When Plague Strikes

Overview of: 'When Plague Strikes' by James Giblin

This book is separated into three main parts the Black Death, smallpox, and aids. This book gives facts of occurring diseases and the diseases from the past. This books content mainly took place in Europe and Asia when it gave facts dates and examples. It explains the nature and symptoms of diseases from long ago.

The bubonic Plague mainly affects rodents, but fleas can transmit the disease to people. Once people are infected, they infect others very rapidly the disease struck and killed people with terrible speed. They called it "The Black Death" because of the black spots it produced on the skin. A terrible killer was loose across Europe, and medieval medicine had nothing to go against it. In five years twenty five million people were dead because of the Black Death. So many people had died that there were serious labor shortages all over Europe. The Black Death came in three forms, the bubonic, pneumonic, and septicemia. Each different form of plague killed people in a nasty way. All forms were caused by a bacterium called Yersinia pestis. The symptoms were enlarged and inflamed lymph nodes (around arm pits, neck and groin). The term 'bubonic' refers to the characteristic bubo or enlarged lymphatic gland. "Victims were subject to headaches, nausea, aching joints, fever of 101-105 degrees, vomiting, and a general feeling of illness. Symptoms took from 1-7 days to appear. Bubonic plague is just the medical term for the Black Death" (Giblin 11).

Smallpox is a serious, contagious, and sometimes fatal infectious disease. There is no specific treatment for smallpox disease, and the only prevention is vaccination. The name smallpox is derived from the Latin word for "spotted" and refers to the raised bumps that appear on the face and body of an infected person. Smallpox outbreaks have occurred from time to time for thousands of years, but the disease is now eradicated after a successful worldwide vaccination program. The last case of smallpox in the United States was in 1949. The last naturally