Ring-a-ring-a-rosies / a pocket full of posies...

By Murray Stewart murray.stewart49@gmail.com

The For Fact’s Sake columns are – according to Google and the Duck ’n Fiddle’s Explanation of Everything – based in truth. Occasionally however, names and places have been changed to protect innocent people involved.

Atishoo! Atishoo! My kingdom for a tissue! Without getting too morbid on the subject of pandemics, poxes and plagues, some research concerning their origins proved interesting enough to share.

Apparently there are two main culprits: Bubonic – injected into the bloodstream, e.g. by flea bites, or Pneumonic – air-borne and inhaled. We’re currently grappling with the latter, but let’s take a look back at how the gods periodically culled humans with new variations of plagues.

Man has suffered from deadly viruses since Adam, the first being recorded in Babylon in 3 000 BCE which wiped out a third of the local population. Then those Biblical plagues in Egypt were pretty rough going, but for the known world at the time, worse was yet to come.

Click below to read more. (The full article can be found on page 3)