Bubonic plague - what is this disease

2024 Author: James Gerald | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 14:00

No sooner had the coronavirus pandemic subsided when people were worried by fresh alarming news about the spread of bubonic plague in Mongolia. What kind of disease is it, how is it transmitted, how the bacteria of the bubonic plague look in the photo - more on everything below.

What's really going on

In Mongolia, two people were recently discovered who were diagnosed with bubonic plague by doctors. They turned out to be a 27-year-old boy and a girl, about whose age nothing is known.

Currently, the physical health of infected young people is assessed by doctors as critical. Later, two more people were discovered who also showed signs of bubonic plague.

At the same time, it was revealed that while the girl was a carrier of the virus, she definitely communicated with 60 people and could potentially indirectly infect another 400. All people who could come into contact with the infected were sent to forced self-isolation, and the city of Khovd itself was closed to strict quarantine.

Bubonic plague - what is this disease and what is its origin

The bubonic plague is known in the history of mankind as the "black death", which claimed millions of lives in the Middle Ages, actually "cutting out" a third of the population of Western Europe.

The causative agent of this disease is the bubonic bacillus, which was discovered at the beginning of the 19th century by two researchers - the Swiss and French scientist Alexander Yersen and the Japanese Kitasato Shibasaburo. It was then that people began to get a more or less clear idea of what kind of disease it was and how the bacteria of the bubonic plague could be seen in the photo.

The main symptoms are fever and fever. The bacterium causes terrible pain throughout the body, and the person begins to literally rot from the inside. The bacillus infects the lungs and also contributes to the development and spread of sepsis.

In former times, plague was considered an incurable disease, since the death rate reached 95%, and if it directly touched the lungs, then 100%.

Such a plague was called bubonic precisely because specific growths form on the human body. They fill with pus and later break out, which is why the body is streaked with ulcers, and the patient turns into a carrier of a terrible virus.

Symptoms of the bubonic plague:

• lymph nodes become inflamed and begin to hurt;
• the person constantly feels dizzy;
• the temperature rises sharply, it is capable of reaching 40 degrees;
• the body undergoes transformations, the skin is covered with protruding veins.

The so-called buboes appear mainly on the neck, groin and armpits. Mention of the disease can be found not only in the medical records of scientists in Egypt, Libya and Syria, it is also mentioned in the texts of the Bible.

Spread of the bubonic plague

Is it worth preparing for a new wave of a terrible virus, how is the disease transmitted? In fact, the plague is transmitted by rats, fleas and other small animals and insects. A single bite is enough for the virus to begin its journey through the human body. The incubation period is from 2 to 6 days, sometimes it can stretch up to 12 days.

However, don't panic. Even in the Middle Ages, some people recovered quickly and unexpectedly. It cannot be said that bubonic plague is a sentence, especially since modern methods of treatment have advanced far ahead since those times.

How plague is treated in the modern world

In the Middle Ages, it was believed that you can get infected with the plague by just touching the things or the body of an infected person. For this reason, the most infected person and his clothes were burned. Unfortunately, these methods did not have the desired effect.

For the first time, a cure for the "black death" was invented by the Russian scientist Vladimir Khavkin, and the vaccine was created by biologist Magdalena Pokrovskaya in the middle of the last century. Thus, in the modern world, it is almost impossible to die from bubonic plague if it is detected in a timely manner and urgent treatment is started.

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Now the situation is not as dire as it was in those distant times, so the mortality rate from this disease has significantly decreased. According to statistics, an average of 2.5 thousand people die from it every year. And this is about 5-7% of the total number of infected.

As a rule, it is on the territory of Asia that small and short-term outbreaks of the disease occur, they practically do not affect the European part. Those infected with the bubonic plague are found in Africa and South America.

But there have been no truly massive cases of infection for hundreds of years. In our country, the last time bubonic plague was recorded in the Altai Territory in 2016.

The modern form of bubonic plague is not fatal; you can die from it, like from any other disease, if you delay treatment. Now all health organizations are working to prevent the subsequent spread of the disease on the territory of other states. Thus, there is no need to be afraid of the same situation as 600 years ago. This is confirmed by modern biological scientists.

Summarize

1. Bubonic plague is so called because growths form on the human body in the groin, neck and armpits.
2. The Black Death is transmitted through rodent and flea bites and has an incubation period of 1 to 12 days.
3. Modern methods of treating bubonic plague have advanced significantly compared to the Middle Ages, so it is now quite possible to cure this disease.
4. Infected people will be able to recover thanks to modern drugs.