During the 17th and 18th centuries, measures were taken by the Venetian administration to combat plague on the Ionian Islands. At that time, although the scientific basis of plague was unknown, the Venetians recognized its infectious nature and successfully decreased its spread by implementing an information network. Additionally, by activating a system of inspection that involved establishing ...

Plague is an ancient disease of humans and animals, caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis and transmitted by fleas. It continues to occur in many regions of the world: in the Far East, Central Asia, North Africa, subSaharan Africa, and North and South America. However, >90 % of cases of human plague are reported in Africa. Most cases result from flea bites and take the clinical form of buboni...

references in this volume, was not always accurate and that by the time he contributed the veterinary medicine chapters to Laignel-Lavastine's comprehensive history two years later, he had removed this paragraph from the section on plagues and contagions in the middle ages which otherwise closely follows his previous volume. This was possibly done with a little help from his medical history fri...

Albert Camus (1913-1960) was born in Algeria, which was then a French colonial possession. His father was killed in battle in World War I a year after Albert’s birth, leaving his family in poverty. Camus worked his way through the university of Algiers by doing odd jobs, but dropped out after a severe bout of tuberculosis. He then turned to journalism, writing for an anti-colonial newspaper in ...

An epizootic of duck plague occurred in early 1973 in a population of 163,500 wild waterfowl, primarily mallards (Anas platyrhynchos), wintering on Lake Andes and the nearby Missouri River in southeastern South Dakota (USA). The diagnosis was based on pathologic lesions and confirmed by virus isolation. Control measures included quarantine, attempts to reduce virus contamination of the area, di...

over the valuables of the plague stricken. Thus, the trial transcripts report that health workers targeted the homes of the wealthy for the spread of plague, that is, those homes where the pickings would prove the most profitable. The final chapter of Naphy's analysis branches beyond Geneva, investigating trials, council deliberations, and plague in the nearby cities of Lausanne, Lyons, and Mil...

Plague is widespread among rodents and their fleas in the western United States, but most human cases occur in several definable, ecologically unique, and geographically limited high risk areas in the Southwest and Pacific Coast states. Control strategies to prevent human cases in high risk areas must vary from one epizootic focus to another, depending on such basic ecological factors as rodent...