the incidence of plague in the modern world and charts the history of vaccines which have been used to pro...

Natural disasters have always been followed by a fear of infectious diseases. This raised historical debate about one of the most feared scenarios: the outbreak of bubonic plague caused by Yersinia pestis. One such event was recorded in the Indian state Maharashtra in 1994 after an earthquake. In multidisciplinary historical approach to the evolution of plague, many experts ignore the possibili...