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Bubonic plague is primarily a black disease of rodents, particularly marmots (in which the most virulent strains of plague are primarily found), but also Black Rats, prairie dogs, chipmunks, squirrels and other similar large rodents. Human infection most often occurs when a person is bitten by a rat flea (Xenopsylla cheopsis) that has fed on an infected rodent. The bacillus multiplies in the stomach of the flea. When the flea next bites a mammal, blood consumed by the flea is regurgitated along with the bacillus into the bloodstream of the bitten animal.
Globally, the World Health Organization (WHO) records a total of 1,000 to 3,000 human cases of this plague each year.
History of outbreak
1st Outbreak:
Plague of Justinian
When:
541-542
Where:
Constantinople (Turkey)
Casualty:
Estimated 25 million dead |
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2nd Outbreak:
The Black Death
When:
1300s
Where:
European and Asia continent
Casualty:
Estimated 200 million dead |
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3rd Outbreak:
China/India
When:
1855
Where:
China and India
Casualty:
Estimated 12 million dead
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Plague of Justinian (541)
The Plague of Justinian (541-542) is the first known pandemic recorded, and it also marks the first firmly recorded pattern of bubonic plague. This outbreak may have originated in Ethiopia or Egypt and moved northward until it reached the large city of Constantinople. (Today’s Istanbul).
At its peak, the Byzantine historian Procopius showed that the plague killed 10,000 people in Constantinople every day thus weakening the Byzantine empire. The actual number of deaths will always remained uncertain, a mystery though modern scholars believed that the plague killed up to 5,000 people per day during the pandemic. Ultimately, 40 percent of the city's inhabitants perished. The plague went on to destroy up to a quarter of the human population of the Eastern Mediterranean. A second major plague wave in 588 spread through the Mediterranean into what is now France, causing the death of 25 million people.
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The Black Death (1347-1348)
In 1347, the plague called the Black Death infected Venice, probably carried by flea-infested rats on merchant ships bringing trade goods from Sicily.
The population of Venice dropped by almost half: from 130,000 to 70,000 by the time the outbreak ended. Following traders along the Silk Road from China through Central Asia, these rats, with their plague-carrying fleas, reached the shores of the Black Sea and on to Sicily as stowaways on Italian merchant ships.
It is estimated that the plague killed about one in every four people in its path, spreading rapidly through western Europe.
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The Great Plague of London (1563)
This plague killed three quarters (an estimate) of the population. Subsequent outbreaks, thereafter, in 1578, 1593, 1602, 1625, 1636 and 1665 killed thousands of people.
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