Tag: Plague

In the spring of 430 King Archidamus again set out from Sparta with an army to devastate the lands of Attica. The Athenian country people again withdrew behind the walls of Athens for safety. But this time the devastation to Athens would be much worse than anything Sparta could inflict on them direc...

The Antonine Plague, also referred to as the Plague of Galen, was one of the most devastating pandemics in ancient history. Estimated to have occurred between AD 165 and 180, it is believed to have claimed the lives of over 5 million people throughout the Roman Empire. This plague, which left a prof...

There is a lot to unpack here. Firstly, I find it hard to see how a scholarly analysis of plague-related morbidity in the 14th Century could possibly damage trust in the UK’s health services in 2023 unless the report’s authors recommended the reintroduction of bloodletting, leeches and o...

When Craig Vallon and his wife Denise moved to Bullhead City, Arizona, in 1973, he thought he was the luckiest man in the world. The two had met as teenagers in the suburbs of Los Angeles. Denise was a party girl, and her wealthy family had hoped she’d settle down with a doctor. But Craig prov...

The Justinianic Plague, the pandemic that brought waves of plague to western Eurasia between 541 to about 750 CE, has been a feature of narratives about the “decline and fall of the Roman Empire” ever since the eighteenth century, when Edward Gibbon featured Procopius’s vivid ...