The Worlds Deadliest Plagues The History And Legacy Of The Worst Global Pandemics Charles River Editors by Charles River Editors B086Q6MZQX instant download after payment.

Human beings seem to have a particular fascination for microbiological threats. They are invisible, unpredictable and mysterious, and it is only in the past 150 years or so that scientists have begun to understand microorganisms and the maladies they can cause. Modern society has long been horrified and enthralled by accounts of such pestilences as the Black Death, which exterminated up to 60% of the population of Europe from 1347-1351. Less known is the Plague of Justinian which was even more deadly in that it carried away a quarter of the world’s population within the space of one year (542 CE). The Great Plague of London, which killed 100,000 in 1666, is another infamous pestilence, as is the Spanish Flu of 1918, which took the lives of as many as one million worldwide, making that epidemic even deadlier than the medieval Black Death.

Such virulent outbreaks of disease are by no means distant historical events. While scientific and technological advances have limited and in many places eradicated such community-devastating diseases as cholera, smallpox, bubonic plague, typhus, Salmonella and yellow fever, new microscopic threats have arisen, including Ebola, SARS, bird flu, and most recently Coronavirus 2.