Flea-Borne Diseases

Abstract

Oat of the mist of antiquity, plague emerged as a fully developed disease capable of striking terror and devastation among a population of defenseless people. In I Samuel IV, we find reference to the punishment of the Philistines after they had defeated the Hebrew Army: ‘And He smote the men of the city, both small and great, and they had emerods in their secret parts’, and ‘the hand of God was very heavy there. And the men that died not were smitten with the emerods.’ The most common translation is that emerods are ‘swellings’ or ‘rounded eminences’, similar to buboes of plague. Various authorities have interpreted this as evidence of an epidemic of bubonic plague.