Reply to: Black Death Unleashed!

[Doggy Styles]

Rats make lovely pets - badgers don't.

Badgers are bastards. The UK's largest natural carnivore apart from us.

And the lizards, obviously.

[mudskipper]

Nah Badgers are cute and fluffy (well not actually but popular media portays them as that) where as Rats are not.

Although Ratatouille was - as was Roland Rat....

Rats make lovely pets - badgers don't.

[original PM]

Nah Badgers are cute and fluffy (well not actually but popular media portays them as that) where as Rats are not.

Although Ratatouille was - as was Roland Rat....

[mudskipper]

BBC News - Madagascar village 'hit by bubonic plague'

The badger cull to reduce TB caused an outcry. I wonder if the rats will get any public sympathy.

[BolshieBastard]

Yersinia Pestis did cause three separate diseases: Bubonic plague, pneumonic plague, and septicemic plague

No. It is considered to be the most likely cause but, there is considerable disagreement on whether it in actual fact did.

[socialworker]

Or even any live fleas.

They're going to dig up some viable small pox at this rate & then the ordure will hit the aircon & no mistake.

Or anthrax?

[OwlHoot]

Y Pestis is considered to be the most likely cause of the black death but it is by no means certain, medical and academics are not agreed on the cause or whether the Black death was the result of 3 separate diseases.

Yersinia Pestis did cause three separate diseases: Bubonic plague, pneumonic plague, and septicemic plague

[malvolio]

Well your SWMBO may be a lead microbiologist at a major hospital with 40 years experience. That doesnt make her the sole authority on the Black Death. Is she more of an expert on the Black Death than J. F. D. Shrewsbury, Samuel K. Cohn, Jr, David Herlihy, Susan Scott, Christopher Duncan or archaeologist Barney Sloane etc, etc?

Sorry, you can be offended all you want but it doesnt change the fact that while Y Pestis is considered the likely cause, it doesnt mean it is nor that your wife is correct.

OK, but the toxicology certainly points that way... . and I'd rather trust a trained microbiologist over five writers and an archaeologist. YMMV.

[BolshieBastard]

Sorry, shall I tell SWMBO (Lead Microbiologist at a major hospital with 40 years experience) that she's wrong or will you? The epidemiology is non-existent, the best description we have from the 14th century is that is was a result of foul vapours... Yersinia is the best modern explanation, possibly with a viral co-pathogen. We may be able to find out now we have some samples to work with.

Meanwhile, back to the real point: the mortality was very high and prophylaxis non-existent so if you lived to breed you were probably immune. That goes for all the major pandemics; that bloke Darwin wasn't just talking about the lower orders, you know.

Well your SWMBO may be a lead microbiologist at a major hospital with 40 years experience. That doesnt make her the sole authority on the Black Death. Is she more of an expert on the Black Death than J. F. D. Shrewsbury, Samuel K. Cohn, Jr, David Herlihy, Susan Scott, Christopher Duncan or archaeologist Barney Sloane etc, etc?

Sorry, you can be offended all you want but it doesnt change the fact that while Y Pestis is considered the likely cause, it doesnt mean it is nor that your wife is correct.

[centurian]

Just go to an NHS hospital for a routine op... bound to pick it up...

[malvolio]

Y Pestis is considered to be the most likely cause of the black death but it is by no means certain, medical and academics are not agreed on the cause or whether the Black death was the result of 3 separate diseases.

In any event, you have to have someone breathe on you who has the disease or, be bitten by infected fleas (if the supposition that Y Pestis is the causal effect) to be infected.

Sorry, shall I tell SWMBO (Lead Microbiologist at a major hospital with 40 years experience) that she's wrong or will you? The epidemiology is non-existent, the best description we have from the 14th century is that is was a result of foul vapours... Yersinia is the best modern explanation, possibly with a viral co-pathogen. We may be able to find out now we have some samples to work with.

Meanwhile, back to the real point: the mortality was very high and prophylaxis non-existent so if you lived to breed you were probably immune. That goes for all the major pandemics; that bloke Darwin wasn't just talking about the lower orders, you know.

[hyperD]

Y Pestis is considered to be the most likely cause of the black death but it is by no means certain, medical and academics are not agreed on the cause or whether the Black death was the result of 3 separate diseases.

In any event, you have to have someone breathe on you who has the disease or, be bitten by infected fleas (if the supposition that Y Pestis is the causal effect) to be infected.

Indeed, will no-one think of the virii?

[Troll]

It's still out there!

[Ketchup]

doubt we are going to dig up any live flees

[BolshieBastard]

It is a bacterium (Yersina pestis) an so unlikely to still be viable. However, we are all descended from people who didn't die of the Black Death.

Y Pestis is considered to be the most likely cause of the black death but it is by no means certain, medical and academics are not agreed on the cause or whether the Black death was the result of 3 separate diseases.

In any event, you have to have someone breathe on you who has the disease or, be bitten by infected fleas (if the supposition that Y Pestis is the causal effect) to be infected.