Culture

In a Word . . . Pandemic

The bubonic plague is believed to be the most fatal pandemic in human history

Patsy McGarry's face
Patsy McGarry
Sat Jul 31 2021 - 00:30

We lament so much that is wrong with the world. It could be worse. Yes, even as we deal with the Covid-19 pandemic. For instance, there’s the Black Death or bubonic plague. Believed to be the most fatal pandemic in human history, it killed up to 200 million people in the 14th century.

It is believed also to have originated in, or near, China and reached Europe via fleas, via rats, via ship, and was at its height between 1347 and 1351. In Europe it also began in Italy, with trading ships bringing it to Sicily, then Genoa, then Venice. It followed trade routes much as Covid spread worldwide through air routes.

And thank you for that too Messrs Wright brothers. Okay, not fair.

With no cure, the main method of keeping it at bay was isolation. People coming from infected areas were isolated for 30 days. This was extended to 40 days, giving us the word “quarantine”, from “quarantino” – Italian for 40.

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Outbreaks of this plague have continued since, with an occurrence in Madagascar killing 170 people in October 2017. It is estimated that, with antibiotics etc, the fatality rate for this bubonic plague is down to 11 per cent.

This ongoing story of the bubonic plague illustrates the extraordinary achievement of today’s scientists in producing not just one effective vaccine against coronavirus but many, and so fast.

Truly, it is astonishing, as was the speed with which that pandemic became worldwide, that too also down to science, modern aviation in this instance.

It is to be reminded that with all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, this is such a better world.

Another such reminder can be gleaned from reasons given for admission to "insane asylums" in the United States between 1864 and 1889, as recently circulated on social media. Though a corrective has pointed out that these were "causes why those patients were said to have developed their underlying maladies".

Listed as grounds for admission to the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in West Virginia during those years, was novel reading, egotism, vicious vices, women trouble, bad whiskey, over study of religion, laziness, kicked in the head by a horse, tobacco and masturbation, masturbation for 30 years, and suppressed masturbation. You couldn't win.

Be grateful .Be very grateful.

Pandemic, from Greek pandemos, "pertaining to all (pan) people (demos)".

[ inaword@irishtimes.com ]

Genoa