Diseases bubonic plague

Variations of disease Bubonic plague, pneumonic plague... 

Bacteria and archaebacteria, the most abundant single-celled organisms, are commonly 1-2 )xm in size. Despite their small size and simple architecture, they are remarkable biochemical factories, converting simple chemicals into complex biological molecules. Bacteria are critical to the earth s ecology, but some cause major diseases bubonic plague (Black Death) from Yersinia pestis, strep throat from Streptomyces, tuberculosis from Mycobacterium tuberculosis, anthrax from Bacillus anthracis, cholera from Vibrio cholerae, food poisoning from certain types of E. coli and Salmonella. 

The Middle Ages, from around ad 400 to 1500, witnessed the decline of the Roman influence. This was also the time when plagues scourged many parts of Europe. Diseases such as bubonic plague, leprosy, smallpox, tuberculosis, and scabies were rampant. Many millions of people succumbed to these diseases. 

The European bubonic plague of 1347 killed one-third of the population of Europe. It is the largest single plague ever recorded. The disappearance of the Aztec civilization was spurred by smallpox and measles introduced by Hernando Cortes and his band of Spanish invaders. The same diseases also decimated Native Americans in what is now the United States. Much more recently, the influenza epidemic of 1918 killed an estimated 40 million people worldwide. Malaria continues to be a major problem for people and their countries today in areas in which it is endemic. AIDS, tuberculosis, influenza, hepatitis, pneumonia, and a lengthy list of parasitic infections continue as important constraints on the welfare of people throughout the world. 

The presence of sodium urate in the amorphous deposits in a jug found in 1903, but dating back to the Middle Ages, suggests that it was used to store urine, from which the urate precipitated as the urine evaporated. But why was urine stored in a jug in the Middle Ages Perhaps because drinking urine was highly recommended at this time for treatment of bubonic plague and other diseases Lancet, July 11, 1942). 

Monkey AIDS the most serious disease since the bubonic plague ... 

Smallpox, however, was not the only disease that wreaked havoc as it traversed the globe. In the Middle Ages, bubonic plague reduced the population of Europe by a third after arriving there from the steppes of Eurasia (McNeil 1976). In the nineteenth century, cholera spread around the globe (McNeil 1976). In the twentieth century, diseases such as influenza, HIV, and SARS have traveled with the speed of jet planes. 

Alkyl halides have contributed to human health through their use as insecticides. Since antiquity, people have died from famine and disease caused or carried by mosquitoes, fleas, lice, and other vermin. The black death of the Middle Ages wiped out nearly a third of the population of Europe through infection by the flea-borne bubonic plague. Whole regions of Africa and tropical America were uninhabited and unexplored because people could not survive insect-borne diseases such as malaria, yellow fever, and sleeping sickness. 

House mice, as well as other species, have been linked to man for thousands of years. Their destruction of human food supplies and crops has been recorded in very early records. Importantly, these mice are also responsible for spreading a number of diseases, such as typhus, spotted fever. Salmonella food poisoning, and bubonic plague. 

Resistance to tetracyclines shows marked inter-regional variations and changes rapidly with time. The selection of resistant bacterial strains may be favored by widespread, often prophylactic, use in veterinary medicine and by long-term therapy for acne, periodontal disease, or symptomatic Borrelia infections. Many of the documented cases of resistance are of limited practical significance, since the tetracyclines are merely one of a number of therapeutic alternatives. The problem may be different when these drugs are the chemotherapeutic agents of first choice, that is in chronic Borrelia infections, especially arthritis due to Lyme disease and pulmonary or bubonic plague due to Yersinia pestis (154). 

Fig. 2.5 (See color plate) Inguinal bubo on upper thigh of person with bubonic plague. From Inguinal bubo on upper thigh of person with bubonic plague. CDC Division of Vector-Bome Infectious Diseases (DVBID). http //www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvbid/plague/p5.htm)...

Many antibacterial agents are now available and the vast majority of bacterial diseases have been brought under control (e.g. syphilis, tuberculosis, typhoid, bubonic plague, leprosy, diphtheria, gas gangrene, tetanus, gonorrhoea). 

Pasteurella infections. Butler (B52) studied 40 patients suffering from bubonic plague. None of them developed hyperbilirubinemia, although 9 showed serum alkaline phosphatase activities above the normal range. The values in these 9 patients varied from just above normal to six times the upper reference limit. Patients with clinical and hematological evidence of severe infection had higher serum alkaline phosphatase activities than did patients in whom the disease ran a milder course. 

Buchanan, T. M., Faber, L. C., and Feldman, R. A., Brucellosis in the United States, 1960-1972. An abattoir-associated disease. Medicine 53, 403-413 (1974). Butler, T, A clinical study of the bubonic plague. Observations of the 1970 Vietnam epidemic with emphasis on coagulation studies, skin histology and electrocardiograms. Am. J. Med. 53, 268-276 (1972). 

The situation in Europe changed towards the end of the 17th century. Improvements in sanitation produced a dramatic decline in the incidence of bubonic plague, whilst a mutation of the variola virus (the causative agent of smallpox) appears to have produced a more virulent strain. During the 18th century, most Europeans contracted smallpox and around one in five of the population (a total in excess of 50 million people) died from the disease. Localised epidemics could be even more devastating like the one of 1707 in Iceland, when 36% of the population died, or the one of 1719 in Paris, when 14000 of the population died. 

Unusual Disease Symptom For example, an unusually high prevalence of respiratory disease (e.g. pneumonia) from a disease that more often occurs naturally as a skin disease (e.g. inhalation versus cutaneous anthrax pneumonic versus bubonic plague). 

Sulfa drugs are used to treat pneumonia, dysenteiy, meningitis, blood poisoning, urinary tract infections, erysipelas, cellulitis, bubonic plague, cholera, rheumatic fever, and some venereal diseases. 

It is probably a relatively recent recognition that one of the great factors in shaping human history has been infectious disease. Almost whole populations may have disappeared from the map. Bubonic plague killed one-third of Europe s population in the fourteenth century. The first documented pandemic was in the early sixth century. It began in northeast Africa (Egypt and Ethiopia) and spread through Europe. It lasted 60 years and is estimated to have killed 100 million people. Smaller epidemics continued up to the end of the nineteenth century. 

Salmonella typhimurium, and the genus Yersinia, which includes three species responsible for human diseases from gastrointestinal conditions to bubonic plague. ... 

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