Yersinia Pestis Research Paper

A plague is a bacterial infection that can take on more than one form. One of the greatest plagues that have stricken mankind throughout history was the Black Death. The Black Death was the outbreak of the bubonic plague that struck Europe and the Mediterranean area between 1347 and 1351. This plague was the most severe plague that hit the earth because of its origin (the spread), the symptoms, and the effects of the plague.

The black death was a pneumonic plague caused by the yersinia pestis bacteria. “It was the greatest demographic crisis of the medieval period, and in proportion to those killed, the single most calamitous epidemiological event in all of history. In my opinion, the black death has been the greatest challenge to social, political, and economic history.

Multiple factors contributed to the spread of this deadly plague, that historians believed originated in Asia and then spread along trade routes to Europe and England. Infected rats carrying fleas that were infected with the Plague took rides on boats and travelled through the routes. While this is how the Plague

The Middle Ages were a very dark time, education became very unimportant and people were forced to live in very close quarters and, consequently, hygiene was atrocious and it made the perfect place for Yersinia Pestis to thrive. Yersinia Pestis is the virus responsible for the Black Death, a deadly disease that rapidly powered through Europe, killing nearly everyone in its way. The Black Death had many gruesome and scary symptoms that made bystanders sick just watching. Some people were more likely to get the Black Death than others. Because peasants had worse living conditions than the nobility, they were far more likely to catch the Plague. The history of the Plague and its track is very surprising to most people and when you see just how

The Plague was a severe outbreak of bacterium Yersinia pestis in the 1300’s and the 1800’s. Killing 25 million people in the 14th century alone it became one of Europe's most grim times in history. The Plague caused people to flee their homes in fear of catching the Black Death. The outbreak began in Peking, China otherwise known as modern day Beijing, capital of China. The disease ended out around 1350, but still had no medically accurate way of treating the disease.

The most common symptom of this disease was the occurrence of tumors around the groin, armpits, and neck. When opened, these tumors oozed and bled. The tumors would soon be followed by fever and the vomiting of blood. Victims would usually die between two to seven days after catching the disease. After dying, the armies would collect the bodies and throw them over the walls of the city. Other symptoms of the plague was a lung condition, which caused difficulty breathing, horrible infections to the respiratory system, and coughing up

Throughout the middle ages, the people believed that this plague came from the gods above as punishment for their sins. The real cause of the plague was infected fleas on rats. These flea-infested rats were attracted to towns and cities because of trash dump on the streets. The infected fleas bite humans and transferred the bacteria, also known as the Bubonic Plague, to the bitten humans. The people in the West, which were infected with the plague, did not experience the same symptoms as the people of the East did. In the East experienced blood gushing from the nose, which was a clear sign of inevitable death; but the people of the West experienced swelling of under the armpits and the groins. These swellings are called tumors. These tumors would spread all over the body from the groins and armpit. Others symptoms of the Bubonic plague may include:

Yersinia pestis is the causative agent of the infamous bubonic plague, primary septicaemic plague, and primary pneumonic plague. Y. pestis was first discovered by Shibasaburo Kitasato and Alexandre Yersin, but due to Yersin’s description of the bacteria being more accurate, this bacterium was named after him (3). There are still disputes going on for who had correctly identified Y. pestis first.

disease, the infected person would notice black painful lumps. These boils would usually appear around the

The roots of this fearsome plague are very chilling to think about knowing that a mere flea can be the cause of the bubonic plagues epidemic. The more specific medical or scientific term for this disease is Yersinia Pestis. This was named after the doctor, Alexandre Yersin, who isolated the bacteria in 1894 during the pandemic that began in China in the 1860’s. The earliest traces of Y Pestis can be found all the way back to the Gobi Desert of Mongolia in the 1320’s. The cause of the sudden eruption is yet to be solved but the earliest major toll it has taken in our history books is in China in the 1330’s during the expansion of trade in the middle and high

The source is a parasite that has carried the bubonic plague for over 600 years.This source is a primary because this is a parasite that has the Bubonic Plague from the Black Death. My source tells us that the bubonic plague from the black death existed and that it can help us understand the disease. Such as the cause of the disease, where it came from and the symptoms of the disease. We can also track down how much blood and how many rats blood it took. This helps us find a end to the plague. 25 million people died from this tiny parasite, thats over the population of Australia. Yersinia pestis is a zoonotic bacterial infection transmitted by a flea parasite. The plague infection is typically spread from one rodent to another after

It is impossible to discuss Europe’s history without mentioning the Plague of 1348, also known as the Black Death. The Black Death reached Italian shores in the spring of 1348. The presence of such a plague was enormously devastating making its mark in unprecedented numbers in recorded history. According to records, it is estimated to have killed a third of Europe’s population. The Black Death was caused by bacteria named Yersinia Pestis. This germ was transferred from rats to fleas and then to humans. This disease spread quickly due to the infestation of rats. Also, sanitary conditions were very poor which did not help the problem at all. When a human was infected, the bacteria moved from the bloodstream

There are many theories on how the plague found its way to Europe. A journalist from National Geographic, Cameron Walker said, “The bacterium that causes bubonic plague, Yersinia pestis, lives inside the gut of its main carrier, the flea. The plague likely spread to Europe on the backs of shipboard black rats that carried plague-infested fleas.” Europe’s widespread trade system was the main cause of the plague spreading to England, Italy, France, and other neighboring countries (Richard). This bacterium caused infection not only in rodents, but also in humans and insects. The flea attached itself to a host and infected them with the disease by producing blockages in the stomach, making it that no blood can pass through (Sutyak). The infection is highly contagious. Something as simple as a cough could cause the bacteria to go air borne and kill numerous people in a matter of days. The Black Death started to quickly spread, resulting in countries being blindsided and having the disease kill a vast sum of their population. The case of the bubonic plague was the only disease to affect Western Europe on a worldwide scale (Damen).

It was believed in the middle ages that this disease was caused by poor hygiene, bad eating habits, corrupted humid air, and a lack of rest. Once a person was thought to be infected the doctors would move them to a non-infected area thinking that this would heal the persons illness instead this transported the disease even further than normal. In modern times we have made leaps and bounds to control this illness. One of the main problems of the plague is that it is not treatable until the victim gets tested and confirmed that the plague is the illness. Once that is done they will start receiving high doxycycline doses and many other types of antibiotics. The mortality rate for someone that is not treated is 50-90% compared to treated cases of 1-15%.

Plague is one of the most important re-emerging zoonotic diseases in the history of public health in the world and can remain quiescent for more than thirty to forty years. The disease is caused by a gram negative, non motile and non sporing coccobacillus bacterium known as Yersinia pestis and has caused devastating effects in the entire world. The causative agent of plague disease was discovered by a young Swiss physician, Alexandre Yersin, in Hong Kong during the beginning of the third plague pandemic in 1894. The bacterium infects warm blooded animals, especially rodents, which are the usual host reservoirs while human beings and other mammals are occasionally affected. The bacterium is normally transmitted from one host