Plague laid siege to the city of London several times during the 16th and 17th centuries, most famously between and The pestilence first arose in the suburb of St.
Giles-in-the-Fields, but it soon traveled into the cramped and filthy neighborhoods of the city proper. At its peak in September , some 8, people were dying each week. Somewhere between 75, and , people eventually perished before the outbreak died down in Later that same year, London was visited by a second major tragedy when the Great Fire of torched much of its city center.
Painting of Marseille during the plague. The disease arrived on a merchant ship called the Grand Saint Antoine, which had picked up infected passengers during a journey to the Middle East.
Plague-carrying rat fleas soon spread across the city, sparking an epidemic. People died by the thousands, and the piles of bodies on the streets grew so large that convicts were conscripted to dispose of them. By then, it had killed roughly , people. People in quarantine in Karachi during the outbreak. The first two major plague pandemics began with the Plague of Justinian and the Black Death.
The disease traversed the globe over the next several decades, and by the beginning of the 20th century, infected rats traveling on steamships had carried it to all six inhabited continents. The worldwide outbreak would eventually claim some 15 million lives before petering out in the s.
Lacking the active immunity of mature elders, firstborn biblical Egyptian children exposed to RVFV through contact or to either virus through mosquito transmission would have been unprotected from lethal infection. Conversely, younger siblings still or recently at breast, possessing transplacental passive immunity, would have been protected. Such a dramatic contrast would have fostered the perception of vulnerability of the firstborn in plague Residual effects of the heavy rains of plague 7 would have extended the geographical range of transmission of both viruses from pastures to human habitations.
Close to dwelling places of the biblical Egyptians, new vegetation and standing water would have increased vector mosquito numbers and attracted birds [ 59 , 60 ]. In plague 10, the contrast in mortalities of RVFV-infected lambs with RVFV-infected sheep near human dwellings — absent stresses of pasture life — would have lent a perception of widespread deaths among firstborn animals.
As atmospheric warming continued, the end result of masses of newly hatched vector mosquitoes near Egyptian dwellings rapidly amplifying both viruses, in concert with secondary contact spread of RVFV, would have been the devastating plague Historically, some period of warm weather is necessary for introduced RVFV to develop into a major outbreak.
RVFV was brought into Egypt in and spread northward largely unnoticed through the summer and early autumn; in October, it exploded into an epidemic and epizootic in the Nile Delta [ 25 , 46 , 47 ]. Similarly, RVFV was identified in Saudi Arabia in mosquitoes in , yet was recognized as an epidemic and epizootic only in August-September [ 48 , 61 ].
Along this line, experimental findings demonstrate a need for physical warming of vector mosquitoes for WNV transmission. Absent similar climatic conditions in Goshen, comparable disasters would not have occurred.
Interestingly, recent studies in the Nile Delta utilizing the newer technique of thermal scanning radiometry correlate the focal distribution of filariasis, a disease also transmitted by Aedes, Culex, and other mosquitoes, with focal surface and subsurface moisture in the soil and plant canopy [ 63 ].
This finding lends support to the view that the occurrence of the 10th plague in the land of Egypt, but not in Goshen, may have been due in large part to focal differences in moisture. That overlapping mosquito-borne outbreaks of virus disease do occur was repeatedly documented in episodes caused by Western encephalitis and St. Louis encephalitis viruses in Kern County, California, during the latter decades of the 20th century [ 64 ].
Recovery of WNV from mosquitoes in a setting of enzootic RVF in Mauritania in and at the end of an RFV epidemic in Egypt in provides historical support to the concept that these viruses together could have caused plagues 5 and 10 [ 65 , 26 ]. Additionally, observations made during an RVF outbreak in Mauritania in seem relevant: As expected, the finding of icterus was significantly greater among persons with laboratory evidence of recent RVFV infection than in those without [ 52 ].
However, this was not the case for individuals having hemorrhagic signs, which led the seasoned investigators to consider the possibility of an additional outbreak agent. The present analysis of the origin of the Old Testament plagues offers a possible unifying theory of interrelation of a single atmospheric event with a series of unseasonable climate changes causing all calamities. Continuing scientific advances may permit future development of a formal hypothesis based on our analysis.
Outbreaks of arthropod-viruses are documented throughout tropical and subtropical regions following ENSO atmospheric reversals [ 11 , 13 , 14 , 17 ]. In future ENSO cycles, such viruses may be important public health concerns in temperate regions. We thank Dr. Charles Calisher and Dr. John S. Marr for review of the manuscript, and Mr. David Weiss for his invaluable library guidance. National Center for Biotechnology Information , U. Yale J Biol Med. Joel Ehrenkranz. Deborah A. Author information Copyright and License information Disclaimer.
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons CC BY-NC license, which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. You may not use the material for commercial purposes. This article has been cited by other articles in PMC. Abstract Analyses of past disasters may supply insights to mitigate the impact of recurrences.
Introduction The vivid Old Testament saga of the 10 plagues that devastated the land of Egypt and its people Exodus has intrigued some to seek rational explanations for a chronicle of disasters that befell one population yet spared another. Brief Literature Review In parallel with scientific advances, succeeding authors have offered progressively rational explanations for the plagues, as well summarized by Marr and Malloy [ 2 ].
Open in a separate window. Focal Climate Change Proposal of Causation Drawing from present day knowledge of the interplay of climatic conditions, ecological changes, and arthropod-borne and arthropod-caused diseases, we suggest that the immediate cause of all plagues — in biblical sequence — was unseasonable and progressive climate warming along the eastern Mediterranean coast where Israelites worked in forced labor. Authoritative Bibles and Translation Inconsistencies For consistency, we used the well-recognized and authoritative sources of two different translations of the Old Testament published in the 20th and 21st centuries by the Jewish Publication Society [ 18 , 19 ].
Discussion Disturbed climatic conditions over the biblical land of Egypt clearly are evident in the Old Testament account of plagues 7 and 8, bespeaking the turbulent atmospheric events of a supercell storm bearing hailstones to destroy crops and veering winds to drive swarms of locusts to and fro.
Epidemiology and Pathogenesis of Plague 10 The ancient and continuing Egyptian practice of stabling livestock within dwellings would have facilitated human contact with RVFV-infected livestock [ 29 ]. Eventuation of Plague 5 into Plague 10 Residual effects of the heavy rains of plague 7 would have extended the geographical range of transmission of both viruses from pastures to human habitations. Conclusions and Outlook The present analysis of the origin of the Old Testament plagues offers a possible unifying theory of interrelation of a single atmospheric event with a series of unseasonable climate changes causing all calamities.
Acknowledgments We thank Dr. The Jewish Study Bible. New York: Oxford University Press; Annotation 7. An epidemiological analysis of the ten plagues of Egypt. The Plagues of Egypt. Zeitschrift fur die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft. The Plagues of Egypt II. Mycotoxins and the bible. Perspect Biol Med. The Plagues of Egypt: What killed the animals and the firstborn? Med J Australia. Annotation Sarna NM. Exploring Exodus.
New York: Shocken Books; Introduction; pp. Relations between climate variability in the Mediterranean region and the tropics: ENSO, south Asian and African monsoons, hurricanes and Saharan dust. Mediterranean Climate Variability, 4. Amsterdam: Elsevier; Climate and satellite indicators to forecast Rift Valley fever epidemics in Kenya. El Nino: the catastrophic flooding of Peru. Part II. Field Museum of Natural History Bulletin. New York: Warner; Brown locust outbreaks and climate variability in southern Africa.
J Applied Ecology. Mar Ecol Prog Ser. Multiscale Variability and Global and Regional Impacts. Exodus ; pp. Toward integrated reconstruction of past climates. Alexandrium minutum algae [database on the Internet] [cited November 7]. Alexandrium minutum cysts in sediment cores from the eastern harbour of Alexandria, Egypt. The eastern form of Rana ridibunda anura: ranidae inhabits the Nile delta. Zoologischer Anzeiger.
Some observations of the bionomics of the common mosquitoes of the Nile delta. Amer J Trop Med Hyg. Rift Valley fever epizootic in Egypt: 1. Description of epizootic and virologic studies. Isolation of West Nile and Sindbis viruses from mosquitoes collected in the Nile valley of Egypt during an outbreak of Rift Valley fever.
J Med Entomology. Some myiasis producers in Cairo and Gaza abattoirs. J Egyptian Society Parasitology. Human infection with Rift Valley fever virus and immunity twelve years after single attack. Proc Soc Exper Biol Med. In the picture, Egyptians are digging around the river for a spring. But all they found was a spring of blood. The pharaoh, his servants, the Egyptians and even their animals developed painful boils all over their bodies.
There were even boils on the Pharaoh's feet! A physician attended the Pharaoh's court but he could not cure them. God rained hail, fire and thunder upon Egypt and the hail struck down all the crops in the fields and shattered every tree. In the picture, the hail stones red and white dots are falling on a tree, as a shepherd and his goats shelter underneath. Hail storms were unusual in arid regions such as Egypt and were therefore extremely frightening. Moses, on the right, pleads with God to stop the storm.
God told Moses to stretch out his hand over the land of Egypt to bring a plague of locusts.
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