The Plague

 Time for the Plague

 

 It seems that every century has it's own particular plagues. At the moment we are going through Coronavirus or Corvid 19. We have good methods of communication, good advice given to us by the people who know what we're dealing with. 

Not the Government particularly, but that's my personal opinion.

We are lucky. No-one who caught The Black Death in the 15th/16th centuries survived.  But those who didn't catch it, lived longer in the following years.

Everything was tried, eating onions, arsenic, mercury, (usually used for STDS) bursting the buboes. Blood letting.

When all they needed to do was to be clean. Get rid of the rats and their fleas.

Bit like today. Wash your hands, sneeze into a hankie, don't wipe your face with dirty hands.

The famous nursery rhyme, "Ring a ring o' Rosies, a pocket full of posies, Atishoo, Atishoo we all fall down!" came from this time.

Lavender and roses prevented bad smells and pockets full of herbs were meant to protect the wearer, sneezing was one of the first signs, then of course you would fall down. Dead.

Today, some people will die if the catch it, the already sick, the aged, the infirm, but if we are careful we should be ok. Those of us alive today are already survivors of the people who did not die of the plague.

More mysterious is The Sweating Sickness, today we still don't know what caused it, or why it worked so quickly and was so fatal. within hours of the first symptoms the victims felt unable to keep awake and if they did sleep, they died. Some recovered but there was no immunity and some people suffered this illness three or four times before they died.

It disappeared from History in 1551. It just stopped. No-one knows why. That was the Tudor Plague.

So far we have had bird flu, swine flu, norvovirus, Asian flu, Spanish Flu, HIV, Cholera, Polio, TB in our history. 

Does make you wonder why people keep fighting wars.

 

I lived near a plague pit. It was called Pitfield Street in Shoreditch. There are many more throughout London. The 1665 plague was only ended by The Great Fire of London, so one disaster finished another.

I'll end it there, sweet dreams, don't have nightmares, just wash your hands and sneeze into a tissue.