Athens plague was typhoid fever.

The plague which struck Athens during the Peloponnesian War was not smallpox after all. It was typhoid fever.

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20060123/typhoid_his.html

Anyone who mentions Thucidydes in public is probably a Straussian.

Posted by Søren Renner on Wednesday, January 25, 2006 at 12:47 PM in History
Comments (4) | Tell a friend

Comments:

Posted by MichaelCD on January 25, 2006, 03:42 PM | #

The question of when Smallpox came to Europe is quite an interesting one when one looks at the fall of Rome.

Hippocrates described numerous diseases in the 5th Century BC with such accuracy that we know he was talking about Mumps, diptheria, TB, Malaria e.t.c. but he did not mention Smallpox. Furthermore the 6th century Justinian plague has been positively identified as Bubonic plague not Smallpox, from Procopius’ description. There are however contempary accounts of Smallpox such as the recording in India around 400 a.d. and ‘the Elephant War’ siege of Mecca in 568 a.d. Interestingly Arab tradition states that Smallpox came from Camels and DNA has shown that Variola is closely related to Camelpox. It is also fairly certain that Gregory of Tours description of a plague in Italy and France which he called Variola from the Latin for ‘spotted’ was Smallpox.

For me the question is could the Antonine plague or the Plague of Cyprian have been Smallpox? When you look at the dates it’s certianly possible. Of course if we could find that the answer was yes and that the consequences of this which included severe depopulation of entire areas we would have a major reason for the fall of the Romans.

Posted by JRM on January 25, 2006, 11:14 PM | #

Related, but slightly off topic. Discover magazine has an article which claims that the disease which reduced the indigenous population of Mexico in the sixteenth century was native to Mexico. The rapid spread and symptoms of the disease suggest that it was unlikely to have been brought by the Spanish. The article describes a cycle where the epidemics happened in wet years after a few dry years. The article postulates that a disease vector was rodents carrying a virus similar to hantavirus. The rats’ population would explode in the wet years and their numbers would help transmit the disease to the native population. In conclusion, the article suggests that the Spanish were not necessarily to blame for native population reduction.Discover magazine 16th century epidemics in Mexico

Posted by jonjayray on January 26, 2006, 09:24 PM | #

Hey! I am a great fan of old Thucy and I am no Straussian. I have nothing but contempt for gnostic knowledge

Posted by Calvin on January 26, 2006, 10:00 PM | #

The palgues that decimated the Aztecs had nothing to do with the Spanish invasion? That’s another nail in the coffin of “Guns Germs and Steel” then.

How were the corpses of the thousands of Athenian typhoid victims dispossed of, did they have to enlarge their cremation facilities?

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