Question: what was the plague

Emma Trantham answered on 2 Jul 2012:

Great question 🙂

Scientists now think that the plague (also known as the Black Death) was caused by a bacterial species Yersinia pestis

Have you covered the Black Death in history? People got horrible swellings (lumps) in their armpits and groins, had a fever and sometiems coughed up blood before dying (ewww!)

They got the plague because the bacteria were carried by rats and their fleas and people came into contact a lot with rats back then.

Interestingly some recent work (where they dug up the skeletons of plague victims from the Middle Ages and analysed their teeth) found that the bacteria that caused the plague then looks very similar to the Yersinia pestis that is around now (yup it is still around in some parts of the world). Plague now doesn’t seem to be as dangerous so scientists suggest that maybe we are protected from it because we live in much cleaner environments and have antibiotics etc, rather than because the bacteria have become less harmful.