Third pandemic

The third pandemic is the widespread plague pandemic that originated in Yunnan in 1855 ^[1] . Bubonic and pulmonary plague over several decades spread to all inhabited continents. In China and India alone, the total number of deaths was more than 12 million people. According to the World Health Organization , the echoes of the pandemic were recorded in 1959, when the number of victims in the world dropped to 200 people.

The plague throughout history has caused many epidemics and pandemics, among which Justinian's plague and Black Death stand out. The plague of the late XIX - early XX centuries is considered the third especially large pandemic. However, some authors, not without justification, point out the conventional nature of the third pandemic, indicating the sequence of peaks of activity of the plague: the first peak - 1346-1382 ( Black Death ), the second - 1545-1683, the third - 1710-1830, between which several generations of people ^[2] . A comparison of the scale of the third pandemic with previous peaks of plague activity shows that it is more correct to consider it not an independent phenomenon, but the fifth, lowest peak of the second pandemic.

The change in the clinical form of the disease is independent: the pulmonary plague reappeared, registered during the Black Death, but not observed during subsequent peaks of activity of the plague.

It is also significant that in the last years of the 19th century, scientists discovered the causative agent of the plague and identified its carriers . As Milan Daniel writes ^[3] :

Finally, the millennium-long attempts of mankind to find weapons against the "black death", in the shadow of which grew, and sometimes only barely warm human civilization, were crowned with success