The plague: A pox upon the houses of everyone

With ebola spreading across West Africa, the parallels between the modern affliction and the plague of the Middle Ages is unavoidable. Now cured by simple antibiotics, the plague at one time ravaged most of the classical world Among the earliest mentions of plague are the 10 plagues that struck Egypt in approximately the sixth century B.C., and they are supposed to have led to the pharaoh of the time letting the Israelites leave his country. It is, however, not clear what type of plague it might be that would only kill firstborn sons and not affect other members of the family. Plague is mentioned one other time in the Old Testament related to King David; at that time 70,000 people are supposed to have died in a three-day period.

Usually plague is defined as a contagious bacterial disease characterized by fever and delirium caused initially by infected fleas and later spread from person to person – today’s Ebola virus in West Africa immediately comes to mind. The latest speculation is that it has been spread via bats.

When we say plague, what leaps to mind is the bubonic plague of the Middle Ages which is thought to have started in Central Asia or China and spread west and south from there. Millions upon millions died because there was no cure for such a disease, the cause of which no one knew at the time.

The bubonic plague was apparently spread via commerce along the Silk Road and/or invading armies. The first known cases of bubonic plague occurred in the 1330s in China and spread to the Crimea by 1343. The year 1347 was a year in which Constantinople registered the plague and Genoese vessels brought the disease from there where merchants had been engaged in commerce. These traders docked in...