The Black Death was a bubonic plague pandemic occurring in Western Eurasia and North Africa from 1346 to 1353. It is the most fatal pandemic recorded in human history, causing the deaths of 75–200 million people, peaking in Europe from 1347 to 1351. Bubonic plague is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis spread by fleas, but during the Black Death it probably also took a secondary form, spread by person-to-person contact via aerosols, causing pneumonic plague.
Plague is an infectious disease caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. Symptoms include fever, weakness and headache. Usually this begins one to seven days after exposure. There are three forms of plague, each affecting a different part of the body and causing associated symptoms. Pneumonic plague infects the lungs, causing shortness of breath, coughing and chest pain; bubonic plague affects the lymph nodes, making them swell; and septicemic plague infects the blood and can cause tissues to turn black and die.
Henry Tifft Gage was an American lawyer, politician and diplomat. A Republican, Gage was elected to a single term as the 20th governor of California from 1899 to 1903. Gage was also the U.S. Minister to Portugal for several months in 1910.
Oswaldo Gonçalves Cruz, better known as Oswaldo Cruz, was a Brazilian physician, pioneer bacteriologist, epidemiologist and public health officer and the founder of the Oswaldo Cruz Institute.
The third plague pandemic was a major bubonic plague pandemic that began in Yunnan, China, in 1855. This episode of bubonic plague spread to all inhabited continents, and ultimately led to more than 12 million deaths in India and China, and at least 10 million Indians were killed in British Raj India alone, making it one of the deadliest pandemics in history. According to the World Health Organization, the pandemic was considered active until 1960 when worldwide casualties dropped to 200 per year. Plague deaths have continued at a lower level for every year since.
The Oswaldo Cruz Foundation is a scientific institution for research and development in biological sciences located in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; it is considered one of the world's main public health research institutions. It was founded by Dr. Oswaldo Cruz, a noted physician and epidemiologist.
Adolfo Lutz was a Brazilian physician, father of tropical medicine and medical zoology in Brazil, and a pioneer epidemiologist and researcher in infectious diseases.
The Bombay plague epidemic was a bubonic plague epidemic that struck the city of Bombay in the late nineteenth century. The plague killed thousands, and many fled the city leading to a drastic fall in the population of the city. In September 1896, Bombay's municipal administration declared the presence of bubonic plague in the city. Ineffective protocols administered furthering the spread. By January 1897 half the population fled to the countryside.
John Ashburton Thompson was a British-Australian physician and an international authority on plague and leprosy.
The Vaccine Revolt was a popular riot that took place between 10 and 16 November 1904 in the city of Rio de Janeiro, then the capital of Brazil. Its immediate pretext was a law that made vaccination against smallpox compulsory, but it is also associated with deeper causes, such as the urban reforms being carried out by mayor Pereira Passos and the sanitation campaigns led by physician Oswaldo Cruz.
Bubonic plague is one of three types of plague caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. One to seven days after exposure to the bacteria, flu-like symptoms develop. These symptoms include fever, headaches, and vomiting, as well as swollen and painful lymph nodes occurring in the area closest to where the bacteria entered the skin. Acral necrosis, the dark discoloration of skin, is another symptom. Occasionally, swollen lymph nodes, known as "buboes", may break open.
The Russian plague epidemic of 1770–1772, also known as the Plague of 1771, was the last large-scale outbreak of plague in central Russia, claiming between 52,000 and 100,000 lives in Moscow alone. The bubonic plague epidemic that originated in the Moldovan theatre of the 1768–1774 Russian-Turkish war in January 1770 swept northward through Ukraine and central Russia, peaking in Moscow in September 1771 and causing the Plague Riot. The epidemic reshaped the map of Moscow, as new cemeteries were established beyond the 18th-century city limits.
Baron Kitasato Shibasaburō was a Japanese physician and bacteriologist. He is remembered as the co-discoverer of the infectious agent of bubonic plague in Hong Kong during an outbreak in 1894, almost simultaneously with Alexandre Yersin.
The 1994 plague in India was an outbreak of bubonic and pneumonic plague in south-central and western India from 26 August to 18 October 1994. 693 suspected cases and 56 deaths were reported from the five affected Indian states as well as the Union Territory of Delhi. These cases were from Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and New Delhi. There are no reports of cases being exported to other countries.
Joseph James Kinyoun was an American physician and the founder of the United States' Hygienic Laboratory, the predecessor of the National Institutes of Health.
The San Francisco plague of 1900–1904 was an epidemic of bubonic plague centered on San Francisco's Chinatown. It was the first plague epidemic in the continental United States. The epidemic was recognized by medical authorities in March 1900, but its existence was denied for more than two years by California's Governor Henry Gage. His denial was based on business reasons, to protect the reputations of San Francisco and California and to prevent the loss of revenue due to quarantine. The failure to act quickly may have allowed the disease to establish itself among local animal populations. Federal authorities worked to prove that there was a major health problem, and they isolated the affected area; this undermined Gage's credibility, and he lost the governorship in the 1902 elections. The new governor, George Pardee, implemented public-health measures and the epidemic was stopped in 1904. There were 121 cases identified, resulting in 119 deaths.
The 1924 Los Angeles pneumonic plague outbreak was an outbreak of the pneumonic plague in Los Angeles, California that began on September 28, 1924, and was declared fully contained on November 13, 1924. It represented the first time that the plague had emerged in Southern California; plague outbreaks previously surfaced in San Francisco and Oakland. The outbreak killed 30 people and infected several more. Public health officials credited the lessons learned from the San Francisco outbreak with saving lives, and swiftly implemented preventative measures, including hospitalization of the sick and all their contacts, a neighborhood quarantine, and a large-scale rat eradication program. The epicenter of the plague was in the Macy Street District, primarily home to Mexican immigrants. Racism against Mexican Americans tainted the reaction to the plague, an issue not made public until the outbreak concluded. This outbreak was the last instance of aerosol transmission of the plague and the last major plague outbreak in the United States.
The Directorate-General of Health is a division of the Portuguese public administration concerned with public health. Even though it is statutorily a service of the Ministry of Health, it is a public agency with administrative autonomy. It was created in 1899, after a plague outbreak in Porto, in order to coordinate efforts and planning against future disease outbreaks and epidemics.
The COVID-19 pandemic in Portugal is part of the pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2. On 2 March 2020, the virus was confirmed to have reached the country when it was reported that two men, a 60-year-old doctor who travelled to the north of Italy on vacation and a 33-year-old man working in Spain, tested positive for COVID-19. On 16 March 2020, the first death from COVID-19 was reported in Portugal.
