Bleeding Edge

–Painting depicting the “Plague of Athens” and titled “Plague in an Ancient City”  by Michael Sweerts, circa 1652–1654.

The Plague of Athens (Ancient Greek: Λοιμὸς τῶν Ἀθηνῶν, Loimos tôn Athênôn) was an epidemic that devastated the city-state of Athens in ancient Greece during the second year of the Peloponnesian War (430 BC) when an Athenian victory still seemed within reach. The plague killed an estimated 75,000 to 100,000 people and is believed to have entered Athens through Piraeus, the city’s port and sole source of food and supplies. Much of the eastern Mediterranean also saw an outbreak of the disease, albeit with less impact.

The plague had serious effects on Athenian society, resulting in a lack of adherence to laws and religious belief; in response laws became stricter, resulting in the punishment of non-citizens claiming to be Athenian. In addition, Pericles, the leader of Athens, and his two sons died from the plague. The plague returned twice more, in 429 BC and in the winter of 427/426 BC. Some 30 pathogens have been suggested as having caused the plague.

Sparta and its allies, with the exception of the city of Corinth, were almost exclusively land based powers, able to summon large land armies that were very nearly unbeatable. In the face of a combined campaign on land from Sparta and its allies beginning in 431 BC, the Athenians, under the direction of Pericles, pursued a policy of retreat within the city walls of Athens, relying on Athenian maritime supremacy for supply while the superior Athenian navy harassed Spartan troop movements. Unfortunately, the strategy also resulted in massive migration from the Attic countryside into an already highly-populated city, generating overpopulation and resource shortage. Due to the close quarters and poor hygiene exhibited at that time, Athens became a breeding ground for disease and many citizens died. In the history of epidemics, the “Plague of Athens” is remarkable for the one-sidedness of the affliction as well as for its influence on the ultimate outcome of the war.

In the History of the Peloponnesian War, the contemporary military strategist, general and ancient Athenian historian Thucydides, who was present and who had also contracted the plague’s disease himself and survived, describes the epidemic, as he writes of a disease that was coming from Ethiopia and passing through Egypt and Libya into the Greek world and spreading throughout the wider Mediterranean; a plague so severe and deadly that no one could recall anywhere its like, and physicians ignorant of its nature not only were helpless but themselves died the fastest, having had the most contact with the sick. In overcrowded Athens, the disease killed an estimated 25% of the population.

Such was the decimation of the people, that the sight and smell of the burning funeral pyres of Athenian citizens, caused the Spartans besieging the city of Athens, to withdraw their troops, being unwilling to risk contact with the diseased enemy. Naturally, most of Athens’ infantry, marines and expert sailors died because of the plague, and the Spartans did not want to assume a Victory such as this that was not befitting their honorable image as warriors and gentlemen.

And yet it is believe that the besiegers themselves had caused the plague to enter Athens by throwing via catapult, over the walls, the diseased bodies of the dead into the city of Athens, and thus the disease spread and decimated the defendants of the City along with its leader the courageous and wise Pericles and his two sons…

When the Spartan leadership saw the barbarity of their actions and the terrible results thereof, they withdrew lest the Gods smite them, for such a horrific and dishonorable crime that they and their allies had caused against man and God alike.

According to Thucydides, not until 415 BC had Athens recovered some of its strength and was keen to mount a major offensive, that due to the depleted resources of Athens in manpower and vigor along with experienced seamen and marines that their new foray into battle came to be known as the disastrous Sicilian Expedition…

Seems that History is repeating itself with a renewed ferocity these days…

And recently, came the first corroboration of the Athenian plague that was not revealed until 1994-95 when excavations in the military graveyards of Kerameikos revealed the first mass grave of that era where the dead were interned hastily, before the number of dead was so overwhelming that they had to burn the bodies in huge bonfires, the funerary pyres whose stench and awful sight even drove away the battle hardened Spartan troops that had laid siege to the City of Athens for the past two years…

Still upon this new discovery (circa 1995) of the Athenian mass graves from the second year of the Peloponnesian war, during the plague, it has become known that this is one of the first recorded instances of finding the gravesites of victims of suspected biological warfare in the history of Man & War.

And this is also the first major plague that hit the city of Athens, as modern day archaeologists and contemporary historians all agree as validated by the findings from the Athenian mass grave sites of that era concurrent and collaborating the historian Thucydides’ first hand eyewitness accounts of the Athens plague as a historical event, fully authenticated by the careful exhumation and examination of the massive internment gravesites of the “Demos Vima” the ancient Athenian cemetery of Kerameikos, where Pericles himself had earlier delivered his panegyric as a funerary oration and where he also came to rest alongside his two sons that were both killed by the plague.

Therefore, Thucydides, as well as all the other ancient and modern historians that covered the Peloponnesian wars attest to the biological warfare as supported by the DNA evidence stemming from the analysis of the remains inside the mass graves that have been used to both verify the massive effects of the plague, but also in an effort to identify the viral cause of the epidemic, which to this day remains obfuscated, as is supposed to be one of a cocktail of viruses and bacteria that seem to have been present at the remains.

So much like the engineered and transmogrified Wuhan Coronavirus that was endowed with genetic modifications and that has mutated and metastasized more than fifty different times — it is difficult to address as the exact one that was the main cause of the plague, yet back then as it is today, the combined effect of the various attributes and mutations of the virus is quite deadly as was intended to be, since that is the effect of weaponized biological agents…

Adjunct to that is the destruction of social and moral order of the Athenian Society, because the most forceful implications of the Plague of Athens were the deadly nature of the highly communicable and deadly disease, but also of the many and varied side effects and intended / unintended consequences of this biological weapons’ caused epidemic.

Many contemporary accounts of the Athenian plague graphically describe the social consequences of the plague’s epidemic consequences.

Thucydides’ own account clearly details the complete disappearance of social morals during the time of the plague: “The catastrophe was so overwhelming that men, not knowing what would happen next to them, became indifferent to every rule of religion or law.” Thus wrote Thucydides, in his book, “The History of the Peloponnesian War.”

This perceived impact of the Athenian plague on collective social and religious behavior echoes accounts of the medieval pandemic best known as the Black Death, although scholars have disputed its objective veracity in both instances, citing a historical link between epidemic disease and unsubstantiated moral panic.

During the years of the plague any fear of the law and the consequences of criminal activity had subsided in Athens and thus regular criminality became the order of the day…

Thucydides states that people ceased fearing the law since they felt they were already living under a death sentence.

Likewise, people started spending money indiscriminately. Many felt they would not live long enough to enjoy the fruits of wise investment, while some of the poor unexpectedly became wealthy by inheriting the property of their relatives. It is also recorded that people refused to behave honorably because most did not expect to live long enough to enjoy a good reputation for it.

Care for the sick and dead was spotty and all the doctors were overwhelmed as we see today happening in Italy, in America and most elsewhere…

–Α reconstructed likeness of “Myrtis” an 11-year-old Athenian girl who died during the plague of Athens, and whose skeleton was found in the Kerameikos mass grave. Her reconstructed likeness and photograph thereof is provided by the National Archaeological Museum of Athens.

Another reason for the lack of honorable behavior was the sheer contagiousness of the illness. Those who tended to the ill were most vulnerable to catching the disease. This meant that many people died alone because no one was willing to risk caring for them. The dead were heaped on top of each other, left to rot, or shoved into mass graves. Sometimes those carrying the dead would come across an already burning funeral pyre, dump a new body on it, and walk away. Others appropriated prepared pyres so as to have enough fuel to cremate their own dead.

Those lucky enough to survive the plague developed an immunity and so became the main caretakers of those who later fell ill.

A mass grave and nearly 1,000 tombs, dated between 430 and 426 BC, have been found just outside Athens’ ancient Kerameikos cemetery. The mass grave was bordered by a low wall that seems to have protected the cemetery from a wetland. Excavated during 1994–95, the shaft-shaped grave may have contained a total of 240 individuals, at least ten of them children. Skeletons in the graves were randomly placed with no layers of soil between them.

Archaeologist and Kerameikos ancient mass graves from the era of the plague, excavator Ms Efi Valavani, of the Directorate of Hellenic Antiquities, has recently reported that “the ancient Kerameikos mass grave did not have the usual Athenian careful monumental character. She had this to say: “The gravesite offerings we found consisted of common, even cheap, burial vessels; black-finished ones, some small red-figured, as well as white lekythoi (oil flasks) of the second half of the 5th century BC. The bodies were placed in the pit within a day or two. These factors point to a mass burial in a state of panic due to the plague.”

During that time, refugees from the Peloponnesian war had immigrated within the Long Walls of Athens, inflating the populations of both the City of Athens and the port of Piraeus. The population had tripled in this time increasing the rate as well as the chance of infection amongst the crowded residents, with the plague epidemic assisted by the prolonged poor hygiene due to constrained water resource availability and the demands for fresh water by the increased population density within the City’s walls.

The plague also caused religious uncertainty and doubt. Since the disease struck without regard to a person’s piety toward the gods, people felt abandoned by the gods and there seemed to be no benefit to worshiping them. The temples themselves were sites of great misery, as refugees from the Athenian countryside had been forced to find accommodation in the temples. Soon the sacred buildings were filled with the dead and dying. The Athenians pointed to the plague as evidence that the gods favored Sparta, and this was supported by an oracle that Apollo himself (the god of disease and medicine) would fight for Sparta if they fought with all their might.

Indeed an earlier Delphic oracle had warned that “A Dorian [Spartan] war will come, and bring a pestilence with it”.

Thucydides is skeptical of these oracular dreams and the conclusions drawn thereof, and instead states that the Athenian people were simply being superstitious. He relies upon the prevailing medical theory of the day — Hippocratic theory — and strives to gather evidence through direct observation. He notes that carrion-eating birds and animals disappeared as a result, though he leaves it an open question whether they died after eating the corpses or refused to eat them and were driven away: “All the birds and beasts that prey upon human bodies, either abstained from touching them (though there were many lying unburied), or died after tasting them. In proof of this, it was noticed that birds of this kind actually disappeared; they were not about the bodies, or indeed to be seen at all.”

The plague was an unforeseen event that resulted in one of the largest recorded loss of life events in ancient Greek history, as well as the breakdown of the Golden Era of the Athenian empire, the Delian league and the most important ancient City’s internal societal order. The balance of power between citizens had changed due to many of the rich dying and their fortunes being inherited by remaining relatives of the lower class. According to Thucydides, those who had become ill and survived were the most sympathetic to others suffering: “Believing that they could no longer succumb to any illness, a number of survivors offered to assist with the remaining sick.”

The plague had also contributed to Athens’ overall loss of power and ability to expand. Many of the remaining Athenians were found to be “meticoi” (unlawful immigrants) who had forged their documentation or had bribed Athenian officials in order to hide their original status. A number of these people were reduced to slaves once they were caught. This resulted in stricter laws dictating who can become an Athenian citizen, reducing both the number of potential Athenian sailors, soldiers and marines, as well as the amount of political power the citizens had in the Athenian representative Democracy, but this also resulted in a steep decline of the rights that the “meticoi” had within the City of Athens.

The plague dealt massive damage to Athens that was already deeply involved for at least two years into the Peloponnesian War, and it was under Spartan siege. Athens was never able to recover from this terrible plague.

Athenian political strength had evaporated and the City was weakened beyond hope, as the morale among Athens’ naval forces and her armies, as well as the citizens had fallen sharply. Athens would then go on to be defeated by Sparta and fell from her position of being the major superpower in Ancient Greece, and the sole naval imperial power of all the ancient World, when Athens was the leader of the Commonwealth Alliance of 2,000 city states comprising the Delian Alliance (Symmachia tis Delou) that extended throughout the known and civilized world. At least the whole civilized Greek world “known to man” at the time.

According to Thucydides, in describing the Plague of Athens — the illness began by showing symptoms in the head, as it worked its way through the rest of the body. He also describes in detail the symptoms that the various victims of the plague experienced: “Fever, redness and inflammation in the eyes, sore throats leading to bleeding and bad breath, sneezing, loss of voice, coughing, vomiting, pustules and ulcers on the body, extreme thirst, insomnia, diarrhea and death.”

Historians have long tried to identify the disease behind the Plague of Athens. The disease has traditionally been considered an outbreak of the bubonic plague in its many forms, but reconsideration of the reported symptoms and epidemiology have led scholars to advance alternative explanations. These include typhus, smallpox, measles, and toxic shock syndrome. Based upon striking descriptive similarities with recent outbreaks in Africa, as well as the fact that the Athenian plague itself apparently came from Africa (as Thucydides recorded), Ebola or a related viral hemorrhagic fever have been considered, but these results remain inconclusive…

Given the possibility that profiles of a known disease may have changed over time, or that the plague was caused by a disease that no longer exists, the exact nature of the Athenian plague may never be known. In addition, crowding caused by the influx of refugees into the city led to inadequate food and water supplies and a probable proportionate increase in insects, lice, rats, and waste. These conditions would have encouraged more than one epidemic disease during the outbreak…

In January 1999, the University of Maryland devoted their fifth annual medical conference, dedicated to notorious case histories, to the Plague of Athens. They concluded that the disease that killed most of the Athenians at the time of the Athens plague, was a version of a typhus outbreak. Dr David Durack, consulting professor of medicine at Duke University wrote the summary of the conference thus: “Epidemic typhus fever is the best explanation, because typhus hits hardest in times of war and privation, it has about 20 percent mortality, it kills the victim after about seven days, and it sometimes causes a striking complication: gangrene of the tips of the fingers and toes. The Plague of Athens had all these features.”

Indeed, in most all typhus cases, progressive dehydration, debilitation and cardiovascular collapse ultimately cause the patient’s death.

This medical opinion is supported by the opinion of A. W. Gomme, who wrote a comprehensive annotated edition of Thucydides and who also believed typhus was the cause of the epidemic. This opinion is expressed in his monumental work Historic Comments on Thucydides, completed after Gomme’s death by A. Andrewes and K. J. Dover. Angelos Vlachos (Άγγελος Βλάχος), a member of the Academy of Athens and a diplomat, in his Remarks on Thucydides (Παρατηρήσεις στο Θουκυδίδη, [1992] I: 177–178) acknowledges and supports Gomme’s opinion: “Today, according to Gomme, it is generally acceptable that it was typhus” (“Σήμερα, όπως γράφει ο Gomme, έχει γίνει από όλους παραδεκτό ότι ήταν τύφος”). The theory has also found support recent in a study of the plague by Greek epidemiologists.

Symptoms generally associated with typhoid resemble Thucydides’ description. They include: A high fever from 39–40 °C (102–104 °F) that rises slowly, chills,
bradycardia (slow heart rate), weakness, diarrhea, headaches, myalgia (muscle pain), lack of appetite, constipation, stomach pains, in some cases, a rash of flat, rose-colored spots called “rose spots,” extreme symptoms such as intestinal perforation or hemorrhage, delusions and confusion are also possible.

However, still worth noting is that some characteristics of typhoid are at clear variance from Thucydides’ description. Scavenger animals do not die from infection with typhoid, the onset of fever in typhoid is typically slow and subtle, and typhoid generally kills later in the disease course. As typhoid is most commonly transmitted through poor hygiene habits and public sanitation conditions in crowded urban areas, it is an unlikely cause of a plague emerging in the less urbanized Africa, as reported by Thucydides.

A 2005 DNA study of dental pulp from teeth recovered from an ancient Greek burial pit, led by the orthodontist Dr. Manolis Papagrigorakis of the University of Athens, found DNA sequences similar to those of Salmonella enterica (S. enterica), the organism that causes typhoid fever.

A second group of researchers, including American evolutionary molecular biologist Dr. Beth Shapiro of the University of California, Santa Cruz, disputed the Papagrigorakis team’s findings, citing what they claim are serious methodological flaws. In a letter to the International Journal of Infectious Diseases, Shapiro et al. stated that “while this DNA analysis confirms that the Athens sequence is possibly Salmonella, it demonstrates clearly that it is not typhoid.”

The technique used by the Papagrigorakis team (PCR) has shown itself to be prone to contamination-induced false-positive results, and the source burial site is known to have been heavily trafficked in antiquity by hogs, carriers of another Salmonella serovar that may have been confused with the one that causes typhoid fever. Nonetheless, the Papagrigorakis team assert that the basis of this refutation is flimsy, and that the methodology used by the Shapiro team has historically produced conflicting results.

Viral hemorrhagic fever is another likely candidate for the Athens plague, that makes it a more likely candidate, because Thucydides’ narrative pointedly refers to increased risk among caregivers, more typical of the person-to-person contact spread of viral hemorrhagic fever (e.g., Ebola virus disease or Marburg virus) than typhus or typhoid.

Unusual in the history of plagues during military operations, besieging Spartan troops are described as not having been afflicted by the illness raging near them within the city. Thucydides’ description further invites comparison with VHF in the character and sequence of symptoms developed, and of the usual fatal outcome on about the eighth day.

Some scientists have interpreted Thucydides’ expression “lygx kenē” (λύγξ κενή) as the unusual symptom of hiccups, which is now recognized as a common finding in Ebola virus disease.

Outbreaks of VHF in Africa in 2012 and 2014 reinforced observations of the increased hazard to caregivers and the necessity of barrier precautions for preventing disease spread related to grief rituals and funerary rites. The 2015 west African Ebola outbreak noted persistence of effects on genitalia and eyes in some survivors, both described by Thucydides. With an up to 21-day clinical incubation period, and up to 565-day infectious potential recently demonstrated in a semen-transmitted infection, movement of Ebola via Nile commerce into the busy port of Athens, the city waterfront docks of Piraeus, is also plausible.

Ancient Greek trade with African sources is reflected in accurate renditions of monkeys in art of frescoes and pottery, most notably guenons (Cercopithecus), the type of primates responsible for transmitting Marburg virus into Germany and Yugoslavia when that disease was first characterized in 1967. Circumstantially tantalizing is the requirement for the large quantity of ivory used in the Athenian sculptor Phidias’ two monumental ivory and gold statues of Athena and of Zeus (one of the Seven Wonders), which were fabricated in the same decade. Never again in antiquity was ivory used on such a large scale.

A second ancient narrative suggesting hemorrhagic fever etiology is that of Titus Lucretius Carus. Writing in the 1st century BC, Lucretius characterized the Athenian plague as having “bloody” or black discharges from bodily orifices. Lucretius cited and was an admirer of scientific predecessors in Greek Sicily Empedocles and Acron. While none of the original works of Acron, a physician, are extant, it is reported that he died c. 430 BC after travel to Athens to combat the plague.

Unfortunately DNA sequence-based identification is limited by the inability of some important pathogens to leave a “footprint” retrievable from archaeological remains after several millennia. The lack of a durable signature by RNA viruses means some etiologies, notably the hemorrhagic fever viruses, are not testable hypotheses using currently available scientific techniques.

Yet, what we know today is that the Covid-19 viral infection disease that has become todays massive plague epidemic has all the attributes of biological warfare due to the massive research and development effort paid for by the Dr Fauchi led Vaccination complex, that supported the Wuhan laboratory of virology that created this super attenuated bat originated Wuhan Novel Coronavirus to be able to jump from animals to humans in a short order and to be able to mutate faster than we can typeset its genomic code, and the Chinese researchers also endowed it with plenty of “gain of function” and then was unleashed to an unsuspecting world…

What remains to be seen now is the new balance of power and how that will have shifted in the near term, between the incumbent world empire, and the new claimant of power on the world stage.

And I shall let you figure out who those might be, and what the future might look like.

Cheers to your best of Health, & Wisdom and may Victory come to crown the glory of the Soldiers of Christ doing the just work of the Salvation of Humanity as a whole…

Similarly I pray that may the just God punish and smite the godless evil dwellers of the reptilian places that seek to defile Creation with their satanic bioweapons.

Yours,

Dr Churchill

PS:

Methinks that karma is a Bitch, but Vengeance belongs to the Lord Almighty, so its out of our hands now.

Yet, we ought to now the Truth.

And because, History repeats itself — it is up to us to recognize the patterns and know their meaning for our future, so that we act accordingly and swiftly to gear up and bear the terrible fight that in turn will bring about the Salvation of the World.

Now, let us hope that our current leadership has been able to study the lessons of the far ago Peloponnesian wars and might be able to apply them to today’s reality through the awfully evanescent lenses of clarity that has come to us via the two millennial distance between the two plagues and the wars of global supremacy…

As for myself — am going to Athens to investigate further… because those who do not know history are want to repeat it… and that’s not at all who I am.

God Bless.

References:
^ Littman, Robert J. (October 2009). “The plague of Athens: epidemiology and paleopathology”. The Mount Sinai Journal of Medicine, New York. 76 : 456–467. doi:10.1002/msj.20137. ISSN 1931-7581. PMID 19787658.
^ Jump up to: a b Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 2.48.1
^ Plague in the Ancient World: A Study from Thucydides to Justinian by Christine A. Smith
^ Jump up to: a b Manolis J. Papagrigorakis, Christos Yapijakis, and Philippos N.Synodinos, ‘Typhoid Fever Epidemic in Ancient Athens,’ in Didier Raoult, Michel Drancourt, Paleomicrobiology: Past Human Infections, Springer Science & Business Media, 2008 pp. 161–173.
^ History of the Peloponnesian War 1.117
^ “Plague Victims Found: Mass Burial in Athens – Archaeology Magazine Archive”. archive.archaeology.org. Retrieved 2019-10-28.
^ Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 2.52
^ Aberth, John (2016-04-30). The Black Death: The Great Mortality of 1348-1350: A Brief History with Documents. Springer. ISBN 9781137103499.
^ Gilman, Sander L. (2010-05-29). “Moral panic and pandemics”. The Lancet. 375 (9729): 1866–1867. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(10)60862-8. ISSN 0140-6736. PMC 7135638. PMID 20521345.
^ Sourvinou-Inwood, Christiane (2003). Tragedy and Athenian Religion. Lexington Books. ISBN 9780739104002.
^ Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 2.53
^ Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 2.51
^ Axarlis, Nikos (April 15, 1998). “Plague Victims Found: Mass Burial in Athens”.
^ Martínez, Javier (2017). “Political consequences of the Plague of Athens”. Graeco-Latina Brunensia. 22 (1): 135–146. doi:10.5817/GLB2017-1-12. ISSN 1803-7402.
^ Thuc. 2.53
^ For both oracles, see Thuc. 2.54
^ Thuc. 2.50
^ Martínez, Javier (2017). “Political consequences of the Plague of Athens”. Graeco-Latina Brunensia (1): 135–146. doi:10.5817/GLB2017-1-12. ISSN 1803-7402.
^ Dr. Alexander Langmuir, formerly chief epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, US. New England Journal of Medicine, 1985 Volume 313:1027–1030 http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,963885,00.html
^ Olson PE, Hames CS, Benenson AS, Genovese EN. “The Thucydides syndrome: ebola deja vu? (or ebola reemergent?)” Emerging Infectious Diseases 2(1996): 155–156. ISSN 1080-6059.
^ “Plague of Athens: Another Medical Mystery Solved at University of Maryland”. University of Maryland Medical Center. Archived from the original on 2015-12-04. Retrieved 2016-02-10.
^ Gomme, A. W., ed. A. Andrewes and K. J. Dover. An Historical Commentary on Thucydides, Volume 5. Book VIII, Oxford University Press, 1981. ISBN 0-19-814198-X.
^ Thucydides equivocates on whether scavengers actually did die after eating corpses, or simply fled: See Thuc. 2.50.
^ Papagrigorakis, Manolis J.; Yapijakis, Christos; Synodinos, Philippos N.; Baziotopoulou-Valavani, Effie (2006). “DNA examination of ancient dental pulp incriminates typhoid fever as a probable cause of the Plague of Athens”. International Journal of Infectious Diseases. 10 (3): 206–214. doi:10.1016/j.ijid.2005.09.001. PMID 16412683.
^ Shapiro, Beth; Rambaut, Andrew; Gilbert, M. Thomas P.; et al. (2006). “No proof that typhoid caused the Plague of Athens (a reply to Papagrigorakis et al.)”. International Journal of Infectious Diseases. 10 (4): 334–335. doi:10.1016/j.ijid.2006.02.006. PMID 16730469.
^ MAMcIntosh (2016-05-09). “Typhus, Typhoid Fever or Avian Influenza? What Plague Killed the Father of the Parthenon?”. Retrieved 2019-07-06.
^ Papagrigorakis, Manolis J.; Yapijakis, Christos; Synodinos, Philippos N.; Baziotopoulou-Valavani, Effie (July 2006). “Insufficient phylogenetic analysis may not exclude candidacy of typhoid fever as a probable cause of the Plague of Athens (reply to Shapiro et al.)”. International Journal of Infectious Diseases. 10 (4): 335–336. doi:10.1016/j.ijid.2006.02.005.
^ Boyd, EF; Hartl, DL (Feb 1999). “Analysis of the type 1 pilin gene cluster fim in Salmonella: Its distinct evolutionary histories in the 5′ and 3′ regions”. J Bacteriol. 181 (4): 1301–1308. doi:10.1128/JB.181.4.1301-1308.1999. PMC 93509. PMID 9973358.
^ Olson, PE; Hames, CS; Benenson, AS; Genovese, EN (1996). “The Thucydides syndrome: Ebola déjà vu? (or Ebola reemergent?)”. Emerging Infect. Dis. 2 (2): 155–156. doi:10.3201/eid0202.960220. PMC 2639821. PMID 8964060. They translate the phrase λύγξ κενή as “hiccups,” often previously translated from Thucydides as “ineffectual retching”, (cf. Aretaeus, Treatment of Acute Diseases 2.4; Hippocrates, Aphorisms 5.58).
Dixon B. “Ebola in Greece?” British Medical Journal (1996), 313–430.
McNeill, William H. Plagues and People. New York: Anchor Books, 1976. ISBN 0-385-12122-9.
Pomeroy, Sarah B. Spartan Women. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-19-513067-7.
Zinsser, Hans. Rats, Lice and History: A Chronicle of Pestilence and Plagues. Boston,1935; New York: Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, 1996. ISBN 1-884822-47-9.
External links[edit source]
Papagrigorakis, MJ; Yapijakis, C; Synodinos, PN; Baziotopoulou-Valavani, E (May 2006). “DNA examination of ancient dental pulp incriminates typhoid fever as a probable cause of the Plague of Athens”. Int. J. Infect. Dis. 10 (3): 206–14. doi:10.1016/j.ijid.2005.09.001. PMID 16412683. and the reply to it by Shapiro et al.
History of the Peloponnesian War 2.47–55.
^ Live Science article
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Singaporean dengue (2005) Indian dengue (2006) Chikungunya outbreaks (2006) Pakistani dengue (2006) Iraqi cholera (2007) Zimbabwean cholera (2008–2009) Bolivian dengue (2009) Gujarat hepatitis (2009) W. African meningitis (2009–2010) Haiti cholera (2010–present) Pakistani dengue (2011) Dafur yellow fever (2012) MERS (2012) Swansea measles (2013) Western African Ebola (2013–2016) DR Congo Ebola (2014) Madagascan plague (2014) Odisha jaundice (2014) Polio declaration (2014) Indian swine flu (2015) MERS in South Korea (2015) Angolan yellow fever (2016) Yemeni cholera (2016–present) Gorakhpur Japanese encephalitis (2017) MERS in Saudi Arabia (2018) Kerala Nipah virus (2018) Équateur province Ebola (2018) Kivu Ebola (2018–present) Madagascan measles (2018) Samoa measles (2019) Philippine measles (2019) Pacific NW measles (2019) New York measles (2019) Kuala Koh measles (2019) Tonga measles (2019) DRC measles (2019–present) New Zealand measles (2019–present)
Global
First cholera pandemic (1816–1826) Second cholera pandemic (1829–1851) Third cholera pandemic (1852–1860) Third plague pandemic (1855–1960) Fourth cholera pandemic (1863–1879) Fifth cholera pandemic (1881–1896) 1889 flu (1889–1890) Sixth cholera pandemic (1899–1923) Spanish flu (1918–1920) Asian flu (1957–1958) Seventh cholera pandemic (1961–1975) Hong Kong flu (1968–1969) AIDS (1981–present) SARS (2002–2004) Bird flu (2003–2005) Mumps (2009) Swine flu (2009–2010) MERS (2012–2015) Chikungunya (2013–2014) Zika (2015–2016) COVID-19 (2019–present)