The pestilence referred to the bubonic plague
and it now refers to any epidemic disease that is highly contagious,
infectious, virulent and devastating.
The plague was, a highly contagious, infectious, virulent,
devastating disease due to a bacteria called Yersinia pestis which
mainly infects rats and other rodents that serve as the prime
reservoir for the bacteria. Fleas function as the prime vectors
carrying the bacteria from one species to another. The fleas bite the
rodents infected with Y. pestis and then they bite people and so
transmit the disease to them.
Transmission of the plague to people can also occur from eating
infected animals such as squirrels (e.g., in the southeastern U.S.)
Once someone has the plague, they can transmit it to another person
via aerosol droplets.
The word "pestilence" comes from "pestis," the Latin word for
"plague." Because the plague was responsible for so many deaths, the
plague and death have long been linked in literature. The 14th-
century English poet Geoffrey Chaucer spoke of "pestilence" in "The
Pardoner's Tale": "Ther cam a privee theef men clepeth Deeth, / That
in this contree al the peple sleeth, / And with his spere he smoot
his herte atwo, / And wente his wey withouten wordes mo. / He hath a
thousand slayn this pestilence."
"La Peste" (The Plague), a novel by the Nobel Prize-winning 20th-
century French writer Albert Camus, is set in the Algerian city of
Oran overrun by a deadly epidemic of the plague.
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