L.A. woman diagnosed with bubonic plague

Hey, Reyn. I also notice that mumps are making a come back. We have dosed our bodies too much with frivolous abandon and our immune systems are losing ground.

Incidently, B.C., the update function isn't working either. <smile>

Not only that, Letty, but whooping cough, too.

Update function?

Reyn, you may not opt for updates. Some people don't, but I do as I want that alert. The option is at the bottom of the page.

I am not surprised about the whooping cough either. Weird, no? but there is always some balance in nature. Thought to be extinct, the whooping crane has been spotted.

Very interesting, Reyn. (as always). Now I just have to go find out What Exactly bubonic plague actually is!

I had thought it was 'wiped out'.

I heard on the radio, that the woman's apartment was saturated with rhodent feces and fleas. Perhaps she was
bitten by an disease-bearing flea.

Oh, heck no. It's endemic in our prairie dog population, but still not much of a problem. That's New Mexican prairie dogs, by the way, as their fleas are partial to prairie dogs, not people.

Uh, that reply was to flushd, not Miller, by the way

I wonder if the prarie dog fleas are partial to dogs. That's one way for those little nasty biting creatures to br brought into a persons home.

I had no idea, roger. Thanks for the info.
I wonder if rats carry it then, too.

Sure, the Norway rat was famous for spreading plague.

I don't think so, Cheri. Cat fleas favor cats; dog fleas prefer dogs. I don't know what kind of fleas these little fellers have, but they hardly ever leave a warm body. Transfer from road kill could be a source of transmission, but it doesn't seem to be happening.

Serious plague years went way past 1351, although the few years before that were the biggies.

Black Death

Fleas don't care what they infest, although the different species of Ctenocephalides prefer their usual hosts. Any warm body will do, though. Lice, on the other hand, are species-specific. Bottom line regarding plague: It is, as Roger says, endemic to the American Southwest, and exists in rodent reservoirs worldwide. It is not, and will not be, eradicated. Fortunately, it is quite sensitive to antibiotic therapy. In fact, streptomycin is actually TOO effective, as it kills nearly all the bacteria with one dose, and the endotoxin release can often put the patient into shock. Therefore, tetracyclines are usually the treatment of choice.

Why thank you!

Read all about yer Bubonic Plague right HERE!

Our old neighbor had a dog whose fleas did not have a problem jumping onto me so CowDoc's post makes perfect sense.

This kind of topic always reminds me of the book Rats, Lice, and History by Renes DuBois. I never managed to read it, but I think I still have it in paperback form.

Oops, that was Zinsser's book. Back with a link.

Still don't have the link, because I needed to copy this amazon review first -

E. A. Lovitt "starmoth" (Gladwin, MI USA) - See all my reviews

The copy of "Rats, Lice, and History" that I own was published in 1963, and this was the 33rd time it had been reissued since first appearing in 1934. I can't imagine Dr. Zinsser's grumpily discursive, masterfully written, and ultimately profound biography of typhus fever ever going completely out of print. Stylistically the only work I can compare it to is Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire". Where Gibbon occasionally dipped his pen in vinegar and excoriated the Christians, Zinsser dips his pen in hydrochloric acid and savages all of the quaint human customs that have kept Typhus alive and thriving. He shows much more affectionate sympathy for the louse than he does for the General or the Politician. Witness:
"The louse shares with us the misfortune of being prey to the typhus virus. If lice can dread, the nightmare of their lives is the fear of some day inhabiting an infected rat or human being. For the host may survive; but the ill-starred louse that sticks his haustellum through an infected skin, and imbibes the loathsome virus with his nourishment, is doomed beyond succor. In eight days he sickens, in ten days he is 'in extremis', on the eleventh or twelfth his tiny body turns red with blood extravasated from his bowel, and he gives up his little ghost."

In the interests of research, Zinsser carried pill boxes of lice under his socks for weeks at a time before taking "advantage of them for scientific purposes." He is not able to tear himself away from these little creatures and address the true subject of his biography, i.e. the typhus virus, until Chapter 12!

However, the journey to Chapter 12 is well worth taking because along the way, Zinsser wittily savages modern biographers, psychoanalysis, astronomers and physicists who "scamper back to God" (Biologists evidently are much less prone to being 'born again'), and of course, all of the wars that have given Typhus countless opportunities to murder lice and humans alike.

"Rats, Lice, and History" should be required reading for would-be writers for its style, would-be Generals for its lessons on how soldiers really die, and for anyone else who is interested in a passionate, eminently witty, one-of-a-kind history of medicine.

This is about Typhus, not bubonic plague, but, y'know, similar interest to me.

There it is - voila - Rats, Lice, and History
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0316988960/sr=1-4/qid=1145852411/ref=sr_1_4/002-0280951-4796858?%5Fencoding=UTF8&s=books


Sinclair Lewis' Aerosmith was another book that got me going in the old days. Actually made me change my major to bacteriology. Still not about bubonic plague though - Aerosmith dealt with "Yellow Fever".