CHAPTER 12: SPECIFIC THREATS

Event: Black DeathBubonic Plague, Europe Date: 1348-1666 Summary: The disease may have come from China and was spread by merchant ships and war. Fleas carried by black rats passed it on to humans by biting people. It hit Genoa, Italy in 1348. Ships at sea drifted without crews because all had died. Half of all Italians died. Ninety percent of Londoners died, as did about three quarters of the populations of Iceland and Cyprus. People tried a series of ridiculous remedies, including praying to pagan gods, animal sacrifices and the use of toads, lizards, leeches, dead dogs, goats, human excrement and goat urine. One medical treatment that sometimes did work was using red-hot pokers to cauterize the open soresif you lived through the pain. Governments became precarious, and anarchy prevailed in many communities. Government officials stole food, money and medicine. Royals, nobles and other wealthy people retreated to the country. There were orgies, drunkenness and dances of death in which the participants literally danced in the streets until they died. The recurring outbreaks of the plague in England over the next three centuries may finally have been stopped by the London fire of 1666 or because brown rats that did not carry the virus ousted the black ones that did. Result: 25 million dead. Lessons Learned: While the bubonic plague is now extremely rare, cases do crop up occasionally, including in California in the late 20th century. Could the events of 650 years ago be a warning for what might occur in a modern pandemic? There were stories of medical workers stealing drugs and preferential treatment for professional athletes during a swine-flu outbreak in 2009-10. What would be the effects of mass migration from cities to cottages, farms and rural areas? Should officials encourage such migration?

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an ounce of prevention

chapter 12: specific threats

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