ANTHROP 2U03 Chapter 1: Plague: What's in a Name
16 Jul 2018
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Document Summary
Plague in greek and latin meant blow, something sudden and acute. Now, the world plague is a generic term applicable to almost any calamity. Plague: an epidemic disease of particular severity and dramatic impact, and a disease which probably always had the same causative agent, yersinia pestis. Plague has been distinguished from other epidemic diseases in two ways: Special horrors it inflicts on its victims and threatened all around them. Plague has decreased but not disappeared; appears in isolated epidemics. Now classified as a re-emerging disease in africa and asia where ~5000 cases have been reported since 1990. The organism was first isolated in 1894 and erupted in china and india and became a specific entity. A disease coming in from the outside that came into human populations where it was transported btwn cities by infected rats and was then transmitted to local rats and fleas.
