The plague that Thucydides describes that hit Athens while it was besieged by Sparta sounds eerily like ebola. He says that at first victims would have "violent heats in the head", redness in the eyes, and that the internal organs such as the throat or tongue, would become bloody and start to smell. The "violent heats in the head" are presumably fevers but Thucydides states that the body was hot to the touch. The person would then start coughing and would experience nausea and violent spasms. The skin would then become reddish, livid, and covered in ulcers. The majority of people struck by the plague died on the seventh or eighth day. While these are only the general symptoms which I have stated, the rest can be found in Section 2.48. The interesting part is that Thucydides even points out that the plague originated in Africa. The plague killed off the majority of the physicians that were trying to help people yet contained itself within Athens for the most part. This shows that the disease could only be transmitted by contact with the sick. While Thucydides' descriptions are fairly vague, when I looked into the signs and symptoms that he described, it sounds a great deal like the virus that is currently making its way through west Africa. Below are links to an article about this topic from the New York Times and a description of the symptoms of ebola from the Mayo Clinic website. I'm curious if this is true or not.
http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/ebola-virus/basics/symptoms/con-20031241
http://www.nytimes.com/1996/08/18/weekinreview/was-the-plague-of-athens-really-ebola.html
Interesting idea. There have been attempts to identify it with almost every nasty disease or virus imaginable, including flu, measles, smallpox, ergotism, or staph infection. A survey of the medical and literary evidence was done in 1979, "Thucydides and the Plague of Athens" A. J. Holladay and J. C. F. Poole, Classical Quarterly 29 (1979)
ReplyDeletehttp://www.jstor.org.libproxy.adelphi.edu:2048/stable/638096?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
With additional notes here: http://www.jstor.org.libproxy.adelphi.edu:2048/stable/638766
and here: http://www.jstor.org.libproxy.adelphi.edu:2048/stable/638306?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
Interesting idea. There have been attempts to identify it with almost every nasty disease or virus imaginable, including flu, measles, smallpox, ergotism, or staph infection. A survey of the medical and literary evidence was done in 1979, "Thucydides and the Plague of Athens" A. J. Holladay and J. C. F. Poole, Classical Quarterly 29 (1979)
ReplyDeletehttp://www.jstor.org.libproxy.adelphi.edu:2048/stable/638096?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
With additional notes here: http://www.jstor.org.libproxy.adelphi.edu:2048/stable/638766
and here: http://www.jstor.org.libproxy.adelphi.edu:2048/stable/638306?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents