6 Plague Today
نویسنده
چکیده
This chapter contains a brief overview of plague today (current foci, epidemiology, clinical symptoms, causative agent, treatment, and prophylaxis), as seen from the viewpoint of the medical and scientific community. It is not an ‘‘argument’’ but a description of our current observations and understanding of the disease. Three plague pandemics are traditionally described during the Christian era. The first pandemic, designated ‘‘the plague of Justinian’’, broke out in Egypt in 541; the second, known as the ‘‘Black Death’’, erupted inMessina, Sicily, in 1347; and the third began in the war-torn Yunnan province of China and reached Hong Kong in 1894. The network of steamships and railways favoured a rapid spread of the disease over all continents and the colonization of previously unscathed areas. Major advances in the knowledge of plague were made during the early years of the last pandemic. In 1894, Alexandre Yersin identified the aetiologic agent (Yersinia pestis) and showed that rats are a reservoir of the disease. Four years later, Paul-Louis Simond demonstrated that plague is transmitted by fleas. Thanks to the advent of effective public health measures, mass vaccination in 1934, and antibiotic therapy in 1938, the number of victims reported during the third pandemic was in no way comparable to those of the previous two.
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تاریخ انتشار 2008