Overview of: ‘When Plague Strikes’ by James Giblin This book is separated into three main parts the Black Death, smallpox, and aids. This book gives facts of occurring diseases and the diseases from the past. This books content mainly took place in Europe and Asia when it gave facts dates and examples. It explains the nature and symptoms of diseases from long ago. The bubonic Plague mainly affects rodents, but fleas can transmit the disease to people. Once people are infected, they infect others very rapidly the disease struck and killed people with terrible speed.
They called it ‘The Black Death’ because of the black spots it produced on the skin. A terrible killer was loose across Europe, and medieval medicine had nothing to go against it. In five years twenty five million people were dead because of the Black Death. So many people had died that there were serious labor shortages all over Europe. The Black Death came in three forms, the bubonic, pneumonic, and septicemia.
Each different form of plague killed people in a nasty way. All forms were caused by a bacterium called Yersinia pestis. The symptoms were enlarged and inflamed lymph nodes (around arm pits, neck and groin).
The term ‘bubonic’ refers to the characteristic bubo or enlarged lymphatic gland. “Victims were subject to headaches, nausea, aching joints, fever of 101-105 degrees, vomiting, and a general feeling of illness. Symptoms took from 1-7 days to appear.
The Essay on The Black Death And The Transformation Of The West
Herlihy argues that the Black Death paved the way for an explosion of technological advances, greatly altered religion and theology, and completely transformed European society as a whole. The Black Death was catalystic for the transformation from a feudalistic society, to Europe as we now know it. Herlihy argues that the havoc wreaked by the Black Death and subsequent diseases spurred the ...
Bubonic plague is just the medical term for the Black Death” (Giblin 11).
Smallpox is a serious, contagious, and sometimes fatal infectious disease. There is no specific treatment for smallpox disease, and the only prevention is vaccination. The name smallpox is derived from the Latin word for “spotted” and refers to the raised bumps that appear on the face and body of an infected person. Smallpox outbreaks have occurred from time to time for thousands of years, but the disease is now eradicated after a successful worldwide vaccination program. The last case of smallpox in the United States was in 1949.
The last naturally occurring case in the world was in Somalia in 1977. Generally, direct and fairly prolonged face-to-face contact is required to spread smallpox from one person to another. Smallpox also can be spread through direct contact with infected bodily fluids or contaminated objects such as bedding or clothing. “The first symptoms of smallpox include fever, malaise, head and body aches, and sometimes vomiting.
The fever is usually high, in the range of 101 to 104 degrees Fahrenheit. At this time, people are usually too sick to carry on their normal activities and may last for two to four days” (Giblin 60).
AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) is the final and most serious stage of HIV disease, which causes severe damage to the immune system. The Centers for Disease Control has defined AIDS as beginning when a person with HIV infection has a cell (called ‘t-cell’, a type of immune cell) count below 200. It is also defined by numerous opportunistic infections and cancers that occur in the presence of HIV infection.
Those at highest risk include homosexual or bisexual men engaging in unprotected sex, the sexual partners of those who participate in high-risk activities, infants born to mothers with HIV, and people who received blood transfusions or clotting products between 1977 and 1985 (prior to standard screening for the virus in the blood).
Aids was mostly spread by gay sex (Giblin 119).
