![]() “People had no real understanding of how to fight it other than trying to avoid sick people,” says Thomas Mockaitis, a history professor at DePaul University. The plague decimated Constantinople and spread like wildfire across Europe, Asia, North Africa and Arabia killing an estimated 30 to 50 million people, perhaps half of the world’s population. It was carried over the Mediterranean Sea from Egypt, where plague-ridden fleas hitched a ride on black rats that snacked on grain. The Plague of Justinian arrived in Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, in 541 CE. Three of the deadliest pandemics in recorded history were caused by a single bacterium, Yersinia pestis, a fatal infection otherwise known as the plague. Here it's seen under optical microscopy X 1000. ![]() Yersinia pestis, formerly pasteurella pestis, was the bacteria responsible for the plague. ![]()
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