Second plague pandemic
The Great Plague of London, in 1665, killed up to 100,000 people.A plague doctor and his typical apparel during the 17th-century outbreak.The plague repeatedly returned to haunt Europe and the Mediterranean throughout the 14th to 17th centuries.[162] According to Jean-Noël Biraben, the plague was present somewhere in Europe in every year between 1346 and 1671 (although some researchers have cautions about the uncritical use of Biraben's data).[163][164] The second pandemic was particularly widespread in the following years: 1360–1363; 1374; 1400; 1438–1439; 1456–1457; 1464–1466; 1481–1485; 1500–1503; 1518–1531; 1544–1548; 1563–1566; 1573–1588; 1596–1599; 1602–1611; 1623–1640; 1644–1654; and 1664–1667. Subsequent outbreaks, though severe, marked the plague's retreat from most of Europe (18th century) and northern Africa (19th century).[165]
Historian George Sussman argued that the plague had not occurred in East Africa until the 1900s.[82] However, other sources suggest that the Second pandemic did indeed reach Sub-Saharan Africa.[107]
According to historian Geoffrey Parker, "France alone lost almost a million people to the plague in the epidemic of 1628–31."[166] In the first half of the 17th century, a plague killed some 1.7 million people in Italy.[167] More than 1.25 million deaths resulted from the extreme incidence of plague in 17th-century Spain.[168]
The Black Death ravaged much of the Islamic world.[169] Plague could be found in the Islamic world almost every year between 1500 and 1850. Sometimes the outbreaks affected small areas, while other outbreaks affected multiple regions.[170] Plague repeatedly struck the cities of North Africa. Algiers lost 30,000–50,000 inhabitants to it in 1620–21, and again in 1654–57, 1665, 1691 and 1740–42.[171] Cairo suffered more than fifty plague epidemics within 150 years from the plague's first appearance, with the final outbreak of the second pandemic there in the 1840s.[109] Plague remained a major event in Ottoman society until the second quarter of the 19th century. Between 1701 and 1750, thirty-seven larger and smaller epidemics were recorded in Constantinople, and an additional thirty-one between 1751 and 1800.[172] Baghdad has suffered severely from visitations of the plague, and sometimes two-thirds of its population had died.[173]
Third plague pandemic
Worldwide distribution of plague-infected animals, 1998The third plague pandemic (1855–1859) started in China in the mid-19th century, spreading to all inhabited continents and killing 10 million people in India alone.[174] The investigation of the pathogen that caused the 19th-century plague was begun by teams of scientists who visited Hong Kong in 1894, among whom was the French-Swiss bacteriologist Alexandre Yersin, for whom the pathogen was named.[29]
Twelve plague outbreaks in Australia between 1900 and 1925 resulted in over 1,000 deaths, chiefly in Sydney. This led to the establishment of a Public Health Department there which undertook some leading-edge research on plague transmission from rat fleas to humans via the bacillus Yersinia pestis.[175]
The first North American plague epidemic was the San Francisco plague of 1900–1904, followed by another outbreak in 1907–1908.[176][177][178]
Modern-day
Modern treatment methods include insecticides, the use of antibiotics, and a plague vaccine. It is feared that the plague bacterium could develop drug resistance and again become a major health threat. One case of a drug-resistant form of the bacterium was found in Madagascar in 1995.[179] Another outbreak in Madagascar was reported in November 2014.[180] In October 2017, the deadliest outbreak of the plague in modern times hit Madagascar, killing 170 people and infecting thousands.[181]
An estimate of the case fatality rate for the modern plague, after the introduction of antibiotics, is 11%, although it may be higher in underdeveloped regions.[182]
