Bubonic Plague $1.69 AUD
Category: Medicine & Inventions
Bubonic plague is widely regarded as being responsible for two of the most infamous plagues in recorded history – the Black Death in the mid-fourteenth century and the great plague of London in 1665.
The causative organism of modern-day plague was discovered independently in 1894 by two bacteriologists: the Swiss born Dr. Alexandre Yersin and Dr. Shibasaburo Kitasato from Japan. Both were conducting research in Hong Kong during the third plague pandemic then occurring in Asia. Kitasato was working with the backing of the British authorities and had access to autopsies of plague victims at Kennedy Town Hospital. Yersin had to make do with a straw hut and was bribing grave diggers to allow him to cut samples from corpses prior to burial. Yersin was the first to correctly identify the plague bacillus, initially naming it Pasteurella pestis in honour of his French patron, Louis Pasteur.
