Plagues and Pandemics : Black Death, Coronaviruses and Other Killer Diseases Throughout History.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Boyd, Douglas.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Plague.

Black Death.

Communicable diseases.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (233 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Other Title:

Plagues and Pandemics

Place of Publication:

Havertown : Pen & Sword Books Limited, 2022.

Summary:

All you need for a plague to go pandemic are population clusters and travelers spreading the bacterial or viral pathogens. Many prehistoric civilizations died fast, leaving cities undamaged to mystify archeologists. Plague in Athens killed 30% of the population 430-426 BCE. When Roman Emperor Justinian I caught bubonic plague in 541 CE, contemporary historian Procopius described his symptoms: fever, delirium and buboes - large black swellings of the lymphatic glands in the groin, under the arms and behind the ears. That bubonic plague killed 25 million people around the Mediterranean. Later dubbed Black Death, it killed 50 million people 1346-1353, returning to London 40 times in the next 300 years. The third bubonic plague pandemic started 1894 in China, claiming 15 million lives, largely in Asia, before dying down in the 1950s after visiting San Francisco and New York. But it also hit Madagascar in 2014, and the Congo and Peru. The cause, yersinia pestis was identified in 1894. Infected fleas from rats on merchant ships were blamed for spreading it, but Porton Down scientists have a worrying explanation why the plague spread so fast.Any disease can go epidemic. Everyday European infections brought to the Americas by Cortes' conquistadores killed millions of the natives, whose posthumous revenge was the syphilis the Spaniards brought back to Europe. The mis-named Spanish flu, brought from Kansas to Europe by US troops in 1918 caused more than 50 million deaths. Fifty years later, H3N2 flu from Hong Kong killed more than a million people.One coronavirus produces the common cold, for which neither vaccine nor cure has been found, despite the loss of millions of working days each year. Chillingly, historian Douglas Boyd lists many other sub-microscopic killers still waiting for tourism and trade to bring them to us.

Contents:

Intro

Title

Copyright

Contents

Glossary

Introduction

Chapter 1 Ancient Plagues

Chapter 2 Of Cities and Armies

Chapter 3 What Makes a Pandemic?

Chapter 4 Research and Regulations

Chapter 5 A Plethora of Plagues

Chapter 6 The Great Plague Arrives in England

Chapter 7 The Plague Progresses

Chapter 8 Death Goes on Regardless

Chapter 9 The Great Fire

Chapter 10 Plague, Typhus, Cholera. Take Your Pick.

Chapter 11 Getting to Know the Enemy

Chapter 12 Sundry Fevers and the Spanish 'flu

Chapter 13 Covid-19 Emerges

Chapter 14 Pandemic and Panic

Chapter 15 Pathogens A-plenty

Chapter 16 A Pause for Thought

Appendix

Acknowledgements

Further Reading

Notes and Sources

Plate section.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9781399005210

1399005219

9781399005197

1399005197

OCLC:

1321803575