Check This Out!

Check this out!

Primary Source: May 19, 1930 American Magazine

From Guayaquil, Ecuador, last week went triumphant dispatches that U. S. Public Health men had eradicated (removed) bubonic plague from the community. The men were Drs. John D. Long and Clifford Rush Eskey.

Bubonic plague, the Black Death, has been one of man's most terrific scourges (diseases). In the 14th Century it killed 13,000,000 people in China, 24,000,000 in the rest of the East, 25,000,000 (one fourth of the population) in Europe. Its horror is recorded in Daniel DeFoe's Journal of the Plague Year, 1665, when 70,000 died in London. In 1630, 80,000 perished in Milan. Between 1896 and 1917 it killed 10,000,000 over the world.

Although San Francisco is one of the five known endemic foci of bubonic plague,* very seldom does a case now appear in the U. S. Rats, ground squirrels (the chief cause in California) and other rodents carry the germ, Bacillus pestis. Fleas bite the rats, and then carry the bacilli to man's habitations, his clothes, and his body. To prevent the disease, rodents must be exterminated (killed) and their fleas kept from humans through personal hygiene. Drs. Long and Eskey cleaned Guayaquil by drastically cleaning the city of vermin and teaching the inhabitants personal cleanliness. Their next chore, upon which they are already started: to de-rat, de-flea, de-plague Peru.

Questions:

1- Where was Bubonic plague eradicated from in 1930? ______2- How many people died from Bubonic Plague in 14th Century China? ______3- How many people died from Bubonic Plague in 1665 in London? ______4- Which animal is responsible for the spread of Bubonic Plague? ______5- What germ do infected rodents carry? ______The death of family members left children facing death and pain at an early age. Parents even abandoned their children, leaving them to the streets instead of risking the babies giving them the dreaded "pestilence". Children were especially unlucky if they were female. Baby girls would be left to die because parents would favor male children that could carry on the family name.

How did the Black Death change the relationships between parents and children?

1- ______

2- ______

3- ______

4- ______