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Sexually Transmitted Diseases
Published in Ayşe Serap Karadağ, Lawrence Charles Parish, Jordan V. Wang, Roxburgh's Common Skin Diseases, 2022
Aarthy K. Uthayakumar, Christopher B. Bunker
The secondary stage occurs 2–6 weeks later and is due to direct lymphatic involvement of regional draining nodes, with tender lymphadenopathy. Abscesses or buboes may form from coalesced lymph nodes, with systemic features including fever. Proctocolitis can present with rectal discharge, anal pain, constipation, or tenesmus. Rarely, oropharyngeal involvement can occur.
Epidemics and State Medicine in Fifteenth-Century Milan
Published in Roger French, Jon Arrizabalaga, Andrew Cunningham, Luis García-Ballester, Medicine from the Black Death to the French Disease, 2019
Bubonic plague presented an anomaly to medical authorities. On the one hand it was clearly associated with a continuous fever that could not also be characterized as hectic (involving the solid parts), ephemeral (involving the spirits) or putrid (involving the humours). Pestilential fevers came from breathing corrupted air, which generated excess heat in the heart and surrounding region, suppressing the vital spirit.20 On the other hand, buboes were a dramatic clinical feature in epidemics of plague, and buboes were understood usually with the term 'aposteme'. Unfortunately buboes and pestilential fevers could have different etiologies.
The Diagnosis of Hemorrhagic Fever
Published in James H. S. Gear, CRC Handbook of Viral and Rickettsial Hemorrhagic Fevers, 2019
Gram-negative infections, including those due to Pseudomonas, Klebsiella, and Proteus infections, commonly are complicated by the development of a hemorrhagic state. Of particular importance is plague, which is endemic in many of the regions where hemorrhagic fevers occur, and the signs of the septicemic form resemble those of hemorrhagic fever. Their differentiation may be difficult, but the finding of a bubo would suggest a diagnosis of plague, and this can be readily confirmed by the appropriate laboratory tests.
War on Rats: the architecture of the bubonic plague in Galveston
Published in Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings, 2023
The first case arrived in the summer of 1920. On June 8, a 17-year-old boy began experiencing plague symptoms: he was cold, dizzy, and his right femoral gland had a swelling, or “bubo.”1 Investigators found rats near the grain store where he worked as a collector as well as a dead rat and fleas at his home. Eight days later, the young man was unconscious. Four hours after he was admitted to John Sealy Hospital’s isolation ward, Emil Horridge became the first victim of Galveston’s bubonic plague. Figure 1 shows documentation of the first human case of bubonic plague in Galveston in a laboratory notebook.5 Two hours after Horridge died, Dr. Henry C. Hartman (1881–1963), chairman of the Department of Pathology at the University of Texas Medical Branch, began the autopsy.6 As reported by Hartman and his colleague, Dr. Anna M. Bowie (1890–1980), in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Horridge’s autopsy included pathologic findings of hemorrhagic necrosis of the right femoral gland, cloudy swelling and edema in the heart, marked hyperemia of the lungs, an enlarged spleen with hemorrhages, acute nephritis, fatty degeneration of the liver, and erosions in the gastric mucosa.7
COVID-19 and human reproduction: A pandemic that packs a serious punch
Published in Systems Biology in Reproductive Medicine, 2021
George Anifandis, Helen G. Tempest, Rafael Oliva, Grace M. Swanson, Mara Simopoulou, Charles A. Easley, Michael Primig, Christina I. Messini, Paul J. Turek, Peter Sutovsky, Steve J. Ory, Stephen A. Krawetz
The COVID-19 virus has been called the modern plague. This is in reference to the bubonic plague or Black Death, which holds the record for being the most lethal pandemic in human history (Alchon 2003). An estimated 75 million people died during the outbreak in mid 14th century Eurasia and North Africa. Almost half of Europe’s population was wiped out, as the plague was lethal to 30 to 90% of those infected. The plague caused flu symptoms, hemorrhage and pneumonia, as well as painful swollen lymph nodes that form pus-filled boils called buboes. Unlike COVID-19, and according to modern genetic analyses, the plague was due to the bacterium Yersinia pestis. It spread through flea bites and contact with animals (especially rats) but was not spread widely between humans. Notably, the plague still exists today, with about 651 cases reported worldwide annually (https://www.cdc.gov/plague/maps/index.html). It is curable with common antibiotics.
Facts and ideas from anywhere
Published in Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings, 2019
Blue was aware of the work of Paul-Louis Simond, a French researcher, who had noted that the bodies of patients treated at an early stage of plague all had one or more small blisters that contained a mix of fluid and plague bacilli. These blisters, the size of an insect bite, were followed by the emergence of buboes in the lymph nodes of the groin, neck, or armpits. Convinced that insects were spreading plague through their bites, Simond went searching for what species were capable of transferring the disease, not just from person to person but also from rat to rat. He began dunking dead rats found in the homes of plague victims into a bin filled with soapy water, where he would rifle through their fur with his bare hands and pick off as many fleas as he could. When he examined the insects’ intestines under a microscope, he found that the fleas were saturated with plague bacilli.