Back in the ancient world, few diseases caused the same panic and destruction as Bubonic plague.

This dreaded bacterial infection was commonly spread by rats and other rodents. But when it entered the human body, it quickly spread throughout the body and often proved fatal. Death could come in a matter of days. Let's take a look at six of the most infamous outbreaks of this disease.

Plague of Justinian

Justinian I is often cited as the most powerful Byzantine emperor, but his reign coincided with one of the first well-documented outbreaks of the plague. The pandemic is thought to have originated in Africa and then spread to Europe via infected rats on merchant ships.

The plague reached the Byzantine capital of Constantinople in 541 AD and was soon claiming 10,000 lives a day. This led to unburied bodies being piled inside buildings and even outdoors.

According to the ancient historian Procopius, the victims exhibited many of the classic symptoms of bubonic plague, including sudden fevers and swollen lymph nodes. Justinian also fell ill, but he was able to recover, which cannot be said about the third part of the inhabitants of Constantinople who were not so lucky.

Even after the plague had subsided in Byzantium, it continued to appear in Europe, Africa and Asia for several more years, causing massive famine and devastation. It is believed that at least 25 million people died, but the actual number could be much higher.

Black Death

In 1347, the disease again invaded Europe from the East, most likely along with Italian sailors who were returning home from the Crimea. As a result, the Black Death tore apart the entire continent for half a decade. Entire cities were decimated and people spent most of their time trying to bury all the dead in mass graves.

Medieval doctors tried to fight the disease with bloodletting and other crude methods, but most people were sure that this was God's punishment for their sins. Some Christians even blamed the Jews for everything and began mass pogroms.

The Black Death subsided in the West around 1353, but not before taking 50 million people with it - more than half the population of Europe. While the pandemic wreaked havoc across the continent, some historians believe the labor shortage it caused was a boon for the lower working classes.

Italian plague 1629-1631

Even after the Black Death receded, the bubonic plague continued to rear its ugly head in Europe from time to time for several more centuries. One of the most devastating outbreaks began in 1629, when troops taking part in the Thirty Years' War brought the infection to the Italian city of Mantua.

Over the next two years, the plague spread throughout the countryside, but also affected such big cities like Verona, Milan, Venice and Florence. In Milan and Venice, city officials quarantined the sick and completely burned their clothes and possessions to prevent the spread of the disease.

The Venetians even banished some of the plague victims to the islands of the neighboring lagoon. These brutal measures may have helped contain the disease, but up to that time 280,000 people had died, including more than half of the inhabitants of Verona. The Republic of Venice lost a third of its population - 140 thousand people.

Some scholars argue that this outbreak undermined the strength of the city-state, leading to its decline as a major player on the world stage.

Great Plague in London

Plague besieged London several times during the 16th and 17th centuries, but the most famous case occurred in 1665-1666. It first arose in the London suburb of St. Giles, and then spread to the dirty quarters of the capital.

The peak occurred in September 1665, when 8,000 people died every week. Rich people, including King Charles II, fled to the villages, and the main victims of the plague were poor people.

As the disease spread, the authorities in London tried to keep the infected in their homes, which were marked with a red cross. Before the outbreak subsided in 1666, an estimated 75,000 to 100,000 people died. Later that year, London faced another tragedy when the Great Fire destroyed much of the city's inner city.

Marseille plague

The last major outbreak of plague in medieval Europe began in 1720 in the French port city of Marseille. The disease arrived on a merchant ship that picked up infected passengers on a trip to the Middle East.

The ship was quarantined, but its owner, who also happened to be Marseille's deputy mayor, persuaded officials to let him unload the goods. The rats that lived in it soon spread throughout the city, which caused an epidemic.

People were dying by the thousands, and the piles of bodies on the street were so large that the authorities forced the prisoners to dispose of them. In neighboring Provence, a "plague wall" was even built to contain the infection, but it also spread to the south of France. The disease finally disappeared in 1722, but by that time about 100 thousand people had died.

Third pandemic

The Plague of Justinian and the Black Death are considered to be the first two pandemics. The most recent, the so-called Third Pandemic, broke out in 1855 in the Chinese province of Yunnan. Over the next few decades, the disease spread across the globe, and by the early 20th century, infected rats on ships had carried it across all six continents.

Worldwide, this outbreak killed 15 million people before it was eradicated in 1950. Most casualties were in China and India, but there were also scattered cases from South Africa to America. Despite heavy casualties, the Third Pandemic led to several breakthroughs in medical understanding of the disease.

In 1894, Hong Kong physician Alexander Yersin determined which bacilli were causing the disease. A few years later, another doctor finally confirmed that flea bites, which were carried by rats, were the main cause of the spread of infection among humans.

The politicians who started the wars are not responsible for the most massive deaths in history. Pandemics of terrible diseases were the causes of the most massive deaths and suffering of people. How was it and where is the plague, smallpox, typhus, leprosy, cholera now?

PLAGUE

Plague Historical Facts

The plague pandemic brought the most massive mortality in the middle of the 14th century, sweeping across Eurasia and claiming, according to the most conservative estimates of life historians, 60 million people. If we take into account that at that time the population of the earth was only 450 million, then one can imagine the catastrophic scale of the "black death", as this disease was called. In Europe, the population decreased by about a third, and the lack of labor force was felt here for at least 100 years, the farms were abandoned, the economy was in a terrible state. In all subsequent centuries, large outbreaks of plague were also observed, the last of which was noted in 1910-1911 in the northeastern part of China.

Origin of the plague name

The name comes from Arabic. The Arabs called the plague "jumma", which means "ball", or "bean". The reason for this was the appearance of the inflamed lymph node of the plague patient - the bubo.

Methods of spread and symptoms of plague

There are three forms of plague: bubonic, pneumonic and septic. All of them are caused by one bacterium, Yersinia pestis, or, more simply, the plague bacillus. Its carriers are rodents with anti-plague immunity. And the fleas that bit these rats, also through a bite, pass it on to a person. The bacterium infects the flea's esophagus, as a result of which it is blocked, and the insect becomes forever hungry, bites everyone in a row and immediately infects through the resulting wound.

Plague Control Methods

In medieval times, plague-inflamed lymph nodes (buboes) were cut out or cauterized, opening them. The plague was considered a kind of poisoning, in which some poisonous miasma entered the human body, so the treatment consisted in taking the then known antidotes, for example, crushed jewelry. In our time, the plague is successfully overcome with the help of common antibiotics.

plague now

Every year, about 2.5 thousand people are infected with plague, but this is no longer in the form of a mass epidemic, but cases all over the world. But the plague bacillus is constantly evolving, and old medicines are not effective. Therefore, although everything, one might say, is under the control of doctors, the threat of a catastrophe still exists today. An example of this is the death of a person, registered in Madagascar in 2007, from a strain of the plague bacillus, in which 8 types of antibiotics did not help.

SMALLPOX

Historical facts about smallpox

During the Middle Ages, there were not so many women who did not have traces of smallpox lesions on their faces (pox), and the rest had to hide the scars under a thick layer of cosmetics. This influenced the fashion of excessive passion for cosmetics, which has survived to our time. According to philologists, all women now with letter combinations in the surnames “ripple” (Ryabko, Ryabinina, etc.), shadr and often generous (Shchedrins, Shadrins), Koryav (Koryavko, Koryaeva, Koryachko) flaunted pockmarked ancestors (rowan, generous, etc., depending on the dialect). Approximate statistics exist for the 17th-18th centuries and indicate that 10 million new smallpox patients appeared in Europe alone, and for 1.5 million of them this was fatal. Due to this infection a white man colonized the Americas. For example, in the 16th century, the Spaniards brought smallpox to the territory of Mexico, because of which about 3 million of the local population died - the invaders had no one to fight with.

Origin of the name smallpox

"pox" and "rash" have the same root. In English, smallpox is called "small rash" (smallpox). And syphilis is called at the same time a great rash (great pox).

Methods of spread and symptoms of smallpox

After entering the human body, smallpox varionas (Variola major and Variola) lead to the appearance of vesicles-pustules on the skin, the places of formation of which are then scarred, if the person survived, of course. The disease spreads by airborne droplets, and the virus also remains active in scales from the skin of a sick person.

smallpox control methods

Hindus brought rich gifts to the goddess of smallpox Mariatela to appease her. The inhabitants of Japan, Europe and Africa believed in the smallpox demon's fear of red: the sick had to wear red clothes and be in a room with red walls. In the twentieth century, smallpox began to be treated with antiviral drugs.

Smallpox in our time

In 1979, WHO officially announced that smallpox had been completely eradicated thanks to the vaccination of the population. But in countries such as the United States and Russia, pathogens are still stored. This is done for scientific research”, and the question of the complete destruction of these stocks is constantly being postponed. It is possible that North Korea and Iran secretly store smallpox virions. Any international conflict can serve as a pretext for using these viruses as a weapon. So it's better to get vaccinated against smallpox.

CHOLERA

Historical facts about cholera

Until the end of the 18th century, this intestinal infection mostly bypassed Europe and raged in the Ganges delta. But then there were changes in the climate, the invasion of European colonialists in Asia, the transportation of goods and people improved, and this all changed the situation: in 1817-1961, six cholera pandemics occurred in Europe. The most massive (third) took the lives of 2.5 million people.

Origin of the name cholera

The word "cholera" comes from the Greek "bile" and "flow" (in reality, all the liquid from the inside flowed out of the patient). The second name of cholera because of the characteristic blue color of the skin of patients is “blue death”.

Methods of spread and symptoms of cholera

The vibrio of cholera is the bacterium Vibrio choleare, which lives in water bodies. When it enters the small intestine of a person, it releases an enterotoxin, which leads to profuse diarrhea, and then vomiting. In the case of a severe course of the disease, the body dehydrates so quickly that the sick person dies a few hours after the onset of the first symptoms.

Cholera Control Methods

Samovars or irons were applied to the feet of the sick for warming, infusions of chicory and malt were given to drink, and the body was rubbed with camphor oil. During the epidemic, it was believed that it was possible to scare away the disease with a belt made of red flannel or woolen. In our time, those with cholera are effectively treated with antibiotics, and for dehydration they are allowed to drink inside or special salt solutions are administered intravenously.

cholera now

WHO claims that the world is now in its seventh cholera pandemic, beginning in 1961. So far, mostly residents of poor countries are sick, primarily in South Asia and Africa, where 3-5 million people fall ill every year and 100-120 thousand of them do not survive. Also, according to experts, due to global negative changes in the environment, serious problems with clean water will soon arise in developed countries as well. In addition, global warming will affect the fact that in nature foci of cholera will appear in more northern regions of the planet. Unfortunately, there is no vaccine against cholera.

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Historical facts about typhus

Until the second half of XIX century so called completely all the diseases in which there was a strong fever and confusion in the mind. Among them, the most dangerous were typhus, typhoid and relapsing fever. Sypnoy, for example, in 1812 almost halved the 600,000-strong army of Napoleon, which invaded Russia, which was one of the reasons for his defeat. And a century later, in 1917-1921, 3 million citizens died of typhus Russian Empire. Relapsing fever mainly brought grief to the inhabitants of Africa and Asia, in 1917-1918, only the inhabitants of India, about half a million died from it.

Origin of the name typhoid

The name of the disease comes from the Greek "typhos", which means "fog", "confused mind".

Methods of spread and symptoms of typhoid

With typhus, small pink rashes on the skin form on the skin. When recurrent after the first attack, the patient seems to get better for 4-8 days, but then the disease again knocks down. Typhoid fever is an intestinal infection that is accompanied by diarrhea.

The bacterium that causes typhus and relapsing fever is carried by lice, and for this reason, outbreaks of these infections flare up in crowded places during humanitarian disasters. When bitten by one of these creatures, it is important not to itch - it is through combed wounds that the infection enters the bloodstream. Typhoid fever is caused by the bacterium Salmonella typhi, which, if ingested with food and water, leads to damage to the intestines, liver and spleen.

Methods of fighting typhoid

During the Middle Ages, it was believed that the source of the infection was the stench that comes from the patient. Judges in Britain, who had to deal with criminals with typhus, wore boutonnieres of strong-smelling flowers as a means of protection, and also distributed them to those who came to court. The benefit of this was only aesthetic. Since XVII, attempts have been made to combat typhus with cinchona bark, imported from South America. So then treated all the diseases in which the temperature rose. These days, antibiotics are quite successful in dealing with typhoid.

Typhus in now

The WHO list of especially dangerous diseases relapsing and typhus left in 1970. This happened thanks to the active fight against pediculosis (lice), which was carried out throughout the planet. But typhoid fever continues to cause trouble to people. The most suitable conditions for the development of an epidemic are heat, insufficient drinking water and hygiene problems. Therefore, the main contenders for the outbreak of typhoid fever epidemics are Africa, South Asia and Latin America. According to experts of the Ministry of Health, 20 million people are infected with typhoid every year, and for 800 thousand of them it is fatal.

LEPROSY

Historical facts about leprosy

Also known as leprosy, it is a slow disease. It, unlike the plague, for example, did not spread in the form of pandemics, but quietly and gradually conquered space. At the beginning of the 13th century, there were 19,000 leper colonies in Europe (an institution for isolating lepers and fighting the disease) and the victims were millions. By the beginning of the 14th century, the death rate from leprosy had fallen sharply, but it was unlikely that they had learned how to treat the sick. Just the incubation period for this ailment is 2-20 years. Infections like plague and cholera raging in Europe killed many people even before he was classified as a leper. Thanks to the development of medicine and hygiene, there are now no more than 200 thousand lepers in the world. They mainly live in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Origin of the name leprosy

The name comes from the Greek word "leprosy", which means "a disease that makes the skin scaly". They called leprosy in Russia - from the word "exercise", i.e. lead to distortion, disfigurement. There are also a number of other names for this disease, for example, Phoenician disease, "lazy death", Hansen's disease, etc.

Ways of distribution and symptoms of leprosy

It is possible to become infected with leprosy only by contacting the skin of the carrier of the infection for a long time, as well as if its liquid secretions (saliva or from the nose) get inside. Then a rather long time passes (the recorded record is 40 years), after which Hansen's bacillus (Mucobacterium leprae) first disfigures a person, covering it with spots and growths on the skin, and then makes a disabled person rotting alive. It also damages the peripheral nervous system and the patient loses the ability to feel pain. You can take and cut off a part of your body, not understanding where it went.

Leprosy control methods

During the Middle Ages, lepers were declared dead during their lifetime and placed in leper colonies - a kind of concentration camps, where the sick were doomed to a slow death. They tried to treat the infected with solutions that included gold, bloodletting and baths with the blood of giant tortoises. Nowadays, this disease can be completely eliminated with the help of antibiotics.

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The topic of this article is very broad and ambiguous. This phenomenon can certainly become the main competitor of the Second World War for the title of the most effective cleaner of the human gene pool in history. So, the plague.

First, it is necessary to say about the general clinic of the plague. For some reason, it is still extremely common that plague is only transmitted through the bites of infected fleas. But in general, this applies only to the local form of the plague, and inflammatory or septic is also transmitted by airborne droplets and contact.

How did the plague

The plague originated in the Gobi desert in the remote steppes of Kazakhstan, essentially by chance. The plague virus penetrated from unicellular organisms into the soil and plants, and from there inevitably into the steppe rodents. The first plague pandemic began in the second half of the 6th century and was named after the greatest ruler of his time, who died from it - the Justinian plague. It began in Byzantine Egypt. Historical sources claim that it claimed about 100 million people throughout the empire and about 25 million people in Europe. In general, this epidemic reached Britain itself. On this account, there is an assumption that she was one of the factors that facilitated the conquest of England by the Saxons. In addition, the plague of Justinian was one of the reasons why Byzantium had to stop its conquests in the east.

Around the same time, the Christian Church celebrates the final victory over common sense. The fact is that before the split of the church, the so-called Ecumenical Councils took place, something like the modern G20 congress. Basically, they solved subtle issues regarding church law. Just then, all sorts of prohibitions appeared on normal hygiene and, of course, on close contacts with Jews.

Black Death in Western Europe

Now fast forward to the 14th century. It is this era that appears before the mind's eye of most of us when pronouncing the phrase "black in Europe." The pandemic peaked in 1346-1352, killing (again) 25 million people. That was one third of the total population of Europe. But do not think that everything was done only in Europe. Also, do not think that then it was the only global catastrophe. For example, here is a brief digest of the catastrophes of the 14th century.

• The famous 100 Years War is going on between England and France.
• In Italy, there is a rather tough squabble between the Guelfis and the Gebellins - supporters of the Pope and the German Emperor.
• In Russia, the Tatar-Mongol yoke is established
• In Spain, the reconquista, feudal and wars are in full swing.

Well, besides the political hell, there was also a climatic hell:

• There was an expansion of the steppe zones, which increased the number of carriers of infection.
• There was less food. Almost the entire previous (XIII) century is characterized by powerful droughts.
• Greenland, due to the growth of ice, the settlements of the Vikings almost completely disappear.
• The so-called "Little Ice Age" begins.
• Frequent and strong earthquakes occur in the Himalayas
• Numerous volcanoes are active in India
• In Russia in the XIV century dry years, the invasion of rodents and famine.
• In China, in the 30-40s of the XIV century, powerful seismic activity begins, leading to the collapse of some mountain ranges and to very strong floods and, accordingly, to famine. In one of these floods alone, which hit the capital of the Middle Kingdom, about 400,000 people died.
• You can also recall the eruption of Etna in 1333 and the subsequent increase in humidity, as a result of which many cities in Western Europe were flooded due to heavy rains.
• There have been several major locust outbreaks in Germany
• Across Europe, there is an increase in the number of cases of attacks by wild animals due to starvation.
• Very cold winters and major flood 1354, which literally devastated the shores of the North Sea.
• It was also noted that the epidemic of the plague was preceded by the extremely widespread distribution of smallpox and leprosy, and the 14th century was no exception.

As you can see, the plague was not the only problem of that era. In addition, there were outbreaks of mass mental illness everywhere. By the way, there is one very interesting hypothesis on this score.

Mass insanity and psychotropic substances

American explorer Shane Rogers and his team decided to explore the most popular places on the planet among ghost hunters. Not even just points, but the so-called haunted houses and in so many places they found the presence of a dangerous mold that can cause a psychotropic effect. Here the idea was born that psychotropic substances can be a strong enough catalyst for the formation of ideas about the supernatural. The same researchers also thought that agricultural technology could only relatively recently get rid of ergot living on cereals (it was from ergot that Albert Hoffmann synthesized the famous one). Therefore, ergot poisoning among peasants in the Middle Ages was a fairly common occurrence, and this can explain both ergotism and massive crazy dances and much more. This hypothesis has its own logical holes and its own logical patches that these holes close, so it is ultimately up to you to believe it or not.

Again about the plague

But back to the plague. Incompetent medicine and the almost complete lack of hygiene encouraged by the Catholic Church were the main factors in the rapid spread of the plague. Although in the Orthodox tradition there is a strange habit of kissing the same icon during mass epidemics.

In addition, sometimes the very fact of infection was hidden for various reasons, and the already blazing epidemic was learned only after several deaths. Once in Ovignon they learned about the plague only when 700 monks died in one night in one of the monasteries.

There is also a "beautiful story" about Khan Dzhanibek, or rather about his Tatar army and their biological weapons. For example, when besieging the city of Kafu, they threw plague corpses at it with the help of catapults. Previously, there was a popular version that this was the beginning of the European pandemic, but now this hypothesis is recognized as extremely unconvincing. The version is usually recognized that the plague entered Europe through the main trade routes from the territory of Italy, Byzantium and Spain.

It is impossible not to mention how the plague was perceived in the XIV century and how they tried to treat it. Medieval medicine could offer innovative methods such as:

• Attempts to absorb poisonous miasms in an infected room with an onion lying on the floor.
• Walking the streets with flowers
• Wearing pouches containing human feces around the neck
• Classic bloodletting
• Insertion of needles into testicles
• Sprinkling foreheads with the blood of slaughtered puppies and pigeons
• Tinctures of garlic and cabbage juice (which, against the general background, looks somehow too harmless)
• Kindling fires to clean the air from infection
• Collecting human gases in jars.
• Red-hot iron (the only method that somehow helped) plague buboes were cut and cauterized, if a person experienced this, he could have a chance to cope with the disease.

But the most effective was the formula “cito, longe, tarde” – “Quickly, far away, for a long time” to get out of the area of ​​infection somewhere far away.

plague doctors

Separately, it is worth mentioning the bright characters of this era, who have already managed to become part of the mass media - plague doctors. They were paid 4 times more than ordinary doctors, despite the fact that many of them had no education at all (they were politely called empiricists). Mortuses became no less important characters on the streets of medieval plague cities - people who had been ill with the plague or simply criminals who were not sorry. They were mostly engaged in cleaning up corpses. also had a cultural side effect.

First of all, this is a rapid increase in the number of flagellants (from the Latin Flagellare - to beat, flog, torment). Apparently, it seemed to many that self-flagellation is a great way to cope with the gray (black?) Plague medieval everyday life. Religious hysteria and ideas about the approaching apocalypse are still worth arriving here. Distilled alcohol has also become insanely popular. Firstly, it was a good antiseptic, and secondly, at such times it is probably difficult not to drink.

Jewish conspiracy

Of course, one cannot fail to mention the Jewish conspiracy theory, which flourished in those years. Hysteria about the Jews and their pogroms are back in vogue. And after she forced confessions from several dozen suspects that they poisoned the wells, everything generally became bad. During this period, the Jewish conspiracy became trendy again throughout Europe.

(Suddenly) the good side. In Europe, a lot of cheap land and real estate appeared because less demand is cheaper than supply. Well, in the end, for centuries to come, mankind had a gloomy source of inspiration. A lot of stupid legends and superstitions are still associated with the plague.

Case in Nagorno-Karabakh

A plague epidemic broke out in Nagorno-Karabakh and someone began to dig up fresh plague burials. An investigation was carried out and as it turned out, there was some kind of local belief that explained that if family members begin to die one by one, you need to dig up the very first deceased and eat his heart and

The "Black Death" is the most terrible epidemic known in history, which spread in Europe in the period 1347-1351. It is generally accepted that this was an outbreak of bubonic and pneumonic plague. For more than three centuries, the disease again and again came to the European continent, however, later epidemics were no longer so devastating.

In ancient times, the word "plague" ("pestis" in Latin, "loimos" in Greek) meant any epidemic in general, a disease that is accompanied by fever or fever. For example, the "plague" that struck Athens at the start of the Peloponnesian War and killed Pericles was, according to the description of the historian Thucydides, typhoid fever.

In the VI century. in Europe there was an epidemic of a disease called the plague, the so-called Plague of Justinian. Local outbreaks were sometimes observed in different countries. But in 1346-1347. on the territory including the lower reaches of the Volga, the Northern Caspian, the North Caucasus, Transcaucasia, Crimea, the Eastern spurs of the Carpathians, the Black Sea region, the Near and Middle East, Asia Minor, the Balkans, Sicily, Rhodes, Cyprus, Malta, Sardinia, Corsica, North Africa, south of the Iberian Peninsula, the mouth of the Rhone, the activation of natural foci of plague began.

It was believed that the beginning of the epidemic of the XIV century. put the siege of the Genoese fortress of Kafa (modern Feodosia) in the Crimea by Khan Dzhanibek. The disease struck the besiegers, and then they began to throw the corpses of the dead into the city with catapules. In fact, as researchers now think, the episode with the siege of Kafa could not have greatly influenced the spread of the disease. By that time, the plague was already raging in Asia, and the merchants of the Great Silk Road inevitably spread it throughout the vast continent. Already in May 1347 in Paris they knew about the epidemic in the countries of Asia and Eastern Europe. Terrible and unexpected were many symptoms of the disease. With bubonic plague, patients developed tumors in the lymph nodes - buboes, with a pulmonary form, hemoptysis began. All this was supplemented by a rash, nausea, vomiting, fever. And if a person who fell ill with the bubonic form could recover, then everyone died from the pneumonic plague.

The Genoese, who managed to escape to the West, spread the plague throughout Europe. In 1347, the epidemic swept through Constantinople, Greece, Sicily and Dalmatia. In June 1348 it spread to France and Spain, and in the fall to England and Ireland. In 1349, the disease swept through Germany, Scandinavia, Iceland and even Greenland. In 1352, the epidemic came to Russia. In total, at least 25 million Europeans have died over the years. People then considered the cause of the plague harmful fumes, miasma, spoiled air. However, they also understood the danger of infection, so quarantines were arranged.

But the disease did not stop the development of European civilization. The old states have survived, the old conflicts have continued. In the most terrible years, Petrarch traveled around Italy, dreaming of the return of the ancient heritage and becoming the forerunner of the Renaissance, and Boccaccio wrote his Decameron, imbued with the ideas of humanism and the pursuit of love and happiness.

What could have caused this epidemic? Expansion of the steppe zone, and, consequently, the resettlement of rodents - carriers of the disease? Indeed, in Russia the first years of the XIV century were dry, in 1308 an invasion of rodents was observed everywhere, accompanied by pestilence and famine. But the Black Death came forty years later, and last years before the epidemic, the weather in southern Europe was warm and damp. Frequent floods, snowy winters, rainy summer months - the steppe could not grow in such conditions.

Most of the reports of plague involving the lungs concerned the northern countries (England, Norway, Russia). And, probably, during the Black Death pandemic, secondary pneumonic plague prevailed, developing as a complication of bubonic plague.

But the bubonic plague does not go beyond its natural foci, it does not spread in the North, it could not cover the whole of Europe so quickly. In 1997, the Nobel Prize winner in biochemistry, J. Lederberg, suggested that the clinical picture of the disease that had spread then was “tailored” to the plague clinic. The monstrous mortality of the population of Europe during the first epidemics of the Black Death was not characteristic of any of the subsequent epidemics. Lederberg doubts that the Black Death is the plague. There is also a hypothesis that some other factors influenced human susceptibility to the plague. They even call AIDS, but it is worth remembering that since the 11th century leprosy and smallpox have become more active in Europe.

Epidemics continued into the next century, but pneumonic plague was replaced by a less dangerous bubonic form of the disease.

The last outbreaks in Western Europe occurred in England in 1665, Vienna in 1683. In London, the epidemic ended with the “great fire” of 1666. The city center was rebuilt, and Londoners believed that this was why the city no longer suffered from the plague. But the fire left intact the overcrowded suburbs that had been hotbeds of the plague in earlier years. Subsequent outbreaks of the disease occurred farther and farther from the center of Europe. It almost looked as if the European countries were developing some form of defense that kept the infection at bay. In the north, the plague retreated east; in the Mediterranean, it went south. And each time, the areas where the disease spread became smaller and smaller, although people traveled more and more.

In the XVIII century. in Europe, black rats - carriers of the plague were replaced by gray rats. Perhaps this is what led to the attenuation of epidemics. But in the XVIII century. gray rats advanced into Europe from east to west, and the plague receded from west to east. Maybe the black rats developed a resistance to the plague and spread to their entire population. But this is unlikely. Perhaps a new strain of plague bacteria had emerged that proved to be less contagious and dangerous than the earlier one. It is possible that some pathogens worked as vaccines, causing relative immunity in animals and humans to a more dangerous strain of these bacteria.

Or, most likely, some sort of natural selection took place, people who were immune to the plague survived and passed this property on to their descendants. In any case, the search for a clue to the "black death" can lead to many interesting discoveries in medicine and help people fight infectious diseases.

« However, on the same day, around noon, Dr. Rieux, stopping the car in front of the house, noticed at the end of their street a porter who could hardly move, somehow absurdly spreading his arms and legs and hanging his head like a wooden clown. Old Michel's eyes shone unnaturally, his breath whistled from his chest. During the walk, he began to experience such sharp pains in the neck, under the armpits and in the groin that he had to turn back ...

The next day his face turned green, his lips became like wax, his eyelids seemed to be filled with lead, he breathed intermittently, shallowly, and, as if crucified by swollen glands, he kept huddled in the corner of the folding bed.

Days passed, and doctors were called to new patients with the same disease. One thing was clear - the abscesses needed to be opened. Two cruciform incisions with a lancet - and a purulent mass with an admixture of ichor flowed out of the tumor. The sick were bleeding, lying as if crucified. Spots appeared on the stomach and legs, the discharge from the abscesses stopped, then they swelled again. In most cases, the patient died amidst a terrifying stench.

... The word "plague" was uttered for the first time. It contained not only what science wished to put into it, but also an endless series of the most famous disaster pictures: Athens plagued and abandoned by birds, Chinese cities clogged with dumb dying, Marseille convicts throwing bloody corpses into the ditch, Jaffa with her disgusting beggars, damp and rotten bedding, lying right on the earthen floor of the Constantinople infirmary, plague-stricken, who are being dragged with hooks ...».

This is how the French writer Albert Camus described the plague in his novel of the same name. Let's remember those times in more detail ...

This is one of the deadliest diseases in human history, dating back over 2,500 years. The disease first appeared in Egypt in the 4th century BC. e., and the earliest description of it was made by the Greek Rufus from Ephesus.

Since then, every five to ten years, the plague has swooped down on one continent, then on another. Ancient Middle Eastern chronicles noted a drought that occurred in 639, during which the land became barren and a terrible famine set in. It was a year of dust storms. The winds drove the dust like ashes, and therefore the whole year was called "ashy". Hunger intensified to such an extent that even wild animals began to seek shelter from people.

“And the plague broke out at that time. It began in the district of Amavas, not far from Jerusalem, and then spread throughout Palestine and Syria. Of the Muslims alone, 25,000 thousand died. In Islamic times, no one had heard of such a plague. Many people died from it in Basra too.”

In the middle of the 14th century, an unusually contagious plague struck Europe, Asia and Africa. It came from Indochina, where fifty million people died from it. The world has never seen such a terrible epidemic.

And a new epidemic of plague broke out in 1342 in the possessions of the Great Kaan Togar-Timur, which began from the extreme limits of the east - from the country of Xing (China). Within six months, the plague reached the city of Tabriz, passing through the lands of the Qara-Khitay and the Mongols, who worshiped fire, the Sun and the Moon and whose number of tribes reached three hundred. All of them died in their winter huts, in pastures and riding on their horses. Their horses also perished, left to rot on the ground. People learned about this natural disaster from a messenger from the country of the Golden Horde Khan Uzbek.

Then a strong wind blew, which spread the decay throughout the country. The stench and stench soon reached the most remote areas, spread to their cities and tents. If this smell was inhaled by a person or animal, after a while they would surely die.

The Great Clan itself lost such a huge number of warriors that no one knew their exact number. Kaan himself died, and his six children. And in this country there was no one left who could manage it.

From China, the plague spread throughout the east, through the country of Khan Uzbek, the lands of Istanbul and Kaysariyya. From there it spread to Antioch and destroyed its inhabitants. Some of them, fleeing death, fled to the mountains, but almost all of them died on the way. Once, several people returned to the city to pick up some of the things people had left behind. Then they also wanted to hide in the mountains, but death overtook them too.

The plague also spread throughout the possessions of the Karamans in Anatolia, over all the mountains and the region. People, horses and cattle died. The Kurds, fearing death, left their homes, but did not find a place where there were no dead and it would be possible to hide from disaster. They had to return to their native places, where they all died.

There was a heavy downpour in the country of the Kara-Khitays. Together with the rain streams, the deadly infection spread further, bringing with it the death of all living things. After this rain, horses and cattle died. Then people, poultry and wild animals began to die.

The plague also reached Baghdad. Waking up in the morning, people found swollen buboes on their faces and bodies. Baghdad at that time was besieged by the troops of the Chobanids. The besiegers withdrew from the city, but the plague had already spread among the troops. Very few managed to escape.

At the beginning of 1348, the plague swept the district of Aleppo, gradually spreading throughout Syria. All the inhabitants of the valleys between Jerusalem and Damascus, the sea coast and Jerusalem itself perished. The Arabs of the desert and the inhabitants of the mountains and plains perished. In the cities of Ludd and Ramla, almost everyone died. Inns, taverns and teahouses were filled with dead bodies that no one cleaned up.

The first sign of the plague in Damascus was the appearance of acne on the back of the ear. Combing them, people then carried the infection throughout the body. Then the glands under the arm would swell in the person, often he would vomit blood. After that, he began to tremble from severe pain and soon, almost two days later, he died. Everyone was seized with fear and horror from such a number of deaths, because everyone saw how those who began vomiting and hemoptysis lived only about two days.

In one April day in 1348, more than 22,000 people died in Gazza. Death swept through all the settlements around Gazza, and this happened shortly after the end of the spring plowing of the lands. People were dying right in the field behind the plow, holding baskets of grain in their hands. Together with them, all the working cattle died. Six people entered one house in Gazza for the purpose of looting, but they all died in the same house. Gazza has become a city of the dead.

Such a cruel epidemic people have not yet known. Striking one edge, the plague did not always capture the other. Now it has covered almost the entire earth - from east to west and from north to south, almost all representatives of the human race and all living things. Even marine life, birds of the air and wild beasts.

Soon, from the east, the plague spread to African land, to its cities, deserts and mountains. All Africa was filled with dead people and the corpses of innumerable herds of cattle and animals. If a sheep was slaughtered, then its meat turned out to be blackened and fetid. The smell of other products, such as milk and butter, has also changed.

Up to 20,000 people died daily in Egypt. Most of the corpses were delivered to the graves on boards, stairs and door leaves, and the graves were simply ditches in which up to forty corpses were buried.

Death spread to the cities of Damanhur, Garuja and others, in which the entire population and all livestock perished. Fishing on Lake Baralas stopped due to the death of fishermen, who often died with a fishing rod in their hands. Even on the eggs of the caught fish, dead places were found. Fishing schooners were left on the water with dead fishermen, the nets were overflowing with dead fish.

Death marched along the entire sea coast, and there was no one who could stop it. No one approached the empty houses. In the Egyptian provinces, almost all the peasants died, and there was also no one left who could harvest the ripened crops. There were so many corpses on the roads that, having become infected from them, the trees began to rot.

The plague was especially cruel in Cairo. For two weeks in December 1348, the streets and markets of Cairo filled with the dead. Most of the troops perished, and the fortresses were deserted. By January 1349, the city already looked like a desert. It was impossible to find a single house that the plague spared. Not a single passer-by on the streets, only corpses. In front of the gates of one of the mosques, 13,800 corpses were collected in two days. And how many of them still remained in the deserted streets and lanes, in courtyards and other places!

The plague reached Alexandria, where at first one hundred people died every day, then two hundred, and on one Friday seven hundred people died. A textile factory was closed in the city due to the death of artisans, due to the lack of visiting merchants, trading houses and markets were empty.

One day a French ship arrived in Alexandria. The sailors reported that they saw a ship near the island of Tarablus, over which a huge number of birds circled. Approaching the ship, the French sailors saw that its entire crew was dead, and the birds were pecking at the corpses. And there were a great many dead birds on the ship.

The French quickly sailed away from the plague-stricken ship. When they reached Alexandria, more than three hundred of them died.

Through Marseille sailors, the plague spread to Europe.

"BLACK DEATH" OVER EUROPE

In 1347, the second and most terrible invasion of the plague began in Europe. For three hundred years this disease raged in the countries of the Old World and took with it to the grave a total of 75 million human lives. It was called the "Black Death" because of the invasion of black rats, who managed to bring this terrible epidemic to a vast continent in a short period.

In the previous chapter, we talked about one version of its distribution, but some medical scientists believe that it most likely originated in the southern warm countries. Here the climate itself contributed to the rapid decay of meat products, vegetables, fruits, and simply garbage, in which the beggars dug, stray dogs and, of course, rats. The disease took thousands of human lives with it, and then began to wander from city to city, from country to country. Its rapid spread was facilitated by the unsanitary conditions that existed at that time both among the people of the lower class and among sailors (after all, there were a great many rats in the holds of their ships).

According to ancient chronicles, near Lake Issyk-Kul in Kyrgyzstan, there is an ancient gravestone with an inscription that indicates that the plague began its march to Europe from Asia in 1338. Obviously, the nomad warriors themselves, the Tatar warriors, who tried to expand the territories of their conquests and in the first half of the 14th century invaded Tavria - the current Crimea, became its carriers. Thirteen years after penetrating the peninsula, the "black disease" quickly spread beyond its borders and subsequently covered almost all of Europe.

In 1347, a terrible epidemic broke out in the trading port of Kafa (now Feodosia). Today's historical science has information that Tatar Khan Janibek Kipchak laid siege to Kafa and waited for her surrender. His huge army was located by the sea along the stone protective wall of the city. It was possible not to storm the walls and not lose soldiers, because without food and water, the inhabitants, according to Kipchak's calculations, would soon have to ask for mercy. He did not allow any ship to unload in the port and did not give the inhabitants themselves the opportunity to leave the city, so that they would not run away on foreign ships. Moreover, he deliberately ordered that black rats be released into the besieged city, which (as he was told) descended from the arriving ships and brought disease and death with them. But, having sent a “black disease” to the inhabitants of Kafa, Kipchak himself miscalculated. Having mowed down the besieged in the city, the disease suddenly spread to his army. The insidious disease did not care who to mow down, and it crept up to the Kipchak soldiers.

His large army took fresh water from streams descending from the mountains. The soldiers also began to fall ill and die, and they died up to several dozen a day. There were so many corpses that they did not have time to bury them. Here is what was said in the report of the notary Gabriel de Moussis from the Italian city of Piacenza: “Countless hordes of Tatars and Saracens suddenly fell victim to an unknown disease. The entire Tatar army was struck by the disease, thousands died every day. Juices thickened in the groin, then they rotted, a fever developed, death occurred, the advice and help of doctors did not help ... ".

Not knowing what to do to protect his soldiers from the epidemic disease, Kipchak decided to take out his anger on the inhabitants of Kafa. He forced local prisoners to load the bodies of the dead on carts, take them to the city and dump them there. Moreover, he ordered cannons to be loaded with the corpses of deceased patients and fired at the besieged city with them.

But the number of deaths in his army did not decrease. Soon Kipchak could not count even half of his soldiers. When the corpses littered the entire coast, they began to be dumped into the sea. Sailors from the ships that arrived from Genoa and stood in the port of Kafa, impatiently watched all these events. Sometimes the Genoese ventured into the city to find out the situation. They really did not want to return home with the goods, and they waited for this strange war to end, the city to remove the corpses and start trading. However, having become infected in the Cafe, they themselves unwittingly transferred the infection to their ships, and besides, city rats climbed onto the ships along the anchor chains.

From Kafa, the infected and unloaded ships went back to Italy. And there, naturally, along with the sailors, hordes of black rats landed on the shore. Then the ships went to the ports of Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica, spreading the infection on these islands as well.

About a year later, all of Italy - from north to south and from west to east (including the islands) - was engulfed in an epidemic of plague. The disease was especially rampant in Florence, the plight of which was described in his famous novel The Decameron by the novelist Giovanni Boccaccio. According to him, people fell dead in the streets, lonely men and women died in separate houses, whose death no one knew. Decaying corpses stank, poisoning the air. And only by this terrible smell of death people could determine where the dead lay. It was terrible to touch the decomposed corpses, and under pain of prison punishment, the authorities forced ordinary people to do this, who, taking the opportunity, were engaged in looting along the way.

Over time, in order to protect themselves from infection, doctors began to wear specially tailored long gowns, put gloves on their hands, and special masks with a long beak on their faces, in which there were fragrant plants and roots. Plates of smoking incense were tied to their hands on strings. Sometimes it helped, but they themselves became like some kind of monstrous birds that bring misfortune. Their appearance was so terrifying that when they appeared, people fled and hid.

And the number of victims kept increasing. There were not enough graves in the city cemeteries, and then the authorities decided to bury all the dead outside the city, dumping the corpses into one mass grave. And for a short time dozens of such mass graves appeared.

Within six months, almost half of the population of Florence died out. Entire neighborhoods in the city were lifeless, and the wind roamed in the empty houses. Soon even thieves and marauders began to be afraid to enter the premises from which the plague patients were carried out.

In Parma, the poet Petrarch mourned the death of his friend, whose entire family passed away within three days.

After Italy, the disease spread to France. In Marseille, 56,000 people have died in just a few months. Of the eight doctors in Perpignan, only one survived, in Avignon seven thousand houses were empty, and the local cures, out of fear, thought of consecrating the Rhone River and dumping all the corpses into it, which made the river water contaminated. A plague that stopped for a while Hundred Years War between France and England, claimed far more lives than open clashes between troops.

At the end of 1348, the plague entered the territory of today's Germany and Austria. In Germany, a third of the clergy perished, many churches and temples were closed, and there was no one to read sermons and celebrate church services. In Vienna, on the first day, 960 people died from the epidemic, and then every day a thousand dead were taken out of the city.

In 1349, as if having had its fill on the mainland, the plague spread across the strait to England, where a general pestilence began. In London alone, more than half of its inhabitants died.

Then the plague reached Norway, where it was carried (so they say) by a sailing ship, the crew of which all died of disease. As soon as the unruly ship washed ashore, there were several people who climbed on board to take advantage of the gratuitous booty. However, on the deck, they saw only half-decomposed corpses and rats running over them. Inspection of the empty ship led to the fact that all the curious were infected, and from them the sailors who worked in the Norwegian port were infected.

The Catholic Church could not remain indifferent to such a formidable and terrible phenomenon. She sought to give her own explanation for the deaths, in her sermons she demanded repentance and prayers. Christians saw this epidemic as a punishment for their sins and prayed day and night for forgiveness. Entire processions of praying and penitent people were organized. Crowds of barefoot and half-naked penitents roamed the streets of Rome, who hung ropes and stones around their necks, whipped themselves with leather whips, and sprinkled ashes on their heads. Then they crawled to the steps of the church of Santa Maria and asked the holy virgin for forgiveness and mercy.

This madness, which seized the most vulnerable part of the population, led to the degradation of society, religious feelings turned into a gloomy madness. Actually, during this period, many people really went crazy. It got to the point that Pope Clement VI banned such processions and all kinds of flagellation. Those "sinners" who did not want to obey the papal decree and called for physical punishment of each other were soon thrown into prison, tortured and even executed.

In small European cities, they did not know at all how to fight against the plague, and they considered that its main distributors were incurable patients (for example, leprosy), invalids and other infirm people who suffered from various kinds of ailments. Established opinion: "It was they who spread the plague!" - took possession of people so much that the merciless popular anger turned on the unfortunate (mostly homeless vagrants). They were expelled from the cities, not given food, and in some cases they were simply killed and buried in the ground.

Other rumors later spread. As it turned out, the plague is the revenge of the Jews for their eviction from Palestine, for the pogroms, it was they, the Antichrists, who drank the blood of babies and poisoned the water in the wells. And masses of people took up arms against the Jews with renewed vigor. In November 1348, a wave of pogroms swept across Germany, the Jews were hunted in the literal sense of the word. The most ridiculous accusations were made against them. If several Jews gathered in the houses, then they were not let out from there. They set fire to the houses and waited for these innocent people to burn down. They were nailed into barrels of wine and lowered into the Rhine, imprisoned, floated down the river on rafts. However, this did not reduce the scale of the epidemic.

In 1351 the persecution of the Jews began to subside. And in a strange way, as if on cue, the plague epidemic began to recede. People seemed to come to their senses from madness and gradually began to come to their senses. Over the entire period of the plague's march through the cities of Europe, a third of its population died in total.

But at this time, the epidemic spread to Poland and Russia. Suffice it to recall the Vagankovskoye cemetery in Moscow, which, in fact, was formed near the village of Vagankovo ​​for the burial of plague patients. The dead were brought there from all corners of the white stone and buried in a mass grave. But, fortunately, the harsh climatic conditions of Russia did not give a wide spread of this disease.

plague doctor

From time immemorial, plague cemeteries have been considered a cursed place, because it was assumed that the infection was practically immortal. Archaeologists find tight wallets in the clothes of corpses, and intact jewelry on the skeletons themselves: neither relatives, nor gravediggers, nor even robbers ever dared to touch the victims of the epidemic. And yet, the main interest that forces scientists to take risks is not to search for artifacts of a bygone era - it is very important to understand what kind of bacterium caused the Black Death.

It seems that a number of facts testify against uniting the "great plague" of the XIV century with the pandemics of the VI century in Byzantium and the end of the XIX century in port cities around the world (USA, China, India, South Africa, etc.). The bacterium Yersinia pestis, isolated during the fight against this latest outbreak, is by all accounts responsible for the first, as it is sometimes called, "Justinian plague." But the Black Death had a number of specific features. First, the scale: from 1346 to 1353, it mowed down 60% of the population of Europe. Neither before nor after did the disease lead to such a complete breakdown of economic ties and the collapse of social mechanisms, when people even tried not to look into each other's eyes (it was believed that the disease was transmitted through a glance).

Secondly, area. Pandemics of the 6th and 19th centuries raged only in the warm regions of Eurasia, and the "black death" captured all of Europe right up to its northernmost limits - Pskov, Trondheim in Norway and the Faroe Islands. Moreover, the pestilence did not weaken at all even in winter. For example, in London, the peak of mortality occurred between December 1348 and April 1349, when 200 people died a day. Thirdly, the focus of the spread of the plague in the XIV century is controversial. It is well known that the Tatars were the first to fall ill, besieging the Crimean Kafa (modern Feodosia). Its inhabitants fled to Constantinople and brought the infection with them, and from there it spread throughout the Mediterranean and further throughout Europe. But where did the plague come to Crimea from? According to one version - from the east, according to another - from the north. The Russian chronicle testifies that already in 1346 “there was a strong sea under the eastern country: both on Sarai and on other cities of those countries ... and as if there was no one to bury them.”

Fourthly, the descriptions and drawings of the "Black Death" buboes left to us do not seem to be very similar to those that occur with the bubonic plague: they are small and scattered throughout the patient's body, but should be large and concentrated mainly in the groin.

Since 1984, various groups of researchers, relying on the above facts and a number of other similar ones, have been asserting that the "great plague" was not caused by the bacillus Yersinia pestis, and strictly speaking, it was not a plague at all, but was an acute viral disease similar to Ebola hemorrhagic fever, now rampant in Africa. It was possible to reliably establish what happened in Europe in the 14th century only by isolating characteristic bacterial DNA fragments from the remains of the victims of the Black Death. Such attempts have been carried out since the 1990s, when the teeth of some victims were examined, but the results still lend themselves to various interpretations. And now a group of anthropologists led by Barbara Bramanti and Stephanie Hensch have analyzed the biological material and, having isolated fragments of DNA and proteins from it, she came to important, and in some ways completely unexpected conclusions.

Firstly, the "great plague" is still caused by Yersinia pestis, as traditionally believed.

Secondly, not one, but at least two different subspecies of this bacillus raged in Europe. One spread from Marseilles to the north and captured England. Surely it was the same infection that came through Constantinople, and everything is clear here. Much more surprising is that the Dutch plague burial grounds contain a different strain that came from Norway. How he ended up in Northern Europe is still a mystery. By the way, the plague came to Russia not from the Golden Horde and not at the beginning of the epidemic, as it would be logical to assume, but, on the contrary, under its very curtain, and from the north-west, through the Hansa. But in general, to determine the routes of infection, much more detailed paleoepidemiological studies will be needed.

Vienna, the plague column (otherwise the column of the Holy Trinity), built in 1682-1692 by the architect Matthias Rauchmüller to commemorate the deliverance of Vienna from the epidemic.

Another group of biologists led by Mark Achtman (Ireland) managed to build a “family tree” of Yersinia pestis: comparing its modern strains with those found by archaeologists, scientists concluded that the roots of all three pandemics, in the VI, XIV and XIX centuries, grow from the same area Far East. But in the epidemic that broke out in the 5th century BC. e. in Athens and led to the decline of Athenian civilization, Yersinia pestis is indeed innocent: it was not a plague, but typhus. Until now, scholars have been misled by the similarity between Thucydides' description of the Athenian epidemic and Procopius of Caesarea's account of the Constantinopolitan pestilence of 541. It is now clear that the latter imitated the former too diligently.

Yes, but what then are the reasons for the unheard of mortality brought by the pandemic of the XIV century? After all, it slowed down progress in Europe for centuries. Perhaps the root of the troubles should be sought in the civilizational upheaval that happened then? Cities developed rapidly, the population grew, commercial ties intensified unheard of, merchants traveled great distances (for example, it took the plague only 7.5 months to get from the sources of the Rhine to its mouth - and how many borders had to be overcome!). But with all this, sanitary ideas remained still deeply medieval. People lived in mud, often sleeping among rats, and those rats carried the deadly fleas Xenopsylla cheopis in their fur. When the rats died, hungry fleas jumped on people who were always nearby.

But this is a general consideration, it applies to many eras. If we talk specifically about the "Black Death", then the reason for its unheard of "effectiveness" can be seen in the chain of crop failures in 1315-1319. Another unexpected conclusion that can be drawn from analyzing the skeletons from plague cemeteries concerns the age structure of the victims: most of them were not children, as often happens during epidemics, but people of mature age, whose childhood fell on that great crop failure of the beginning of the XIV century. The social and biological intertwined in the history of mankind is more whimsical than it seems. These studies are of great importance. Let us recall how the famous book of Camus ends: “... the plague microbe never dies, never disappears, it can sleep for decades somewhere in the curls of furniture or in a stack of linen, it patiently waits in the bedroom, in the basement, in a suitcase, in handkerchiefs and in papers, and, perhaps, such a day will come on grief and instructing people when the plague will awaken rats and send them to die in the streets of a happy city.

sources

http://mycelebrities.ru/publ/sobytija/katastrofy/ehpidemija_chumy_v_evrope_14_veka/28-1-0-827

http://www.vokrugsveta.ru/

http://www.istorya.ru/articles/bubchuma.php

Let me remind you something else from medical topics:, but . I think you will be interested in learning more The original article is on the website InfoGlaz.rf Link to the article from which this copy is made -