As many of you know, parts of Yosemite national Park closed this passed week because of several cases of the plague. For most, the plague comes with the stigma of being an extremely deadly disease. But for others, the plague spells out a quite fascinating story of infectious disease. Secretions by the enterobacteria Yersinia pestis …
“In 2010, Americans were prescribed 258 million courses of antibiotics, a rate of 833 per thousand people. Such massive usage, billions of doses, has been going on year after year.” or so says Martin Blaser who has written a book (“Missing Microbes: How the Overuse of Antibiotics is Fueling Our Modern Plagues” published by Macmillan …
Yersinia pestis, Direct Fluorescent Antibody Stain (DFA), 200x Magnification. CDC 2057. Wikimedia Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. “Black death was not spread by rat fleas, say researchers” reported in the Guardian Reportedly it was “pneumonic” rather than “bubonic” as previously thought. Fortunately it was a very, very long time ago, although there have been many …