Symptoms Of The Bubonic Plague In The Middle Ages

Disease Picture: Bubonic Plague Symptoms has an incubation period of 2 to 5 days. Plague is a disease of rodents, only incidentally transmitted to man. When it is transmitted it sometimes causes the most terrible epidemic. It is not particularly confined to tropical countries, but can occur anywhere in the world. For example, when the plague, which was called the 'Black Death' came to England in 1355, it killed 1 million out of the 2 and half million population of that time. There was another severe plague epidemic in England in 1666, and there have been small epidemics up to the present time in many countries.

The symptoms of the bubonic plague in the middle ages begins suddenly with high fever, and soon the lymph glands in the groin become greatly enlarged, and are very painful. These enlarged glands are called bubos, and this form of the disease is known as bubonic plague.

There is also a most severe pneumonia due to plague, called pneumonic plague which can be transmitted by droplets in the air. In this form of plague, when untreated, death is inevitable within 3 days. In bubonic plague the death rate varies from 30 to 90 percent.

Cause. A bacterium called Pasteurella pestis.

Plague Source. The disease is endemic among a variety of wild rodents in many countries. Occasionally the disease is transmitted from them to hunters and other occupationally exposed people. However, epidemics arise only when the plague passes from wild rodents to domestic rats, and from these rats to human.

Plague Disease Route

The plague is transmitted from rat to rat, and from rat to man, by the rat-flea Xenopsylla cheopis. When an epidemic of plague breaks out among rats, the rats died in large numbers, the fleas are deprived of their natural food and then began to bite humans.

It is for this reason that the presence of dead rats in a place precedes the onset of plague. In a severe epidemic when pneumonic plague can occur, the disease is then transmitted from person to person, by means of an aerial route.

Bubonic Plague Susceptibles. As it is an epidemic disease of high mortality, against which few people have any immunity, both children and adults are equally susceptible.

Bubonic Plague Prevention

1. An epidemic in its earliest stage can be controlled by putting down DDT on rat-runs (rat always take the same route around building). The rats then carry the DDT on their fur to their nests, and so the fleas are exterminated both on them and their nestlings, and in the nest itself. DDT can also be blown into holes and into thatch, and put on the floors of houses when cases have occurred.

2. In order to prevent bubonic plague, as well as to improve food preservation, the destruction of rats should always play an important part in public health measures. Bush should be cleared away from homesteads.

3. Persons sick with plague must be isolated in a room which should be sprayed with insecticides.

4. In preventing bubonic plague, there is a good vaccine, and vaccination is useful, especially in rural areas, where antiflea and antirat measures are difficult to put into practice.

5. Antibiotics and sulphonamides can be given to contacts who have been exposed to the disease.

Treatment of the bubonic plague in the middle ages. Sulphonamides and antibiotics in different types of disease.