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Unusual Historic Crises and Calamities

Khalid Elhassan April 16, 2020 34 min

39. A Fatal Bacterium

A mass of Yersinia pestis in the gut of an infected flea. Rocky Mountain Laboratories

Modern research and scholarship have pinned the Black Death on Yersinia pestis, a bacterium with no spores. According to genetic analysis, a strain of Yersinia pestis that emerged during the Black Death caused that plague. However, it did not die off at the end of that period. Instead, it has lingered around ever since, mutating and reemerging periodically to cause further illnesses and plague outbreaks.

The most recent major outbreak, known as the Modern Plague or the Third Pandemic, erupted in China in the mid-nineteenth century. It was carried by rats aboard steamships all over the world, and claimed an estimated 10 million people.

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.