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Hmm. I don't think plague should redirect here. There have been plagues of other things—and not just infectious diseases. What about the Biblical plagues of Egypt, for instance? (See Seder#The Third Telling). — Mulad 17:18, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)
why are there two mostly similar articles? Black Death contains more or less the same info. -- Kku 16:25, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)
There seems to be the implicit assumption in some of these contributions that rats were a necessary vector host and that there is some sort of mutual exclusivity between one form of plague transmission and another. I suggest that this is a simplistic view and that he role of the human flea has been entirely overlooked here. 217.34.53.35Quidnunchttp://www.cdc.gov/eid/content/13/5/687.htm
Im really confused now is the black plague the victorian plague please help —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.242.200.110 ( talk) 15:46, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
From New York City Department of Health & Mental Hygiene Alert: Two cases of travel-associated bubonic plague in New York City
"Human plague has been reported most often from the four western states of Arizona, California, Colorado and New Mexico. Wild rodents, especially ground squirrels and prairie dogs, are the natural reservoir for the plague bacterium. Since January 1980, there have been 272 cases of plague reported in the United States; the overwhelming majority of cases were bubonic plague. Of these, 143 (53%) were acquired in New Mexico. Plague is not enzootic in the eastern United States; there has not been a case of plague in New York City in at least 100 years." Petersam 17:31, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)
"The Plague of Justinian is the first known pandemic on record, and it also marks the first recorded case of bubonic plague in 541. At its peak, the plague was killing 10,000 people in Constantinople every day and perhaps 40 percent of the city's inhabitants. It went on to destroy up to a quarter of the human population of the eastern Mediterranean."
In response to this claim of the initial appearance of a pandemic in historical records as the Plague of Justinian, I am pressed to challenge the authority of such a claim in favor of a contradictory, albeit less detailed, piece of information, providing that in the second year of the Peloponnesian War (430 B.C.E.), Athens was decimated by plague, claiming a possible one third of the populace, including Pericles (Western Civilization: A Brief History Vol. 1: to 1715 Speilvogal, Jackson J. West/Wadsworth 1999 Ch. 3, pp. 56, paragraph 2; ISBN 0-534-56062-8). This, in spite the loss, had no consequent effect on the progress and outcome of the war and may have thus been a reason why no full account has ever been accredited to any inherent significance therein. This would nonetheless appear to have preceded the plague of Constantinople by nearly a millennium.
The omission of this antecedent is curious to me, and if my attempt at correction is misplaced, I would very much like to know how so, as well as your reasons for the omission, both for the sake of my own appreciation of what constitutes academic, indisputable history, and what might qualify a plague as monumental (e.g., were the numbers of the Athenians in the 5th century who’d fallen to the plague simply not high enough for such consideration? Was the account of too questionable an authorship to be deemed as supportable historical fact?)
02-14-05 There are several other literary or historical incidents/accounts of plague epidemics in localized areas. These are of interest both historically and as studies of disease outbreak and contagion. I've placed the Athenian incident (above - unknown contributor) in Localized Epidemics'- and added a few others to the category.
I've also expanded the Pandemics section with a summary of info on the great pandemics of Justinian, the Black Death and Asia. I also changed the title of that section to Historical Pandemics. I'v drawn most of this material from the three references I added to the article, although there is always differences of opinion on some large items and details. Unfortunately, I don't have a source for smaller Asian epidemics, and my info on the Third Pandemic is more limited. Will try and find a few more books. - W. (an anon).
"In the second century C.E., during the reign of the Roman Emperor Trajan, Rufus of Ephesus records an outbreak of plague in Lybia, Egypt and Syria. He clearly stated that buboes were present and described other symptoms associated with the bubonic plague. This local epidemic preceded the plague pandemic of Constantinople by approximately 350 years."
Do we need to subdivide this article -- perhaps into one dealing with the disease and medical information on outbreak and contagion - and one dealing with the historic impact/incidences of plague? The last could tie more closely with the Black Death article and perhaps we should create articles on the other two known pandemics? -W (currently anon.) as of 02/17/05 WBardwin
I found that the Plague of Justinian article already existed, so went ahead and created a Third Pandemic article as well. Little new information in them as yet, but will work at it. I still think breaking history from the disease itself would be good. WBardwin 07:13, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)
does anyone know any good informational websites on this subject????????????????
does any know any good info websites other than wikipedia??????????????
Both this article and Black Death have link sections at the bottom. A quick search will pull up a number of sites, often history oriented. In addition:
Hope you put these to constructive use. Welcome to Wikipedia. WBardwin 21:54, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
google helps
im surprised this article didnt mention the fact that the nursery rhyme " Ring around the Rosey" is about the plague.
Also, theres no mention about the belief that cats were the cause of the bubonic plague in London, effectively leading to the slaughter of cats and causing the plague to flourish unchallenged (cats kill mice who carried fleas). Also, they used to keep coins in jars of vinegar to sanitize them. Anyone found with the plague was immediately barred from leaving their house. -- 64.72.237.166 01:16, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
I don't think the nursery rhyme is contemporary with the actual event.
This article is just talking about what it is. I would like to kow more: What is the history? Was thre a cure? Where did it start? How long does it take for you to die? (if you do) Are there long lasting side affects? What if children are trying to learn somethig? This isn't going to help. You need more details. I am a concerned parent.
Can anyone explain why it was remarkable (and very widely and prominently reported) that a few mice infected with bubonic plague escaped? (Other than pointing out poor security at the facility.) The media were writing headlines like it was a new public health hazard, but the news seemed unremarkable to me, seeing as how there are presumably several hundred thousand infected wild squirrels in the Southwest US. Tempshill 22:49, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
This article is about the diseases caused by Yersinia pestis, one of which is Bubonic plague. While I don't particular like having this article be named "plague" because of the overloaded meanings of that (just look at the disambiguation page), can anyone think of an appropriate disambiugating phrase? "Plague (disease)" might work, but doesn't necesssarily disambiguate clearly (Pestilences of other sorts are sometimes called "plague"). Thoughts? John (Jwy) 06:20, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
cyclosarin ( talk) 04:45, 15 March 2008 (UTC)
The article uses the word virulent to describe the strains found in marmots: "Bubonic plague is primarily a disease of rodents, particularly marmots (in which the most virulent strains of plague are primarily found)..." To avoid confusion about the infectious agent being a virus, I suggest changing virulent to pathogenic.-- Bjorn1101 15:44, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
I notice that this article claims a 200 million-person death toll from the Black Death, whereas by contrast, the Black Death article claims a 34 million-person death toll. The factor of six separating these two is suspicious; where are we getting these numbers from? Ryan Reich 19:36, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
This article had 237 million until someone changed it to 1.2 million (a ridiculously low figure) without explanation. There has been confusion ever since. I've restored the 237 million figure, because no one ever said what was wrong with it. However, other figures in the article seem to add up to less than half that, while the Black Death article currently says "at least 75 million". Can someone find some reputable sources to clear this up? Metamagician3000 09:57, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
Why does everyone seem to be assuming that the pandemic was restricted to Europe and the Near East. The disease apparently spread from the foothills of the Himalayas via established overland trade routes to Europe. Besides striking Europe, the plague hit China, India, Southeast Asia, and the steppes. A world-wide death toll greater than 150 million is not beyond reason Wuf0170 19:14, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
"The first Western literary account of a possible outbreak of plague is found in the book of I
Samuel 5:6 of the Hebrew Bible." To me, describing the Hebrew Bible as "Western" seems odd. Although it is a foundation of Western culture, civilization, etc etc, it originated in the Middle East. A formulation such as "The earliest literary account, familiar to the West, describing a possible outbreat etc etc" would seem to be a better way of formulating it. Otherwise, this is a very interesting and informative article; sorry to carp about such trivia.
The result of the debate was don't move. — Nightst a llion (?) Seen this already? 08:20, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
Bubonic plague → Plague – The article describes the disease plague, created by the bacteria Yersinia pestis, of which bubonic plague is just one form; the other two most common being pneumonic plague and septicemic plague, which currently are redirected to bubonic plague (In total, there are actually eight forms of plague). CDC, WHO and other authorities call the disease only "plague", giving it the IDC-9 and IDC-10 code A20. See [4], [5] and [6]. Similarily, all the other Wikipedias (except the Danish) also only calls it "plague" in their various languages. I can see no reason why English Wikipedia should take a different position.
Plague is currently a disambiguation page to which the also existing Plague (disambiguation) redirects, but it would be better to move the Plague disambiguation content to Plague (disambiguation), and then move the content of Bubonic plague to Plague with a redirect from Bubonic plague - and of course also change the redirects of Pneumonic plague and Septicemic plague the same way. The article would, of course, also need some minor adjustments to reflect the fact that the disease is known as plague, and that bubonic plague is just one form of it. However, to a large extent the article already does this, which makes it even more confusing in its current form Thomas Blomberg 22:06, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
Removed the following vandalism:
"Dylan purdy is a jew who has Mr.Smutka at his feet begging for a BJ. Dylan says no and non-regretably chops his head off and laughs with a vicious laugh.Then dylan trips and falls off a cliff with ease. he tumbles down to a hunter who stalks him with a duck call and a deer head he will lead you on a chase and you will get shot in the back with an arrow and at his last moments of life he will meet a singing fish. How Stupid!!" Maeve 17:31, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
Anyone know what current event the editor Tarpy was referring to in the edit on 14:55, 19 April 2006? An outbreak? WBardwin 00:14, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
In the article Peloponnesian War, it states that the plague was instrumental in the loss of Athens in the "Archidamian War", while this article states, and I quote; "The loss of population did not affect the progress and outcome of the war." The sources of this article and others are obviously different, and I am unsure which is in the wrong, as I am not well versed in history, period. Just a heads up.
Hi, WBardwin. As suggested in you comment on my user page I post my reply here, to the benefit of everyone. The reason I removed the link to the Plague disambig page under "Overview", which Giftlite added on 10 May, was that it confuses the readers. The article is about the decease and the paragraph containing the link is only about the decease, so why should a link there take people to a page dealing with other meanings of the word plague (like the plagues of Egypt)? Also, there is already a link to the disambig page under "See also".
In your comment say that "I realize you may not agree with the editors' concensus to stick with bubonic plague as the name of the article but there are other English uses of the word plague. That is why we have the disambig page and the other Plague article in process."
Well, first of all I'm not arguing about that right now, although I think the suggestion by John (Jwy) above, to rename the article Plague (disease), would be the best solution, as the subject of the article is the specific disease which is medically known as plague (obviously its variants Bubonic plague, Septicemic plague and Pneumonic plague would redirect to it).
Secondly, I wonder which editors you are referring to? There are a number of people contributing to this article, and they are all "the editors" (me included), and looking at the discussions, both here and under Black Death and List of Bubonic plague outbreaks (which is actually a list of historical epidemics and pandemics caused by a variety of diseases), it is obvious that there are several editors who share my views. Also, your reference to "the other plague article in progress" is somewhat confusing, as you link it to the disambig page. I know from the discussions a year ago under List of Bubonic plague outbreaks that you talked about doing an article called "Plague and Human History", (which perhaps would be better titled "Epidemics/Pandemics and Human History"), so I guess that is the one you're referring to. However, it doesn't exist in any form yet, so I don't quite understand your reference to it. In all friendliness. Thomas Blomberg 23:24, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
Untreated septicemic plague is universally fatal, but early treatment with antibiotics reduces the mortality rate to 4 to 15%.
Is 4% to 15% not an increase? Is this just a typo?
There is a section mentioning mortality rates, then in the "treatment" section it should say: How effective are the different treatments that are listed? What are the mortality rates and complication rates? Tempshill 03:56, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
Why the adddition of the London specific information? Not really applicable to the disease article itself, and significant alterations in the article have been made. Possible vandalism -- see version 17:05, 8 November 2006 by Wouterstomp for previous versions of the article. Believe the material should be removed, and the article reverted, if no one has major objections. Will revert. WBardwin 04:47, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
I removed this uncited statement because it clearly does not refer to the Third Pandemic, which is "only" claimed to have killed "12 million people in India and China alone", certainly not 1.3 of Asia. It may relate to previous pandemics, which may or may not have been bubonic plague of some sort.-- Grahamec 04:44, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
"it is estimated that 1.4 percent of England's population, totaling 4.2 million ..."
This is in the first paragraph of "Black death". Certainly, England's population never reached 300 million during the Black death or at any other time in history. Is the statistic supposed to be "1/4 of the English population, totaling 4.2 million"?
I removed: "In Europe, the plague was thought to be spread by cats, so the Europeans killed all of the cats, which eventually made the plague spread even more" from the Justinian section. I think this probably came from a British TV program about the Great Plague of London, based on the received wisdom, but it is unsourced. The comment that the killing of cats caused the plague to spread faster, might make sense, if the Black Death was spread by rats (which is not supported by evidence, in my view), but there is no contemporary evidence for it.-- Grahamec 07:28, 15 December 2006 (UTC) There is a section in Defoe's "Journal of a plague year" “Therefore were we ordered to kill all the dogs and cats, but because as they were domestic animals, and are apt to run from house to house and from street to street, so they are capable of carrying the effluvia or infectious streams of bodies infected even in their furs and hair. And therefore it was that, in the beginning of the infection, an order was published by the Lord Mayor, and by the magistrates, according to the advice of the physicians, that all the dogs and cats should be immediately killed, and an officer was appointed for the execution”. “It is incredible; if their account is to be depended upon, what a prodigious number of those creatures were destroyed. I think they talked of forty thousand dogs, and five times as many cats; few houses being without a cat, some having several, sometimes five or six in a house. All possible endeavours were used also to destroy the mice and rats, especially the latter, by laying ratsbane and other poisons for them, and a prodigious multitude of them were also destroyed”. 217.34.53.35Quidnunc
why is the bicture of the Yersinia pestis entitled "Green Glow Stick in Motion"? that just seems wrong. it looks like it was changed here [7] and then again immediately afterwards. -- MirrorSword 02:55, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
Previous statement was that untreated bubonic plague has a mortality rate less than 10%. I believe this writer intended "a survival rate of less than 10%". Edited to reflect information from the links cited, WHO and CDC, that untreated bubonic plague has a mortality rate of 50-90%. Or perhaps the previous writer intended that treated plague had a mortality of less than 10%? Unimaginative Username 04:09, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
Why does the article say the most common way to contract the disease is to be bitten by an infected rodent? I think it's pretty clear that it's the intermediate vector, the flea, that is responsible for transmitting the plague from rats to humans. That appears to be pretty well established in the first part of the article. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Graehill ( talk • contribs) 04:12, 8 May 2007 (UTC).
I think the word choice is incorrect: genetic engineering implies either introducing a piece of DNA from one lifeform into another, (or making this up from scratch,) or deleting or inserting purposefully pieces of DNA. This was clearly not possible during and before WW II so the `genetic engineering' would have been `(artificial) selection', i.e. breeding and selecting as Mendel understood it. But that's already covered by the earlier mention of breeding antibiotics resistence into them (where resistence is an aim and selection a method, so there is a difference). I have not changed anything as I don't know what the original author wanted to say.
Am I missing anything or is there not a single word in the article about the pathology of the disease? Symptoms? What it actually does to patients? how it presents and manifests?-- Cancun771 22:03, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
I don't mean to be a pain; I've already mentioned this on the Black Death article. But, Poe's " The Masque of the Red Death" has generally been accepted to refer to tuberculosis, so I'm requesting a source that says it is "conventionally agreed" to be Bubonic plague. If you do find a source, I'd love to add that info to the section in the "Red Death" article that discusses the disease. Thanks! -- Midnightdreary 16:28, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
Can you guys put symptoms of it here? Punkymonkey987 14:59, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
For anyone with the time and knowledge: this article has a good section on history and world impact but is severely lacking in medical science. Symptoms, tests, etc. Arbitrarily picking articles clostridium difficile and strep throat have more medical science than this article does and I'd like to see similar information here. Cburnett 06:14, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
(This page could use more information on if handling corpses from bubonic plague could cause the spread of the disease form person to person. Also what about listing misconceptions people had about the bubonic plague in various cultures)-random person researching a paper . —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.32.136.106 ( talk) 02:04, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
D: This is really related to the Black Death =o —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.248.234.126 ( talk) 21:59, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
I'd like to propose that the article be moved to "Plague" or "Plague (disease)" for the reasons outlined above after Naming (again) and in the original proposal.
Please comment on the idea and/or which option is more suitable. If the article is moved to Plague (disease) I can edit it a little and make sub pages for the three types. If it is moved to Plague, which I think might be better, the current page becomes disambiguation and we should probably add a second link to the article, pestilence.
e.g.
I think this would be best in the long run, I hope to help to get the article up to featured status. - cyclosarin ( talk) 06:05, 15 March 2008 (UTC)
Would everyone be happier if this was considered a "split" rather than a "move"? I have already started pneumonic and septicemic articles, and I would be happy to start the new bubonic plague article and redistribute the content from this one.
I think the new main page should be Plague since it is currently only a minor disambiguation page, especially if the main article links to pestilence as I previously suggested. cyclosarin ( talk) 01:07, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
Once this merge proposal is settled and everything's stable, I think someone ought to propose this article for WP:GA. I'd be surprised if it didn't pass easily. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 05:38, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
The following looks to me like it is backwards. I would think the Balck death would have moved much more slowly in 664 than the modern plague. "very different transmission speeds — the Black Death was reported to have spread 385 km in 91 days in 664, compared to 12-15 km a year for the modern Bubonic Plague, with the assistance of trains and cars" dfortini 06:32, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
I think Y. pestis sould be linked to this as it causes plague —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rynosaur ( talk • contribs) 22:19, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
A closed meeting has been held in Ivano-Frankivsk, at which participants agreed that epidemic of the so-called "pneumonic plague" is being spread throughout Ukraine. But the problem is its form is unknown, it is ATYPICAL nobody knows how to treat it. more information here
PlasticShark ( talk) 06:05, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
This doesn't make sense:
Please see here for a list of some fairly notable people who died of the plague, including Royalty and Nobility- Category:Deaths from bubonic plague eg Ali az-Zahir, a Caliph, and Edmund Mortimer, 5th Earl of March, heir presumptive to Richard II of England. Brendandh ( talk) 14:47, 22 April 2010 (UTC) 205.213.240.8 ( talk) 18:03, 3 November 2010 (UTC) Just finished reading 2005 book where this issue is discussed at length. Problem exists. Scientists debate. No definative source, no info on pre historical. Furhther analysis done in 2010 as on Wiki yersenia pestis page says definately source of both epidemics. Also see Wiki camel and posting of reference to 2005 notice from Saudi Arabia avoid eating camel liver as contains Yersenia Pestis. Source: possibly Asian marmots, and the Nova tv special examining the 48 year population explosion of rats feeding on the death-flowering of bamboo would seem an ideal canidate as the rats could have sufficient energy (high protein food) to overflow the valley and spread down to the Ganges delta. Quote from internet source: The bamboo species Melocanna baccifera grows over a large area of Northeast India, primarily in the states of Mizoram and Manipur. It blooms approximately every 48 years, resulting in a human tragedy coinciding with the flowering of this species. Bamboo blossoms produce a fruit packed with protein and other nutrients. Rats feed on the fruits and seeds, and their population increases. After the supply of bamboo seeds and fruits are exhausted, the rats turn to human food sources – invade farms and villages devouring all the crops, and food stored in granaries, resulting in famine. Historically, this phenomenon has lasted for about 3 years, till the rats run out of food. It costs the lives and livelihood of thousands of people. The locals call it ‘Mautam’ or ‘Bamboo death’. Recently it occurred between 2005 and 2007. 205.213.240.8 ( talk) 18:03, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
Another article, Plague vaccine, contradicts this one— here as well as the Yersinia pestis article here. The vaccine article says "There is strong evidence for the efficacy of administration of some plague vaccines in preventing or ameliorating the effects of ... infection ..." whereas this one says "Currently there is no vaccine against the Plague." The Yersinia pestis article says there once was a vaccine ages ago but it didn't really work so now there isn't and experimental development for a new one found it no good for green monkeys. The contradict-tag on the vaccine article points to this talkpage as its own is inactive. Thanks. 92.6.206.226 ( talk) 21:37, 8 June 2011 (UTC)
No consensus to move. I'll note that moving to The plague as suggested is an interesting option. Vegaswikian ( talk) 02:35, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
The bacteria's picture on the top right of the article claims it is 200x magnification. Can this possibly be correct? Even ignoring that it's not clear what this number means when the picture will have a different size on every monitor... But on my screen it looks about 5cm long, so the original bacteria is supposed to be 0.25mm, or 250 micron long? /info/en/?search=File:Bacillus_subtilis_Gram.jpg shows a scaled picture of other rod-shaped germs, and shows their lengths to be merely 10 micron long. So either I'm making some sort of calculation mistake here, or the claim of "200x" is completely mistaken. Nyh ( talk) 09:26, 17 October 2011 (UTC)
Could this be cleaned up by whoever wrote it, because I have read through it multiple times and know what it means ultimately, but the wording could be improved significantly It is found under 'Epidemiology and distribution':
"Contrary to popular belief, rats did not directly start the spread of the bubonic plague. It is mainly a disease in the fleas (Xenopsylla cheopis) that infested the rats, making the rats themselves the first victims of the plague. Infection in a human occurs when a person is bitten by a flea that has been infected by biting a rodent that itself has been infected by the bite of a flea carrying the disease." MarkoPolo56 ( talk) 21:12, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
Rats are not the spreaders of disease but fleas. Once plague has set in it is useless to cull rats, and in fact better to keep them, as fleas prefer rat and will choose them over human if available. Many other animals carry plague, including fleas, cats, squirrels and mice. So maybe change that?
My source: At Home, by Bill Bryson, pages 261-262 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dasyuridae ( talk • contribs) 06:07, 19 August 2013 (UTC)
The article states:
This is clearly wrong as Antarctica is a further exception.
The article states:
How does it compare with malaria or aids?
The article states:
Could a common unit be used such as km/day so that a comparison could be more easily made?
The article states:
Could this be updated?
194.176.105.153 ( talk) 11:22, 31 March 2014 (UTC)
I don't have time to write this up, but a new article offers evidence that European rats did not in fact serve as a reservoir for plague bacteria, as has long been presumed. Instead, the authors argue that plague was repeatedly reintroduced along trade routes from Central Asia.
See: Boris V. Schmid, Ulf Büntgen, W. Ryan Easterday, Christian Ginzler, Lars Walløe, Barbara Bramanti, and Nils Chr. Stenseth. Climate-driven introduction of the Black Death and successive plague reintroductions into Europe. PNAS 2015 : 1412887112v1-201412887.
Download the article at: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/02/20/1412887112.full.pdf+html
Report the plague existed 3000BC: http://www.nature.com/news/bronze-age-skeletons-were-earliest-plague-victims-1.18633
-- CuriousMind01 ( talk) 17:57, 26 October 2015 (UTC)
Debresser the paragraph on the book of Samuel was deliberately removed - it contains dubious factual assertions that are not in line with modern scholarship. Articles on religion are not written from an in-universe perspective. The dating of the the book of Samuel is dubious, the number of authors are dubious, and the verse in question has a different version in the LXX and Vulgate that adds "mice". This is non-specific as to the disease.
This reference includes discussion that discussion of it is wrong (Hebrew "ophal" can mean "Hemorrhoid" (Dysentery)), and that "A widespread view is that biblical stories of this sort are the product of a religious reform movement that flourished hundreds of years after Samuel, in the late Iron Age; but it is acknowledged, nonetheless, that they may have historical kernels"
Freemon, F. R (2005). "Bubonic plague in the Book of Samuel". Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. 98 (9): 436–436. doi: 10.1258/jrsm.98.9.436. ISSN 0141-0768.
Note that the New Scientist article includes an image of an ulcer - historical sources describing "ulcers" may be tularemia rather than bubonic plague
-- Callinus ( talk) 09:14, 27 October 2015 (UTC)
Two things: 1) This article http://www.uib.no/filearchive/rats-plague-arch-akh-lw.pdf suggests human ectoparasites as an alternative mode of transmission. I don't want to mess up the article, so I'm just leaving it here for anyone who's interested. 2) Does anyone know whether people have lifelong immunity after recovering from the plague? I assume so, but I can't find that information in the article. 79.103.155.221 ( talk) 22:05, 16 March 2016 (UTC)
This user is edit-warring, insisting on keeping/changing:
Comments by others on these changes are welcome. His version and my latest version. As far as I can see User:Debresser has only ever edited the article once, some time ago, to add something that was promptly removed (by someone else), so I can't imagine what he thinks he is doing, and his edit summaries are little help. My changes are minimal, to improve the most glaring problems. The article has been neglected, and it would be good if someone competent were to take it on more generally. Johnbod ( talk) 19:34, 30 March 2016 (UTC)
Johnbod, he's not splitting or un-splitting any paragraphs in that diff. That's a list item (where line breaks are WP:ACCESS#Lists violations), and he's removed a line break from the middle of this:
{{cite news|url=http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/health/oregon-man-suffering-plague-critical-condition-article-1.1094782 |title=Oregon man suffering from the plague is in critical condition|work=Daily News|location=New York|date=12 June 2012}}</ref><ref>{{cite
The sole effect of his change was to put the entire citation template on a single line in the wikitext. I know how much you've got on your plate right now, and it's an easy thing to miss, but I cannot imagine you actually objecting to that change. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 15:20, 31 March 2016 (UTC)
For Debresser to claim "in my experience it is a damn good idea to discuss first instead of pushing the revert button, if you want to avoid edit wars" is downright hilarious. You seem to be working your way round to finding that my changes were all improvements, so I expect I don't need to add anything now. Johnbod ( talk) 16:29, 31 March 2016 (UTC)
It looks like the most recent reversions center on whether to limit the TOC, and whether to put the fourth paragraph on the page as the last paragraph of the lead or the first paragraph of the body, in its own section. Are these points important enough to keep worrying about, or shall we consider this resolved? WhatamIdoing ( talk) 02:27, 28 April 2016 (UTC)
The source does not mention her and a short google search only finds the same sentence as on wiki.
I believe this is a dubious claim and maybe a bad joke and should be considered vandalism.
Can someone confirm?
BenjaminKay ( talk) 23:42, 21 December 2016 (UTC)
What other animals besides humans get infected? Just granpa ( talk) 06:26, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
Infobox image caption says "200× magnification." According to /info/en/?search=Magnification#Magnification_and_micron_bar "Magnification figures on printed pictures can be misleading." Near as I can surmise from other sources, these green guys are about 1/2 micron wide and 2 or 3 microns long, which puts the magnification closer to 3000x on my computer screen. Rairden ( talk) 20:39, 6 April 2020 (UTC)
Hi, I added a diagnosis section to this article (paraphrased evidence from the background section of a June 2020 Cochrane Review). I am new to editing on plague, if there are regular editors and experts here who have some feedback to add please do not hesitate to jump in. I did not add in the conclusions of the June 2020 Cochrane Review on rapid diagnostic testing yet, as I do not have enough background in this area to ensure appropriate weight. Does anyone have any suggestions? https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32597510/. Thanks! JenOttawa ( talk) 02:56, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
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Hmm. I don't think plague should redirect here. There have been plagues of other things—and not just infectious diseases. What about the Biblical plagues of Egypt, for instance? (See Seder#The Third Telling). — Mulad 17:18, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)
why are there two mostly similar articles? Black Death contains more or less the same info. -- Kku 16:25, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)
There seems to be the implicit assumption in some of these contributions that rats were a necessary vector host and that there is some sort of mutual exclusivity between one form of plague transmission and another. I suggest that this is a simplistic view and that he role of the human flea has been entirely overlooked here. 217.34.53.35Quidnunchttp://www.cdc.gov/eid/content/13/5/687.htm
Im really confused now is the black plague the victorian plague please help —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.242.200.110 ( talk) 15:46, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
From New York City Department of Health & Mental Hygiene Alert: Two cases of travel-associated bubonic plague in New York City
"Human plague has been reported most often from the four western states of Arizona, California, Colorado and New Mexico. Wild rodents, especially ground squirrels and prairie dogs, are the natural reservoir for the plague bacterium. Since January 1980, there have been 272 cases of plague reported in the United States; the overwhelming majority of cases were bubonic plague. Of these, 143 (53%) were acquired in New Mexico. Plague is not enzootic in the eastern United States; there has not been a case of plague in New York City in at least 100 years." Petersam 17:31, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)
"The Plague of Justinian is the first known pandemic on record, and it also marks the first recorded case of bubonic plague in 541. At its peak, the plague was killing 10,000 people in Constantinople every day and perhaps 40 percent of the city's inhabitants. It went on to destroy up to a quarter of the human population of the eastern Mediterranean."
In response to this claim of the initial appearance of a pandemic in historical records as the Plague of Justinian, I am pressed to challenge the authority of such a claim in favor of a contradictory, albeit less detailed, piece of information, providing that in the second year of the Peloponnesian War (430 B.C.E.), Athens was decimated by plague, claiming a possible one third of the populace, including Pericles (Western Civilization: A Brief History Vol. 1: to 1715 Speilvogal, Jackson J. West/Wadsworth 1999 Ch. 3, pp. 56, paragraph 2; ISBN 0-534-56062-8). This, in spite the loss, had no consequent effect on the progress and outcome of the war and may have thus been a reason why no full account has ever been accredited to any inherent significance therein. This would nonetheless appear to have preceded the plague of Constantinople by nearly a millennium.
The omission of this antecedent is curious to me, and if my attempt at correction is misplaced, I would very much like to know how so, as well as your reasons for the omission, both for the sake of my own appreciation of what constitutes academic, indisputable history, and what might qualify a plague as monumental (e.g., were the numbers of the Athenians in the 5th century who’d fallen to the plague simply not high enough for such consideration? Was the account of too questionable an authorship to be deemed as supportable historical fact?)
02-14-05 There are several other literary or historical incidents/accounts of plague epidemics in localized areas. These are of interest both historically and as studies of disease outbreak and contagion. I've placed the Athenian incident (above - unknown contributor) in Localized Epidemics'- and added a few others to the category.
I've also expanded the Pandemics section with a summary of info on the great pandemics of Justinian, the Black Death and Asia. I also changed the title of that section to Historical Pandemics. I'v drawn most of this material from the three references I added to the article, although there is always differences of opinion on some large items and details. Unfortunately, I don't have a source for smaller Asian epidemics, and my info on the Third Pandemic is more limited. Will try and find a few more books. - W. (an anon).
"In the second century C.E., during the reign of the Roman Emperor Trajan, Rufus of Ephesus records an outbreak of plague in Lybia, Egypt and Syria. He clearly stated that buboes were present and described other symptoms associated with the bubonic plague. This local epidemic preceded the plague pandemic of Constantinople by approximately 350 years."
Do we need to subdivide this article -- perhaps into one dealing with the disease and medical information on outbreak and contagion - and one dealing with the historic impact/incidences of plague? The last could tie more closely with the Black Death article and perhaps we should create articles on the other two known pandemics? -W (currently anon.) as of 02/17/05 WBardwin
I found that the Plague of Justinian article already existed, so went ahead and created a Third Pandemic article as well. Little new information in them as yet, but will work at it. I still think breaking history from the disease itself would be good. WBardwin 07:13, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)
does anyone know any good informational websites on this subject????????????????
does any know any good info websites other than wikipedia??????????????
Both this article and Black Death have link sections at the bottom. A quick search will pull up a number of sites, often history oriented. In addition:
Hope you put these to constructive use. Welcome to Wikipedia. WBardwin 21:54, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
google helps
im surprised this article didnt mention the fact that the nursery rhyme " Ring around the Rosey" is about the plague.
Also, theres no mention about the belief that cats were the cause of the bubonic plague in London, effectively leading to the slaughter of cats and causing the plague to flourish unchallenged (cats kill mice who carried fleas). Also, they used to keep coins in jars of vinegar to sanitize them. Anyone found with the plague was immediately barred from leaving their house. -- 64.72.237.166 01:16, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
I don't think the nursery rhyme is contemporary with the actual event.
This article is just talking about what it is. I would like to kow more: What is the history? Was thre a cure? Where did it start? How long does it take for you to die? (if you do) Are there long lasting side affects? What if children are trying to learn somethig? This isn't going to help. You need more details. I am a concerned parent.
Can anyone explain why it was remarkable (and very widely and prominently reported) that a few mice infected with bubonic plague escaped? (Other than pointing out poor security at the facility.) The media were writing headlines like it was a new public health hazard, but the news seemed unremarkable to me, seeing as how there are presumably several hundred thousand infected wild squirrels in the Southwest US. Tempshill 22:49, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
This article is about the diseases caused by Yersinia pestis, one of which is Bubonic plague. While I don't particular like having this article be named "plague" because of the overloaded meanings of that (just look at the disambiguation page), can anyone think of an appropriate disambiugating phrase? "Plague (disease)" might work, but doesn't necesssarily disambiguate clearly (Pestilences of other sorts are sometimes called "plague"). Thoughts? John (Jwy) 06:20, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
cyclosarin ( talk) 04:45, 15 March 2008 (UTC)
The article uses the word virulent to describe the strains found in marmots: "Bubonic plague is primarily a disease of rodents, particularly marmots (in which the most virulent strains of plague are primarily found)..." To avoid confusion about the infectious agent being a virus, I suggest changing virulent to pathogenic.-- Bjorn1101 15:44, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
I notice that this article claims a 200 million-person death toll from the Black Death, whereas by contrast, the Black Death article claims a 34 million-person death toll. The factor of six separating these two is suspicious; where are we getting these numbers from? Ryan Reich 19:36, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
This article had 237 million until someone changed it to 1.2 million (a ridiculously low figure) without explanation. There has been confusion ever since. I've restored the 237 million figure, because no one ever said what was wrong with it. However, other figures in the article seem to add up to less than half that, while the Black Death article currently says "at least 75 million". Can someone find some reputable sources to clear this up? Metamagician3000 09:57, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
Why does everyone seem to be assuming that the pandemic was restricted to Europe and the Near East. The disease apparently spread from the foothills of the Himalayas via established overland trade routes to Europe. Besides striking Europe, the plague hit China, India, Southeast Asia, and the steppes. A world-wide death toll greater than 150 million is not beyond reason Wuf0170 19:14, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
"The first Western literary account of a possible outbreak of plague is found in the book of I
Samuel 5:6 of the Hebrew Bible." To me, describing the Hebrew Bible as "Western" seems odd. Although it is a foundation of Western culture, civilization, etc etc, it originated in the Middle East. A formulation such as "The earliest literary account, familiar to the West, describing a possible outbreat etc etc" would seem to be a better way of formulating it. Otherwise, this is a very interesting and informative article; sorry to carp about such trivia.
The result of the debate was don't move. — Nightst a llion (?) Seen this already? 08:20, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
Bubonic plague → Plague – The article describes the disease plague, created by the bacteria Yersinia pestis, of which bubonic plague is just one form; the other two most common being pneumonic plague and septicemic plague, which currently are redirected to bubonic plague (In total, there are actually eight forms of plague). CDC, WHO and other authorities call the disease only "plague", giving it the IDC-9 and IDC-10 code A20. See [4], [5] and [6]. Similarily, all the other Wikipedias (except the Danish) also only calls it "plague" in their various languages. I can see no reason why English Wikipedia should take a different position.
Plague is currently a disambiguation page to which the also existing Plague (disambiguation) redirects, but it would be better to move the Plague disambiguation content to Plague (disambiguation), and then move the content of Bubonic plague to Plague with a redirect from Bubonic plague - and of course also change the redirects of Pneumonic plague and Septicemic plague the same way. The article would, of course, also need some minor adjustments to reflect the fact that the disease is known as plague, and that bubonic plague is just one form of it. However, to a large extent the article already does this, which makes it even more confusing in its current form Thomas Blomberg 22:06, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
Removed the following vandalism:
"Dylan purdy is a jew who has Mr.Smutka at his feet begging for a BJ. Dylan says no and non-regretably chops his head off and laughs with a vicious laugh.Then dylan trips and falls off a cliff with ease. he tumbles down to a hunter who stalks him with a duck call and a deer head he will lead you on a chase and you will get shot in the back with an arrow and at his last moments of life he will meet a singing fish. How Stupid!!" Maeve 17:31, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
Anyone know what current event the editor Tarpy was referring to in the edit on 14:55, 19 April 2006? An outbreak? WBardwin 00:14, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
In the article Peloponnesian War, it states that the plague was instrumental in the loss of Athens in the "Archidamian War", while this article states, and I quote; "The loss of population did not affect the progress and outcome of the war." The sources of this article and others are obviously different, and I am unsure which is in the wrong, as I am not well versed in history, period. Just a heads up.
Hi, WBardwin. As suggested in you comment on my user page I post my reply here, to the benefit of everyone. The reason I removed the link to the Plague disambig page under "Overview", which Giftlite added on 10 May, was that it confuses the readers. The article is about the decease and the paragraph containing the link is only about the decease, so why should a link there take people to a page dealing with other meanings of the word plague (like the plagues of Egypt)? Also, there is already a link to the disambig page under "See also".
In your comment say that "I realize you may not agree with the editors' concensus to stick with bubonic plague as the name of the article but there are other English uses of the word plague. That is why we have the disambig page and the other Plague article in process."
Well, first of all I'm not arguing about that right now, although I think the suggestion by John (Jwy) above, to rename the article Plague (disease), would be the best solution, as the subject of the article is the specific disease which is medically known as plague (obviously its variants Bubonic plague, Septicemic plague and Pneumonic plague would redirect to it).
Secondly, I wonder which editors you are referring to? There are a number of people contributing to this article, and they are all "the editors" (me included), and looking at the discussions, both here and under Black Death and List of Bubonic plague outbreaks (which is actually a list of historical epidemics and pandemics caused by a variety of diseases), it is obvious that there are several editors who share my views. Also, your reference to "the other plague article in progress" is somewhat confusing, as you link it to the disambig page. I know from the discussions a year ago under List of Bubonic plague outbreaks that you talked about doing an article called "Plague and Human History", (which perhaps would be better titled "Epidemics/Pandemics and Human History"), so I guess that is the one you're referring to. However, it doesn't exist in any form yet, so I don't quite understand your reference to it. In all friendliness. Thomas Blomberg 23:24, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
Untreated septicemic plague is universally fatal, but early treatment with antibiotics reduces the mortality rate to 4 to 15%.
Is 4% to 15% not an increase? Is this just a typo?
There is a section mentioning mortality rates, then in the "treatment" section it should say: How effective are the different treatments that are listed? What are the mortality rates and complication rates? Tempshill 03:56, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
Why the adddition of the London specific information? Not really applicable to the disease article itself, and significant alterations in the article have been made. Possible vandalism -- see version 17:05, 8 November 2006 by Wouterstomp for previous versions of the article. Believe the material should be removed, and the article reverted, if no one has major objections. Will revert. WBardwin 04:47, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
I removed this uncited statement because it clearly does not refer to the Third Pandemic, which is "only" claimed to have killed "12 million people in India and China alone", certainly not 1.3 of Asia. It may relate to previous pandemics, which may or may not have been bubonic plague of some sort.-- Grahamec 04:44, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
"it is estimated that 1.4 percent of England's population, totaling 4.2 million ..."
This is in the first paragraph of "Black death". Certainly, England's population never reached 300 million during the Black death or at any other time in history. Is the statistic supposed to be "1/4 of the English population, totaling 4.2 million"?
I removed: "In Europe, the plague was thought to be spread by cats, so the Europeans killed all of the cats, which eventually made the plague spread even more" from the Justinian section. I think this probably came from a British TV program about the Great Plague of London, based on the received wisdom, but it is unsourced. The comment that the killing of cats caused the plague to spread faster, might make sense, if the Black Death was spread by rats (which is not supported by evidence, in my view), but there is no contemporary evidence for it.-- Grahamec 07:28, 15 December 2006 (UTC) There is a section in Defoe's "Journal of a plague year" “Therefore were we ordered to kill all the dogs and cats, but because as they were domestic animals, and are apt to run from house to house and from street to street, so they are capable of carrying the effluvia or infectious streams of bodies infected even in their furs and hair. And therefore it was that, in the beginning of the infection, an order was published by the Lord Mayor, and by the magistrates, according to the advice of the physicians, that all the dogs and cats should be immediately killed, and an officer was appointed for the execution”. “It is incredible; if their account is to be depended upon, what a prodigious number of those creatures were destroyed. I think they talked of forty thousand dogs, and five times as many cats; few houses being without a cat, some having several, sometimes five or six in a house. All possible endeavours were used also to destroy the mice and rats, especially the latter, by laying ratsbane and other poisons for them, and a prodigious multitude of them were also destroyed”. 217.34.53.35Quidnunc
why is the bicture of the Yersinia pestis entitled "Green Glow Stick in Motion"? that just seems wrong. it looks like it was changed here [7] and then again immediately afterwards. -- MirrorSword 02:55, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
Previous statement was that untreated bubonic plague has a mortality rate less than 10%. I believe this writer intended "a survival rate of less than 10%". Edited to reflect information from the links cited, WHO and CDC, that untreated bubonic plague has a mortality rate of 50-90%. Or perhaps the previous writer intended that treated plague had a mortality of less than 10%? Unimaginative Username 04:09, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
Why does the article say the most common way to contract the disease is to be bitten by an infected rodent? I think it's pretty clear that it's the intermediate vector, the flea, that is responsible for transmitting the plague from rats to humans. That appears to be pretty well established in the first part of the article. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Graehill ( talk • contribs) 04:12, 8 May 2007 (UTC).
I think the word choice is incorrect: genetic engineering implies either introducing a piece of DNA from one lifeform into another, (or making this up from scratch,) or deleting or inserting purposefully pieces of DNA. This was clearly not possible during and before WW II so the `genetic engineering' would have been `(artificial) selection', i.e. breeding and selecting as Mendel understood it. But that's already covered by the earlier mention of breeding antibiotics resistence into them (where resistence is an aim and selection a method, so there is a difference). I have not changed anything as I don't know what the original author wanted to say.
Am I missing anything or is there not a single word in the article about the pathology of the disease? Symptoms? What it actually does to patients? how it presents and manifests?-- Cancun771 22:03, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
I don't mean to be a pain; I've already mentioned this on the Black Death article. But, Poe's " The Masque of the Red Death" has generally been accepted to refer to tuberculosis, so I'm requesting a source that says it is "conventionally agreed" to be Bubonic plague. If you do find a source, I'd love to add that info to the section in the "Red Death" article that discusses the disease. Thanks! -- Midnightdreary 16:28, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
Can you guys put symptoms of it here? Punkymonkey987 14:59, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
For anyone with the time and knowledge: this article has a good section on history and world impact but is severely lacking in medical science. Symptoms, tests, etc. Arbitrarily picking articles clostridium difficile and strep throat have more medical science than this article does and I'd like to see similar information here. Cburnett 06:14, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
(This page could use more information on if handling corpses from bubonic plague could cause the spread of the disease form person to person. Also what about listing misconceptions people had about the bubonic plague in various cultures)-random person researching a paper . —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.32.136.106 ( talk) 02:04, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
D: This is really related to the Black Death =o —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.248.234.126 ( talk) 21:59, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
I'd like to propose that the article be moved to "Plague" or "Plague (disease)" for the reasons outlined above after Naming (again) and in the original proposal.
Please comment on the idea and/or which option is more suitable. If the article is moved to Plague (disease) I can edit it a little and make sub pages for the three types. If it is moved to Plague, which I think might be better, the current page becomes disambiguation and we should probably add a second link to the article, pestilence.
e.g.
I think this would be best in the long run, I hope to help to get the article up to featured status. - cyclosarin ( talk) 06:05, 15 March 2008 (UTC)
Would everyone be happier if this was considered a "split" rather than a "move"? I have already started pneumonic and septicemic articles, and I would be happy to start the new bubonic plague article and redistribute the content from this one.
I think the new main page should be Plague since it is currently only a minor disambiguation page, especially if the main article links to pestilence as I previously suggested. cyclosarin ( talk) 01:07, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
Once this merge proposal is settled and everything's stable, I think someone ought to propose this article for WP:GA. I'd be surprised if it didn't pass easily. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 05:38, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
The following looks to me like it is backwards. I would think the Balck death would have moved much more slowly in 664 than the modern plague. "very different transmission speeds — the Black Death was reported to have spread 385 km in 91 days in 664, compared to 12-15 km a year for the modern Bubonic Plague, with the assistance of trains and cars" dfortini 06:32, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
I think Y. pestis sould be linked to this as it causes plague —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rynosaur ( talk • contribs) 22:19, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
A closed meeting has been held in Ivano-Frankivsk, at which participants agreed that epidemic of the so-called "pneumonic plague" is being spread throughout Ukraine. But the problem is its form is unknown, it is ATYPICAL nobody knows how to treat it. more information here
PlasticShark ( talk) 06:05, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
This doesn't make sense:
Please see here for a list of some fairly notable people who died of the plague, including Royalty and Nobility- Category:Deaths from bubonic plague eg Ali az-Zahir, a Caliph, and Edmund Mortimer, 5th Earl of March, heir presumptive to Richard II of England. Brendandh ( talk) 14:47, 22 April 2010 (UTC) 205.213.240.8 ( talk) 18:03, 3 November 2010 (UTC) Just finished reading 2005 book where this issue is discussed at length. Problem exists. Scientists debate. No definative source, no info on pre historical. Furhther analysis done in 2010 as on Wiki yersenia pestis page says definately source of both epidemics. Also see Wiki camel and posting of reference to 2005 notice from Saudi Arabia avoid eating camel liver as contains Yersenia Pestis. Source: possibly Asian marmots, and the Nova tv special examining the 48 year population explosion of rats feeding on the death-flowering of bamboo would seem an ideal canidate as the rats could have sufficient energy (high protein food) to overflow the valley and spread down to the Ganges delta. Quote from internet source: The bamboo species Melocanna baccifera grows over a large area of Northeast India, primarily in the states of Mizoram and Manipur. It blooms approximately every 48 years, resulting in a human tragedy coinciding with the flowering of this species. Bamboo blossoms produce a fruit packed with protein and other nutrients. Rats feed on the fruits and seeds, and their population increases. After the supply of bamboo seeds and fruits are exhausted, the rats turn to human food sources – invade farms and villages devouring all the crops, and food stored in granaries, resulting in famine. Historically, this phenomenon has lasted for about 3 years, till the rats run out of food. It costs the lives and livelihood of thousands of people. The locals call it ‘Mautam’ or ‘Bamboo death’. Recently it occurred between 2005 and 2007. 205.213.240.8 ( talk) 18:03, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
Another article, Plague vaccine, contradicts this one— here as well as the Yersinia pestis article here. The vaccine article says "There is strong evidence for the efficacy of administration of some plague vaccines in preventing or ameliorating the effects of ... infection ..." whereas this one says "Currently there is no vaccine against the Plague." The Yersinia pestis article says there once was a vaccine ages ago but it didn't really work so now there isn't and experimental development for a new one found it no good for green monkeys. The contradict-tag on the vaccine article points to this talkpage as its own is inactive. Thanks. 92.6.206.226 ( talk) 21:37, 8 June 2011 (UTC)
No consensus to move. I'll note that moving to The plague as suggested is an interesting option. Vegaswikian ( talk) 02:35, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
The bacteria's picture on the top right of the article claims it is 200x magnification. Can this possibly be correct? Even ignoring that it's not clear what this number means when the picture will have a different size on every monitor... But on my screen it looks about 5cm long, so the original bacteria is supposed to be 0.25mm, or 250 micron long? /info/en/?search=File:Bacillus_subtilis_Gram.jpg shows a scaled picture of other rod-shaped germs, and shows their lengths to be merely 10 micron long. So either I'm making some sort of calculation mistake here, or the claim of "200x" is completely mistaken. Nyh ( talk) 09:26, 17 October 2011 (UTC)
Could this be cleaned up by whoever wrote it, because I have read through it multiple times and know what it means ultimately, but the wording could be improved significantly It is found under 'Epidemiology and distribution':
"Contrary to popular belief, rats did not directly start the spread of the bubonic plague. It is mainly a disease in the fleas (Xenopsylla cheopis) that infested the rats, making the rats themselves the first victims of the plague. Infection in a human occurs when a person is bitten by a flea that has been infected by biting a rodent that itself has been infected by the bite of a flea carrying the disease." MarkoPolo56 ( talk) 21:12, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
Rats are not the spreaders of disease but fleas. Once plague has set in it is useless to cull rats, and in fact better to keep them, as fleas prefer rat and will choose them over human if available. Many other animals carry plague, including fleas, cats, squirrels and mice. So maybe change that?
My source: At Home, by Bill Bryson, pages 261-262 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dasyuridae ( talk • contribs) 06:07, 19 August 2013 (UTC)
The article states:
This is clearly wrong as Antarctica is a further exception.
The article states:
How does it compare with malaria or aids?
The article states:
Could a common unit be used such as km/day so that a comparison could be more easily made?
The article states:
Could this be updated?
194.176.105.153 ( talk) 11:22, 31 March 2014 (UTC)
I don't have time to write this up, but a new article offers evidence that European rats did not in fact serve as a reservoir for plague bacteria, as has long been presumed. Instead, the authors argue that plague was repeatedly reintroduced along trade routes from Central Asia.
See: Boris V. Schmid, Ulf Büntgen, W. Ryan Easterday, Christian Ginzler, Lars Walløe, Barbara Bramanti, and Nils Chr. Stenseth. Climate-driven introduction of the Black Death and successive plague reintroductions into Europe. PNAS 2015 : 1412887112v1-201412887.
Download the article at: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/02/20/1412887112.full.pdf+html
Report the plague existed 3000BC: http://www.nature.com/news/bronze-age-skeletons-were-earliest-plague-victims-1.18633
-- CuriousMind01 ( talk) 17:57, 26 October 2015 (UTC)
Debresser the paragraph on the book of Samuel was deliberately removed - it contains dubious factual assertions that are not in line with modern scholarship. Articles on religion are not written from an in-universe perspective. The dating of the the book of Samuel is dubious, the number of authors are dubious, and the verse in question has a different version in the LXX and Vulgate that adds "mice". This is non-specific as to the disease.
This reference includes discussion that discussion of it is wrong (Hebrew "ophal" can mean "Hemorrhoid" (Dysentery)), and that "A widespread view is that biblical stories of this sort are the product of a religious reform movement that flourished hundreds of years after Samuel, in the late Iron Age; but it is acknowledged, nonetheless, that they may have historical kernels"
Freemon, F. R (2005). "Bubonic plague in the Book of Samuel". Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. 98 (9): 436–436. doi: 10.1258/jrsm.98.9.436. ISSN 0141-0768.
Note that the New Scientist article includes an image of an ulcer - historical sources describing "ulcers" may be tularemia rather than bubonic plague
-- Callinus ( talk) 09:14, 27 October 2015 (UTC)
Two things: 1) This article http://www.uib.no/filearchive/rats-plague-arch-akh-lw.pdf suggests human ectoparasites as an alternative mode of transmission. I don't want to mess up the article, so I'm just leaving it here for anyone who's interested. 2) Does anyone know whether people have lifelong immunity after recovering from the plague? I assume so, but I can't find that information in the article. 79.103.155.221 ( talk) 22:05, 16 March 2016 (UTC)
This user is edit-warring, insisting on keeping/changing:
Comments by others on these changes are welcome. His version and my latest version. As far as I can see User:Debresser has only ever edited the article once, some time ago, to add something that was promptly removed (by someone else), so I can't imagine what he thinks he is doing, and his edit summaries are little help. My changes are minimal, to improve the most glaring problems. The article has been neglected, and it would be good if someone competent were to take it on more generally. Johnbod ( talk) 19:34, 30 March 2016 (UTC)
Johnbod, he's not splitting or un-splitting any paragraphs in that diff. That's a list item (where line breaks are WP:ACCESS#Lists violations), and he's removed a line break from the middle of this:
{{cite news|url=http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/health/oregon-man-suffering-plague-critical-condition-article-1.1094782 |title=Oregon man suffering from the plague is in critical condition|work=Daily News|location=New York|date=12 June 2012}}</ref><ref>{{cite
The sole effect of his change was to put the entire citation template on a single line in the wikitext. I know how much you've got on your plate right now, and it's an easy thing to miss, but I cannot imagine you actually objecting to that change. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 15:20, 31 March 2016 (UTC)
For Debresser to claim "in my experience it is a damn good idea to discuss first instead of pushing the revert button, if you want to avoid edit wars" is downright hilarious. You seem to be working your way round to finding that my changes were all improvements, so I expect I don't need to add anything now. Johnbod ( talk) 16:29, 31 March 2016 (UTC)
It looks like the most recent reversions center on whether to limit the TOC, and whether to put the fourth paragraph on the page as the last paragraph of the lead or the first paragraph of the body, in its own section. Are these points important enough to keep worrying about, or shall we consider this resolved? WhatamIdoing ( talk) 02:27, 28 April 2016 (UTC)
The source does not mention her and a short google search only finds the same sentence as on wiki.
I believe this is a dubious claim and maybe a bad joke and should be considered vandalism.
Can someone confirm?
BenjaminKay ( talk) 23:42, 21 December 2016 (UTC)
What other animals besides humans get infected? Just granpa ( talk) 06:26, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
Infobox image caption says "200× magnification." According to /info/en/?search=Magnification#Magnification_and_micron_bar "Magnification figures on printed pictures can be misleading." Near as I can surmise from other sources, these green guys are about 1/2 micron wide and 2 or 3 microns long, which puts the magnification closer to 3000x on my computer screen. Rairden ( talk) 20:39, 6 April 2020 (UTC)
Hi, I added a diagnosis section to this article (paraphrased evidence from the background section of a June 2020 Cochrane Review). I am new to editing on plague, if there are regular editors and experts here who have some feedback to add please do not hesitate to jump in. I did not add in the conclusions of the June 2020 Cochrane Review on rapid diagnostic testing yet, as I do not have enough background in this area to ensure appropriate weight. Does anyone have any suggestions? https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32597510/. Thanks! JenOttawa ( talk) 02:56, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Plague which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. — RMCD bot 01:32, 17 September 2021 (UTC)