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The Bubonic Plague

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The Black Death

Bubonic Plague
The bubonic plague is a highly infectious and fearsome disease that attacks the lungs and lymph nodes. It is also called the Black Death or black plague. The bubonic plague is caused by Pasteurella pestis, a bacteria which resides within infected fleas and rats. Victims of the bubonic plague develop early symptoms, such as shivering, vomiting, headache, intolerance to light, back and limb pain, and a white coating on the tongue. Eventually, they develop black egg-sized swellings (buboes) filled with blood and pus under the armpits and in the groin. As the disease progresses, internal bleeding leads to black patches on the skin, and the victim may die in three to five days. Invasion of the lungs by the bacterium causes an equally fatal form of the plague called pneumonic plague, which can be transmitted from person to person by air droplets and saliva.
Historical records document outbreaks of the plague as early as 430 b.c., when an epidemic struck Athens, Greece; but the most notorious bubonic plague epidemic began in Europe around 1346, reportedly when a ship of sick and dying sailors arrived at the Black Sea port of Caffa. This plague lasted four years and killed about one-third of the population of Europe, or approximately 20 million people. For hundreds of years after, epidemics of bubonic plague would sweep across the world killing millions more. The disease was so lethal that some victims supposedly would go to bed healthy and die in their sleep. When the disease raged through a town, the population would die so quickly that it was nearly impossible to bury the dead.
Yersinia pestis is primarily a rodent pathogen, with humans being an accidental host when bitten by an infected rat flea. The flea draws viable Y. pestis organisms into its intestinal tract. These organisms multiply in the flea and block the flea's

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