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20th Century’s Deadliest Disasters

Khalid Elhassan October 26, 2020 32 min

1976 Tangshan earthquake - Tangshan — A bridge destroyed by the Tangshan Earthquake. China Underground

8. The Deadly Varieties of the Black Death

A plague doctor during the Black Death. All About History.

The most common, tragic, and painful, form of the Black Death was the bubonic plague. However, the pandemic had two other deadly strains: the septicemic and pneumonic plagues. The differences were in the affected body parts. The bubonic plague hit the lymph nodes, the pneumonic targeted the lungs, while the septicemic infected the blood.

The septicemic plague was a blood infection that caused clotting in the veins. Victims suffered from abdominal pains, bleeding under the skin, blood pouring out of all orifices, vomiting of blood, fever, shortness of breath, and gangrene. The pneumonic plague struck the lungs, causing symptoms such as chest pains, shortness of breath, coughs, headaches, and high fevers. It could follow an initial bubonic or septicemic plague infection, killing those lucky enough to have survived one of the other Black Death varieties, only for their luck to run out when they came down with the pneumonic plague. It could also be caught from airborne particles exhaled by infected humans or cats.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.