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Workers unearth 'Black Death' plague pit


Saru

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i remember a thing on ancient aliens (and we all know how true that show is lol) about how black hooded figures were seen during the time of the plague, and were seen to be spreading a substance in fields and air etc. kinda like a biological weapon. i dunno. its kinda creepy i guess.

Reminds me of the Mongols who actually launched bodies of their own men who died of the plague in to cities with catapults.

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I remember my grandfather telling me about the bubonic plague hitting the shores of Sydney Australia in the early 1900's.He told me how he had contracted it & how he had survived.He was transported to the hospital via a wheelbarrow.My guess was that he survived by being very young & resilient.Most diseases hit a population & take out the weak, frail,ill & aged.The rats had come to our shores & infiltrated our harbours from many cargo ships.The world had a major problem then with the spread of diseases etc from major shipping transport routes.Such would have been the case with the black death,with the spread of disease via a similar explanation that caused a pandemic situation.

Edited by GirlfromOz
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Lots of plague pits have been found throughout London and the rest of the country over the years, and it's not done anyone any harm.

Yet !

Just because it has not so far does not mean to say that it will not now or in the future

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You know bird flue is still lurking about. Just a week or so ago a man in Cambodia died of it, and there have been several in China. When a human being gets it, the mortality is very high.

It does appear that it's something more difficult than first feared for it to develop the ability to spread from person to person, so the world has relaxed. Still, it could happen.

And that is not the only variety of influenza that could turn both deadly and highly infectious. To my mind this is one of the possible disasters lurking about and the sooner a general influenza vaccine is developed the safer we all will be.

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Another peeve of mine along the same lines: reports where metric measurements are - brainlessly - converted to 'English' standards, so that "about three metres" becomes "about 9.84 feet."

Anyone with any common sense would say "ten feet" instead of being so pedantic.

Edited by TheLastLazyGun
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Yet !

Just because it has not so far does not mean to say that it will not now or in the future

Nobody is ever going to be in any danger when medieval plague pits are unearthed.

As it says here:

"However, there is no risk to people's health now because the plague bacteria cannot survive long in the soil, Crossrail says."

http://edition.cnn.c...tons/index.html

This is only a bacterium, not a virus. And, in any case, you need to have someone who has the disease already breathe on you, or you need to be bitten by infected fleas, in order to catch the disease.

Edited by TheLastLazyGun
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I think the reason for the journalistic pedantry, if it is not just lack of awareness, is that there are readers who will look up the conversion table and multiply it out and write them if they didn't carry out the calculation "correctly." It sounds like the journalist is in a no-win situation.

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I think the reason for the journalistic pedantry, if it is not just lack of awareness, is that there are readers who will look up the conversion table and multiply it out and write them if they didn't carry out the calculation "correctly." It sounds like the journalist is in a no-win situation.

LOL. Frank I did just that, I checked my calculations and a Boeing 747-8 weighs 81.45 average elephants.

Back on topic, BBC News reports

" Antibiotics resistance 'as big a risk as terrorism' - medical chief". The likelihood of catching the plague is low compared to dying from another antibiotic resistant bacteria.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-21737844

Edited by 27vet
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Getting a bit OT, but it seems to me that the arguments for the Metric system are really arguments for a world-standard measuring system. It may be that such systems are perfectly arbitrary, so that the Metric system will do as well as any other, but it may also be that there are units that are more 'natural' for people: if "one-Mississippi, two-Mississippi..." approximates seconds, then presumably there is a shorter, 'natural', interval which people can count as "One, two...." Likewise units of mass, length, temperature and so on.

A world-standard system is obviously a Good Thing: but it doesn't necessarily follow that the Metric system is the best possible design for one.

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Anyone with any common sense would say "ten feet" instead of being so pedantic.

This one of the more intelligent comments I have ever read on this forum. Logical, rational, short and simple. Thank you my good man or woman.

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This one of the more intelligent comments I have ever read on this forum. Logical, rational, short and simple. Thank you my good man or woman.

Um gun is a man,

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  • 2 weeks later...

Um gun is a man,

"Man" it be then! @TheLastLazyGun, thank you my good man!

And @The New Tricky Dick, for the enlightenment, thank you my good man or woman!

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  • 3 weeks later...

During the Black death, bodies were at first buried. but as the mortality rate increased, burying the bodies became too laborious the churches began to burn the bodies.

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LOL. Frank I did just that, I checked my calculations and a Boeing 747-8 weighs 81.45 average elephants.

Indian or African? :whistle:

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I had a teacher who was a real 'bug' about the metric system... She insisted once that we work a problem involving velocity but not show it as "English" (unfortunately for her she did not specifically state "Use metric")... So I showed my answer in FPF (Furlongs per fortnight).... I got an A (but a stern talking to)...

I would like to add (a bit ON topic)... That apparently Mr. ealdwita really knows his buboes!

Edited by Taun
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The States insists on using the "English" system even though the English don't. This has several times lead to genuine disasters because of lax attention to units of measure. There is also the way Americans insist on showing dates, that makes my passport and visas so confusing and that I have to pay close attention to whenever I'm filling out forms in that country.

I think the US loses economically with this stubbornness, and they certainly are seen as arrogant because of it. What really p***es me though is that because of this US attitude the rest of the world has to spend time teaching an obsolete and difficult measuring system over and above their own.

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The States insists on using the "English" system even though the English don't. This has several times lead to genuine disasters because of lax attention to units of measure. There is also the way Americans insist on showing dates, that makes my passport and visas so confusing and that I have to pay close attention to whenever I'm filling out forms in that country.

I take it you mean like the terrorist attacks of 11/9

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As far as the date format goes, I think month, day, year is best because that is the way we say it.

During the Black death, bodies were at first buried. but as the mortality rate increased, burying the bodies became too laborious the churches began to burn the bodies.

...............ashes, ashes we all fall down.

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The bacterium Yersinia pestis which caused Bubonic plague cannot survive being buried in the ground for any length of time, so unless you get too close to somebody who is on intimate terms with Xenopsia cheopis (the Oriental Rat Flea) then your chances of growing lumps under your armpits are minimal!

The bubonic plague has an unusual course. In an epidemic about 2/3 of the people infected early will die, but as it passes from person to person it usually loses a lot of its virulence and people infected toward the end have more like a 10-15% mortality rate. It is probably a lot the same thing as attenuating viruses for vaccines. Humans are not the natural host and as it is serially passed from person to person the bacteria changes. During the black plaque there must have been a very virulent strain that was well adapted to humans or several strains. There are antibiotics that can treat bubonic plaque now.

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Yes, I agree up to a point. As far as the 'Black Death' was concerned, most historians have gone along with traditional opinions and have opted for Bubonic-type plague, spread by the rat flea. but there are other schools of thought....for instance, in 2000, biologist Gunnar Karlsson pointed out that the Black Death killed between half and two-thirds of the population of Iceland, although there were no rats in Iceland at this time. Historian Norman F. Cantor suggests, in his 2001 book In the Wake of the Plague, that the Black Death might have been a combination of pandemics including a form of anthrax, a cattle murrain. He cites many forms of evidence including reported disease symptoms not in keeping with the known effects of either bubonic or pneumonic plague, the discovery of anthrax spores in a plague pit in Scotland, and the fact that meat from infected cattle was known to have been sold in many rural English areas prior to the onset of the plague.

As I said though, most historians go along with bubonic rather than either pneumonic or anthrax pandemics.

I have also often wondered if it was a hemorrhagic fever virus. Though the lack of rats and the fact that the people themselves who were often exposed to bubonic plague thought it was different it could have been a very virulent strain that was well adapted to humans that almost always caused pneumonic plague so was exceptionally communicable. This would cause a higher death rate than normal bubonic plague and is easily spread from person to person without any need for rats.

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You know bird flue is still lurking about. Just a week or so ago a man in Cambodia died of it, and there have been several in China. When a human being gets it, the mortality is very high.

It does appear that it's something more difficult than first feared for it to develop the ability to spread from person to person, so the world has relaxed. Still, it could happen.

And that is not the only variety of influenza that could turn both deadly and highly infectious. To my mind this is one of the possible disasters lurking about and the sooner a general influenza vaccine is developed the safer we all will be.

I hate that they call it bird flu all influenza was originally bird flu.

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Getting a bit OT, but it seems to me that the arguments for the Metric system are really arguments for a world-standard measuring system. It may be that such systems are perfectly arbitrary, so that the Metric system will do as well as any other, but it may also be that there are units that are more 'natural' for people: if "one-Mississippi, two-Mississippi..." approximates seconds, then presumably there is a shorter, 'natural', interval which people can count as "One, two...." Likewise units of mass, length, temperature and so on.

A world-standard system is obviously a Good Thing: but it doesn't necessarily follow that the Metric system is the best possible design for one.

Well, the meteric system is much more accurate and easily converted from one size/weight to another (cm --> km).

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