I just read an article on line about the death of a monkey at the Denver Zoo. The cause,  The Black Death .... (bubonic plague). Likely caught from a squirrel  which carried the fleas which, in turn, carried the yersinia pestis enterobacteria that causes the disease.

This may sound a bit weird, but I am fascinated by The Black Death. At a previous job, eons ago,we sort of had a "Black Death" reading group. We would find and read books on it (this was pre-amazon.com so it was harder then, we actually had to use the library!) have discussions at lunch (what a lunch time topic) and even get t-shirts. Ran into a guy in a bar that made custom t-shirts: "Celebrating 600 years of the Black Death" complete with a drawing of a rat in a party hat. Bought a couple. 

Apparently this was not that uncommon for the times, a co-worker at Sun belonged to a Black Death focused college organization:"Santa Rosa Junior College Students for Revival of the Black Death ". So I guess I am not the only one (thank goodness).

For those of you so inclined, there are a lot of great books on the topic - easily found on 'zon. The resurgence in interest is probably due to the recent SARs epidemic and all the fears around bird flu, etc.

 Some of my  favorite books on this topic:

 
Plagues and Peoples - In addition to an excellent discussion of the Black Death - it's also a discussion of how disease in general functions as a  biological weapon over the history of humanity. In the days before globalization,  popluations were relatively isolated and developed  localized diseases and immunities. There wasn't a lot of inter-regional population migration so that when it did occur (usually caused by wars, invasions or colonization), the invaders brought in diseases to which they were immune, but to which the invadees had no resistance. Disease would then kill as many or more then the actual battles.  The invasion of the Americas by the Europeans and the subsequent massive die off by the indigenous peoplse  is the classic example of this, but there are many others.  The Spanish flu of 1918 (much in the news because of its links to bird flu) was probably due to the massive population movements associated with WWI

 
More on this topic by Jared Diamond in the excellent book Guns Germs and Steel. Again, much discussion of how certain cultures had developed greater immunities and when exposed to more isolated cultures - resulted in their destruction.

 

 

 An outcome of reading on The Black Death was our discovery of other books -

The Secret Archives of the Vatican

which in turn led us down the trail of crypto-conspiracies around the Catholic Church, the Illuminati , Knights Templar and  people who wear "cowled clothing".

Umberto Eco and Foucault's Pendulum

I guess we were way ahead of Dan Brown and the Da Vinci code.  And then I think we all got into  Lovecraft ....but I digress.

 ......However I did read an interesting set of short stories last week that combined Sherlock Holmes with the mythos of H.P. Lovecraft:

Shadows over Baker Street.

 
I enjoyed it. But then I am the sort of person that reads books about the bubonic plague for fun.

 I'll stop now....