In the beginning diseases were thought to be a kind of punishment from God, rather than an infection caused by a foreign body. Later this was found to be untrue, and we now have an entire field of science devoted to the study of these diseases, the foreign bodies that cause them, and treatments for ...

During the sixth century, an overwhelming epidemic struck Constantinople and spread westward through what is modern day Greece, Italy, France, and Spain. This epidemic, later known as The Black Death killed thousands of people throughout the 1340's and 1350's (Herlihy 20). "Plague&q...

As the Italian writer Boccaccio said the victims, "ate lunch with their friends and dinner with their ancestors in paradise." That was a very realistic description of a plague that ran rampant throughout the world in the early 1300's. The Black Death, or The Bubonic Plague, killed e...

The Bubonic Plague was a deadly disease that was spread by fleas on rats. During the Middle Ages, millions of the people in various countries died from this sickness, also referred to as the Black Death, and were in chaos. Yet, the Bubonic Plague can be considered a fortunate event in...

AIDS has taken many lives in the short time it has been around. It spread rapidly before doctors knew what it was and how it spread. But, with awareness it has slowed down. The bubonic plague took one-third of the European population, violently attacking peoples' lives. It was the last time a d...

In the early 1330s, the Bubonic Plague first hit China where it infected rodents such as squirrels, prairie dogs and rats. Fleas transmitted the bacteria from rodent to rodent, but as the plague began to take a toll on the rodent population, fleas began looking for another host; thus, the spread o...

Pandemics Throughout history, pandemics/epidemics have had dire effects on societies and sent shockwaves through the world. They have undermined economies and eroded the very foundations and values these societies were based on. Two of these pandemics, perhaps the worst, are the Bubonic ...