What’s On My Bookshelf?
A Review: Plagues Upon the Earth, by Kyle Harper
The Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse | Part 2
Highlights
We still have much to learn from the experience of those who lived and died before us. It is urgent that we do so. The long history of disease counsels us to expect the unexpected. The worst threat may be the one we cannot see coming.
Bubonic Plague (Black Death)
Three stages in history - The Justinian Plague (500’s A.D.), The Black Death (1300’s A.D.) and
Modern Era Plague (1890’s A.D.)
Almost anywhere the evidence in Europe is rich enough to form a quantitative impression, the Black Death carried off 50-60 percent of the population...the death toll is always staggeringly high. Although many a textbook still claims that the Black Death carried off a third of the continent, in reality, the best estimates are closer to half...In Europe alone, forty million or more might have been claimed by this bacterium. The plague is a killer in a class by itself
Small Pox
Endemic throughout the Eastern Hemisphere. Brought to the Americas by the conquistadors.
Major outbreaks of small pox occurred on Hispaniola and other islands in the Caribbean from the earliest days of discovery but then jumped from the Caribbean to the shores of Mexico in 1520. By the time Cortez approached the capital city of the Aztecs a year later, it had been “hollowed out” by the deadly disease. The small pox devastation continued along the trade routes to the north and to central and south America, having the same impact. Measles came alongside and made its way to the mainland continuing its decimation of those small pox hadn’t claimed.
In the 1700’s it accounted for 10-15% of all mortality in Europe.
As the practice of vaccination extended world-wide, small pox was finally eliminated entirely in 1977. It was a global triumph. To date, small pox is the first and only human pathogen that has been driven to extinction.
The Great Influenza (1918/1919)
Killed approximately 50,000,000 people.
One of the single most deadly events in global history. And it infected perhaps one in three persons alive, making it probably the single most coordinated rapid attack by a parasite in the history of the planet.
And the threat of future novel influenza strains, replaying the events of 1918 to 1919 remains one of the most dangerous lurking threats to human health.
The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History, by John Barry.