Comments on: Eating marmot is thought to be good for health

By: Sam J.

Sam J. — Wed, 20 Nov 2019 08:42:39 +0000

Plagues and Peoples by William H. McNeill. Great book I agree 100% this is a foundation book in understanding history and the world as it is. I can not say enough about how enlightening this book us. Must read. His book on technology and warfare is EXTREMELY GOOD too. Even though it's about ancient stuff, mostly, it's just as relevant today as any other time. Maybe even more so as tech changes so fast now. The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force, and Society since A.D. 1000 by William H. McNeill

By: Graham

Graham — Tue, 19 Nov 2019 16:56:38 +0000

OT but it looks like progressive education has finally reached its final stages:

https://graphics.chicagotribune.com/illinois-seclusion/index.html

Padded seclusion rooms.

Tell me again how a slap on the hand was worse?

By: Graham

Graham — Tue, 19 Nov 2019 16:07:56 +0000

Way back in university I read Plagues and Peoples by William (?) O’Neill. Great book, one of the earliest to take that big picture thematic approach to a historical issue, definitely one of the first on diseases as a driver of history.

Worth reading even now, though there have probably been updated developments.

He might have been the one to introduce me to the idea of wondering what exactly caused the great disease epidemics, that is to say which diseases. I still check in from time to time on what is being said.

We seem to be well satisfied that both the Plague of Justinian and its various successor outbreaks, and the Black Death with its follow-on episodes through the 19c, were in fact Plague. The Antonine plague I don’t know. The Plague of Athens during the Pelopponesian (?) War seems to still be up for grabs. I once saw a lot of claims for anthrax, wikipedia seems to currently report mainly claims for typhus, typhoid, or some predecessor of ebola.

By: Graham

Graham — Mon, 18 Nov 2019 21:29:05 +0000

I had long been of the impression that plague left untreated in any particular patient, if it didn’t kill him faster, would get into the lungs and so become the pneumonic form. Is it a different strain?

By: Adar

Adar — Mon, 18 Nov 2019 18:36:30 +0000

This particular plague is the worst possible sort so as reported. The pneumonic sort that can be spread by coughing.

By: Graham

Graham — Mon, 18 Nov 2019 15:33:38 +0000

I am prepared to be culturally sympathetic- rodents are often a protein source, and many cultures eat raw meat, though I am grossed out by both notions. I doubt I could combine the two regardless of how much alcohol was involved.

I gather there are also still plague reservoirs in northern Indian and the SW United States. In the latter, also some sort of rodent.

IIRC we can now kill plague relatively easily with antibiotics, at least at the earlier bubonic stage. Here’s hoping there aren’t multiply resistant strains coming soon of the Black Death.