Plague (disease)

Plague
Yersinia pestis seen at 200× magnification with a fluorescent label. This bacterium, carried and spread by fleas, is the cause of the various forms of the disease plague.
ICD-10	A20
ICD-9	020
DiseasesDB	14226
MedlinePlus	000596
eMedicine	med/3381
MeSH	D010930

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Plague is a deadly infectious disease caused by the enterobacteria Yersinia pestis (Pasteurella pestis). Plague is a zoonotic, primarily carried by rodents (notably rats) and spread to humans via fleas. Plague is notorious throughout history, due to the unprecedented scale of death and devastation it wrought. Plague is still endemic in some parts of the world.

Name

The epidemiological use of the term plague is currently applied to bacterial infections that cause buboes, although historically the medical use of the term plague has been applied to pandemic infections in general. Plague is often synonymous with "bubonic plague" but this only describes one of its manifestations. Other names have been used to describe this disease, such as "The Black Plague" and "The Black Death", the latter is now used primarily to describe the second, and most devastating pandemic of the disease.

Infection and transmission

File:Scanning Electron Micrograph of a Flea.jpg

Xenopsylla cheopis primary vector of Bubonic plague

Bubonic plague is mainly a disease in rodents and fleas (Xenopsylla cheopis). 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. The bacteria multiply inside the flea, sticking together to form a plug that blocks its stomach and causes it to begin to starve. The flea then voraciously bites a host and continues to feed, even though it cannot quell its hunger, and consequently the flea vomits blood tainted with the bacteria back into the bite wound. The bubonic plague bacterium then infects a new victim, and the flea eventually dies from starvation. Serious outbreaks of plague are usually started by other disease outbreaks in rodents, or a rise in the rodent population.

In 1894, two bacteriologists, Alexandre Yersin of France and Shibasaburo Kitasato of Japan, independently isolated the bacterium in Hong Kong responsible for the Third Pandemic. Though both investigators reported their findings, a series of confusing and contradictory statements by Kitasato eventually led to the acceptance of Yersin as the primary discoverer of the organism. Yersin named it Pasteurella pestis in honor of the Pasteur Institute, where he worked, but in 1967 it was moved to a new genus, renamed Yersinia pestis in honor of Yersin. Yersin also noted that rats were affected by plague not only during plague epidemics but also often preceding such epidemics in humans, and that plague was regarded by many locals as a disease of rats: villagers in China and India asserted that, when large numbers of rats were found dead, plague outbreaks in people soon followed.

In 1898, the French scientist Paul-Louis Simond (who had also come to China to battle the Third Pandemic) established the rat-flea vector that drives the disease. He had noted that persons who became ill did not have to be in close contact with each other to acquire the disease. In Yunnan, China, inhabitants would flee from their homes as soon as they saw dead rats, and on the island of Formosa (Taiwan), residents considered handling dead rats a risk for developing plague. These observations led him to suspect that the flea might be an intermediary factor in the transmission of plague, since people acquired plague only if they were in contact with recently dead rats, but not affected if they touched rats that had been dead for more than 24 hours. In a now classic experiment, Simond demonstrated how a healthy rat died of plague after infected fleas had jumped to it from a plague-dead rat.

History

Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665), French. The Plague of Ashdod, 1630. Oil on canvas, 148 x 198 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris, France, Giraudon/Bridgeman Art Library.

"Der Doktor Schnabel von Rom" (English: "Doctor Beak of Rome") engraving by Paul Fürst (after J Columbina). The beak is a primitive gas mask, stuffed with substances (such as spices and herbs) worn by physicians thought to ward off the plague.

The earliest (though unvalidated) account describing a possible plague epidemic is found in I Samuel 5:6 of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh). In this account, the Philistines of Ashdod were stricken with a plague for the crime of stealing the Ark of the Covenant from the Children of Israel. These events have been dated to approximately the second half of the eleventh century B.C. The word "tumors" is used in most English translations to describe the sores that came upon the Philistines. The Hebrew, however, can be interpreted as "swelling in the secret parts". The account indicates that the Philistine city and its political territory were stricken with a "ravaging of mice" and a plague, bringing death to a large segment of the population.

In the second year of the Peloponnesian War (430 B.C.), Thucydides described an epidemic disease which was said to have begun in Ethiopia, passed through Egypt and Libya, then come to the Greek world. In the Plague of Athens, the city lost possibly one third of its population, including Pericles. Modern historians disagree on whether the plague was a critical factor in the loss of the war. Although this epidemic has long been considered an outbreak of plague, many modern scholars believe that typhus[2], smallpox, or measles may better fit the surviving descriptions. A recent study of the DNA found in the dental pulp of plague victims, led by Manolis J. Papagrigorakis, suggests that typhoid was actually responsible. Other scientists dispute this conclusion, citing serious methodological flaws in the DNA study.

In the first century A.D., Rufus of Ephesus, a Greek anatomist, refers to an outbreak of plague in Libya, Egypt, and Syria. He records that Alexandrian doctors named Dioscorides and Posidonius described symptoms including acute fever, pain, agitation, and delirium. Buboes—large, hard, and non-suppurating—developed behind the knees, around the elbows, and "in the usual places." The death toll of those infected was very high. Rufus also wrote that similar buboes were reported by a Dionysius Curtus, who may have practiced medicine in Alexandria in the third century B.C. If this is correct, the eastern Mediterranean world may have been familiar with bubonic plague at that early date.

First Pandemic: Plague of Justinian

Main article: Plague of Justinian

The Plague of Justinian in A.D. 541–542 is the first known attack on record, and marks the first firmly recorded pattern of bubonic plague. This outbreak is thought to have originated in Ethiopia. The huge city of Constantinople imported massive amounts of grain, mostly from Egypt, to feed its citizens. The grain ships were the source of contagion for the city, with massive public granaries nurturing the rat and flea population. At its peak the plague was killing 10,000 people in Constantinople every day and ultimately destroyed perhaps 40% of the city's inhabitants. It went on to destroy up to a quarter of the human population of the eastern Mediterranean.

In A.D. 588 a second major wave of plague spread through the Mediterranean into what is now France. It is estimated that the Plague of Justinian killed as many as 100 million people across the world. It caused Europe's population to drop by around 50% between 541 and 700. It also may have contributed to the success of the Arab conquests. An outbreak of it in the A.D. 560s was described in A.D. 790 as causing "swellings in the glands...in the manner of a nut or date" in the groin "and in other rather delicate places followed by an unbearable fever". While the swellings in this description have been identified by some as buboes, there is some contention as to whether the pandemic should be attributed to the bubonic plague, Yersinia pestis, known in modern times.

Third Pandemic

Main article: Third Pandemic

The Third Pandemic began in China in 1855, spreading plague to all inhabited continents and ultimately killing more than 12 million people in India and China alone. Casualty patterns indicate that waves of this pandemic may have come from two different sources. The first was primarily bubonic and was carried around the world through ocean-going trade, transporting infected persons, rats, and cargos harboring fleas. The second, more virulent strain was primarily pneumonic in character, with a strong person-to-person contagion. This strain was largely confined to Manchuria and Mongolia. Researchers during the "Third Pandemic" identified plague vectors and the plague bacterium (see above), leading in time to modern treatment methods.

Plague occurred in Russia in 1877–1889 in rural areas near the Ural Mountains and the Caspian Sea. Efforts in hygiene and patient isolation reduced the spread of the disease, with approximately 420 deaths in the region. Significantly, the region of Vetlianka in this area is near a population of the bobak marmot, a small rodent considered a very dangerous plague reservoir. The last significant Russian outbreak of Plague was in Siberia in 1910 after sudden demand for Marmot skins (a substitute for Sable) increased the price by 400 percent. The traditional hunters would not hunt a sick Marmot and it was taboo to eat the fat from under the arm (the axillary lymphatic gland that often harboured the plague) so outbreaks tended to be confined to single individuals. The price increase, however, attracted thousands of Chinese hunters from Manchuria who not only caught the sick animals but ate the fat which was considered a delicacy. The plague spread from the hunting grounds to the terminus of the Chinese Eastern Railway and then followed the track for 2,700 km. The plague lasted 7 months and killed 60,000 people.

The bubonic plague continued to circulate through different ports globally for the next fifty years; however, it was primarily found in Southeast Asia. An epidemic in Hong Kong in 1894 had particularly high death rates, greater than 75%. As late as 1897, medical authorities in the European powers organized a conference in Venice, seeking ways to keep the plague out of Europe. The disease reached the Republic of Hawaii in December of 1899, and the Board of Health’s decision to initiate controlled burns of select buildings in Honolulu’s Chinatown turned into an uncontrolled fire which led to the inadvertent burning of most of Chinatown on January 20 1900 according to the Star Bulletin's Feature on the Great Chinatown Fire. Plague finally reached the United States later that year in San Francisco.

Although the outbreak that began in China in 1855 is conventionally known as the Third Pandemic, (the First being the Plague of Justinian and the second being the Black Death), it is unclear whether there have been fewer, or more, than three major outbreaks of bubonic plague. Most modern outbreaks of bubonic plague amongst humans have been preceded by a striking, high mortality amongst rats, yet this phenomenon is absent from descriptions of some earlier plagues, especially the Black Death. The buboes, or swellings in the groin, that are especially characteristic of bubonic plague, are a feature of other diseases as well.

Plague as a biological weapon

Plague has a long history as a biological weapon. Historical accounts from ancient China and medieval Europe detail the use of infected animal carcasses, such as cows or horses, and human carcasses, by the Xiongnu/Huns, Mongols, Turks, and other groups, to contaminate enemy water supplies. Han Dynasty General Huo Qubing is recorded to have died of such a contamination while engaging in warfare against the Xiongnu. Plague victims were also reported to have been tossed by catapult into cities under siege.

During World War II, the Japanese Army developed weaponised plague, based on the breeding and release of large numbers of fleas. During the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, Unit 731 deliberately infected Chinese, Korean, and Manchurian civilians and prisoners of war with the plague bacterium. These subjects, termed "maruta", or "logs", were then studied by dissection, others by vivisection while still conscious. Members of the unit such as Shiro Ishii were exonerated from the Tokyo tribunal by Douglas MacArthur but twelve of them were prosecuted in the Khabarovsk War Crime Trials in 1949 during which where some admitted having spread Bubonic plague within a 36-km radius around the city of Changde.

After World War II, both the United States and the Soviet Union developed means of weaponising pneumonic plague. Experiments included various delivery methods, vacuum drying, sizing the bacterium, developing strains resistant to antibiotics, combining the bacterium with other diseases (such as diphtheria), and genetic engineering. Scientists who worked in USSR bio-weapons programs have stated that the Soviet effort was formidable and that large stocks of weaponised plague bacteria were produced. Information on many of the Soviet projects is largely unavailable. Aerosolized pneumonic plague remains the most significant threat. The plague can be easily treated with antibiotics, thus a widespread epidemic is highly unlikely in developed countries.

Worldwide distribution of plague infected animals 1998

1994 Epidemic in Surat, India

In 1994, there was a pneumonic plague epidemic in Surat, India that resulted in 52 deaths and in a large internal migration of about 300,000 residents, who fled fearing quarantine .

A combination of heavy monsoon rain and clogged sewers led to massive flooding which resulted in unhygienic conditions and a number of uncleared animal carcasses. It is believed that this situation precipitated the epidemic.. There was widespread fear that the flood of refugees might spread the epidemic to other parts of India and the world, but that scenario was averted, probably as a result of effective public health response mounted by the Indian health authorities .

Much like the Black Death that spread through medieval Europe, some questions still remain unanswered about the 1994 epidemic in Surat.

Initial questions about whether it was an epidemic of plague arose because the Indian health authorities were unable to culture Yersinia pestis, but this could have been due to poor laboratory procedures. Yet, there are several lines of evidence strongly suggesting that it was a plague epidemic: blood tests for Yersinia were positive, a number of individuals showed antibodies against Yersinia and the clinical symptoms displayed by the affected were all consistent with the disease being plague .

Other Contemporary cases

Two non-plague Yersinia - Yersinia pseudotuberculosis and Yersinia enterocolitica - still exist in fruit and vegetables from the Caucasus Mountains east across southern Russia and Siberia, to Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and parts of China; in Southwest and Southeast Asia, Southern and East Africa (including the island of Madagascar); in North America, from the Pacific Coast eastward to the western Great Plains, and from British Columbia south to Mexico; and in South America in two areas: the Andes mountains and Brazil. There is no plague-infected animal population in Europe or Australia.

• On 31 August, 1984, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported a case of pneumonic plague in Claremont, California. The CDC believes that the patient, a veterinarian, contracted plague from a stray cat. This could not be confirmed since the cat was destroyed prior to the onset of symptoms.
• From 1995 to 1998, annual outbreaks of plague were witnessed in Mahajanga, Madagascar as per a study done by Pascal Boisier and other scientists and publish in Emerging Infectious Diseases journal in March 2002.

• In the U.S., about half of all food cases of plague since 1970 have occurred in New Mexico. There were 2 plague deaths in the state in 2006, the first fatalities in 12 years.

• In Fall of 2002, a New Mexico couple contracted the disease, just prior to a visit to New York City. They both were treated by antibiotics, but the male required amputation of both feet to fully recover, due to the lack of blood flow to his feet, cut off by the bacteria.

• On 19 April 2006, CNN News and others reported a case of plague in Los Angeles, California, lab technician Nirvana Kowlessar, the first reported case in that city since 1984.

• In May 2006, KSL Newsradio reported a case of plague found in dead field mice and chipmunks at Natural Bridges about 40 miles (64 km) west of Blanding in San Juan County, Utah.

• In May 2006, AZ Central reported a case of plague found in a cat.

• One hundred deaths resulting from pneumonic plague were reported in Ituri district of the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo in June 2006. Control of the plague was proving difficult due to the ongoing conflict.

• It was reported in September 2006 that three mice infected with Yersinia pestis apparently disappeared from a laboratory belonging to the Public Health Research Institute, located on the campus of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, which conducts anti-bioterrorism research for the United States government.

• On 16 May 2007, an 8-year-old hooded capuchin monkey in the Denver Zoo died of the bubonic plague. Five squirrels and a rabbit were also found dead on zoo grounds and tested positive for the disease.

• On 5 June 2007 in Scotland, UK a 68 year old woman developed bubonic plague, which progressed to pneumonic plague.

• On 2 November 2007, Eric York, a 37 year old wildlife biologist for the National Park Service's Template:PDFlink and The Felidae Conservation Fund, was found dead in his home at Grand Canyon National Park. On 27 October, York performed a necropsy on a mountain lion that had likely perished from the disease and three days afterward York complained of flu-like symptoms and called in sick from work. He was treated at a local clinic but was not diagnosed with any serious ailment. The discovery of his death sparked a minor health scare, with officials stating he likely died of either plague or hantavirus, and 49 people who had come in to contact with York were given aggressive antibiotic treatments. None of them fell ill. Autopsy results released on November 9th, confirmed the presence of Y. pestis in his body, confirming plague as a likely cause of death.

Literary and popular culture references

• The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio (1350). Takes place in Florence in 1348, during the outbreak of the Black Death.
• Romeo and Juliet (1597) Friar John was unable to go to Mantua and deliver a letter to Romeo because of Bubonic Plague quarantine.
• A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe (1722). A fictional first hand account of the London outbreak of 1665. Probably based on the experiences of Defoe's uncle.
• "The Masque of the Red Death" (1842) by Edgar Allan Poe includes a vivid description of pestilence that some scholars have interpreted to be septicemic plague.
• I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed) (1842) by Alessandro Manzoni set in early 17th century in Northern Italy, is one of the most read and better known classical novels in Italian literature. Contains a detailed and vivid account of society during the plague outbreak in its time.
• Narcissus and Goldmund by Hermann Hesse (1930). A fictional account in which the main character ends up witnessing the effects of the plague first-hand.
• The Plague by Albert Camus (1947) depicts an outbreak of plague at the Algerian city of Oran. The disease, often interpreted as a metaphor for the German occupation of France in World War II, serves as a means for the author to examine his characters' responses to hardship, suffering and death.
• Panic in the Streets (1950) by Elia Kazan. A murder victim is found to be infected with pneumonic plague. To prevent a catastrophic epidemic, the police must find and inoculate the killers and their associates.
• (Don't Fear) The Reaper (1976) by Blue Öyster Cult. The line "40,000 men and women everyday... Like Romeo and Juliet - 40,000 men and women everyday... Redefine happiness - Another 40,000 coming everyday... We can be like they are" is a reference to the number of people dying daily during The Black Plague"
• The Plague Dogs (1977), by Richard Adams. A fictional story in which two dogs, Rowf and Snitter, escape from a British government research laboratory and are hunted down by the government as potential carriers of the plague.
• Doomsday Book by Connie Willis (1992). A Hugo award and Nebula award-winning historical science fiction novel, in which a time-traveler inadvertently ends up in the plague-ridden England of 1348.
• King of Shadows (1999), by Susan Cooper. Nathan Field, an actor, is infected with the bubonic plague while staying in London, which sends him back in time to the Elizabethan ages.
• Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister (1999), a novel by Gregory Maguire, takes place in 17th Century Haarlem, Netherlands, where a resurgence of the plague occurred.
• Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks (2001), a fictional story of an historical event in which the small Derbyshire village of Eyam quarantines themselves once infected with the plague.
• The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson (2002). Presents an alternate history of the world where the population of Europe is obliterated by the Black Death setting the stage for a world without Europeans and Christianity.
• In Dies the Fire by S. M. Stirling in (2004), an epidemic of the Black Death is described around the city of Portland, Oregon.
• Episode 18 of the second season of American television show House features the bubonic plague.
• In the season one episode of Torchwood, "End of Days", a woman from the 14th century infected by the plague falls through the rift into Cardiff, causing an infection of dozens of people in a local hospital.
• Third Watch In the third episode of the fifth season, a number of illegal immigrants are discovered in the back of a truck and brought to hospital where they are diagnosed with the plague. The situation is complicated by the fact one of the immigrants managed to flee.
• In The Keys to the Kingdom by Garth Nix, Suzy Turquoise Blue, one of the Piper's children, was led to the House by the Piper from London during the Great Plague of London.
• Grey's Anatomy In the first episode of the third season, a couple comes into the hospital because of flu symptoms, but get in a car crash along the way because the woman passed out while driving. Different rooms in the hospital are quarantined, and the woman in the crash dies after surgery, due to complications from the plague.
• In Grand Theft Auto Advance, Liberty City is said to be affected by Bubonic plague.
• The band Modest Mouse references "the rats and the fleas" that caused the disease to spread to humans in their song March into the Sea.
• An episode of the TV show Wire in the Blood features a strain of bubonic plague as a biological weapon.
• In Spooks Series 6 (episodes one and two) a fictional virus that causes symptoms mimicking pneumonic plague is accidentally released in London.
• Lux perpetua (2006) by Andrzej Sapkowski. One of the main characters is murdered by magically induced septicemic plague.
• World Without End (2007) by Ken Follett. The plague's spread throughout Europe in the 14th century is an integral part of the book's storyline.
• The Shifting Tide (2004) by Anne Perry. The plague enters England via a ship transporting ivory.
• In an episode of the TV show NCIS, SWAK, a team member gets infected with an engineered variant of pneumonic plague after opening a contaminated envelope.

References

Bibliography

• Weatherford 2004: 242-250
• Benedictow, Ole J. The Black Death 1346-1353: The Complete History. DS Brewer, 2006. ISBN 978-1843832140.
• Biraben, Jean-Noel. Les Hommes et la Peste The Hague 1975.
• Buckler, John and Bennet D. Hill and John P. McKay. "A History of Western Society, 5th Edition." New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1995.
• Cantor, Norman F., In the Wake of the Plague: the Black Death and the World It Made New York: Harper Perennial, 2002. ISBN 978-0060014346.
• de Carvalho, Raimundo Wilson; Serra-Freire, Nicolau Maués; Linardi, Pedro Marcos; de Almeida, Adilson Benedito; and da Costa, Jeronimo Nunes (2001). Small Rodents Fleas from the Bubonic Plague Focus Located in the Serra dos Órgãos Mountain Range, State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Memórias do Instituto Oswaldo Cruz 96(5), 603–609. PMID 11500756. this manuscript reports a census of potential plague vectors (rodents and fleas) in a Brazilian focus region (i.e. region associated with cases of disease); free PDF download Retrieved 2005-03-02
• Chase, Marilyn. The Barbary Plague: The Black Death in Victorian San Francisco. New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2004. ISBN 978-0375757082.
• Cohn, Samuel K. (2003). The Black Death Transformed: Disease and Culture in Early Renaissance Europe. A Hodder Arnold. p. 336. ISBN 0-340-70646-5.
• Gregg, Charles T. Plague!: The shocking story of a dread disease in America today. New York, NY: Scribner, 1978, ISBN 0-684-15372-6.
• Ernest Jawetz, et al. Medical Microbiology. 18th ed. United States: Prentice-Hall International Inc., 1989. ISBN 0-8385-6238-8
• Kelly, John. The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time. New York: HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 2005. ISBN 0-06-000692-7.
• McNeill, William H. Plagues and People. New York: Anchor Books, 1976. ISBN 0-385-12122-9. Reprinted with new preface 1998.
• Mohr, James C. Plague and Fire: Battling Black Death and the 1900 Burning of Honolulu's Chinatown. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0-19-516231-5.
• Moote, A. Lloyd, and Dorothy C. Moote. The Great Plague: The Story of London's Most Deadly Year. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. ISBN 978-0801877834.
• Orent, Wendy. Plague: The Mysterious Past and Terrifying Future of the World's Most Dangerous Disease. New York: Free Press, 2004. ISBN 0-7432-3685-8.
• Papagrigorakis, Manolis J., Christos Yapijakis, Philippos N. Synodinos, and Effie Baziotopoulou-Valavani. "DNA examination of ancient dental pulp incriminates typhoid fever as a probable cause of the Plague of Athens," International Journal of Infectious Diseases 10 (2006): 206-214. ISSN 1201-9712.
• Patrick, Adam. "Disease in Antiquity: Ancient Greece and Rome," in Diseases in Antiquity, editors: Don Brothwell and A. T. Sandison. Springfield, Illinois; Charles C. Thomas, 1967.
• Platt, Colin. King Death: The Black Death and its Aftermath in Late-Medieval England Toronto University Press, 1997.
• Rosen, William (2007). Justinian's Flea: Plague, Empire, and the Birth of Europe. Viking Penguin. p. 367. ISBN 978-0-670-03855-8.
• Simpson, W. J. A Treatise on Plague. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1905.
• Spielvogel, Jackson J. Western Civilization: A Brief History Vol. 1: to 1715. Belmont, Calif.: West/Wadsworth, 1999, Ch. 3, p. 56, paragraph 2. ISBN 0-534-56062-8.

External links

• World Health Organization
  • Health topic
  • Communicable Disease Surveillance & Response - Impact of plague & Information resources
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
  • CDC Plague map world distribution, publications, information on bioterrorism preparedness and response regarding plague
  • Infectious Disease Information more links including travelers' health
• Symptoms, causes, pictures of bubonic plague
• Secrets of the Dead . Mystery of the Black Death PBS
• Template:PDFlink
• Researchers sound the alarm: the multidrug resistance of the plague bacillus could spread
• Plague - LoveToKnow 1911
• Genome information is available from the NIAID Enteropathogen Resource Integration Center (ERIC)