I am afraid that I have not been overly compelling in the past few days. Sorry, folks. Actually it seems that there has been a general slide in compelling-ness. Even Uncle Bob resorted to surveys. My favorites list seems to be updating not nearly as much lately, and when they do they are having a sudden marked tendency to be "What Work of Art am I" (I'm the Mona Lisa) or "The Eight Billionth List You Have Read Today" (Didn't bother on that one) or "If I Were a Disease I Would Be Syphilis" (I forget which one I was but I remember it was disappointing) or just a whole long transcription of an entire song.

On the disease front. Man, the Plague of Thucydides doesn't get anywhere *near* enough attention. It's all Bubonic Plague this and Smallpox that and Yellow Fever is seeing so-and-so.

The Plague of Thucydides is by far my favorite. And you try typing that a whole bunch of times, it's really hard. But nobody's ever heard of it. This is partly because almost nobody survived, let alone literate people, except Thucydides, hence the name. It left him blind and maimed, though. And partly because it happened to occur right smack around the same time as the Peloponnesian War (I am entirely certain I did not spell that correctly) which wound up getting blamed for the deaths and world-changing that the Plague was actually mostly responsible for.

It's my favorite because victims basically turn about every color that it is possible for a human being to turn during the course of the disease. And also develop almost every possible symptom in almost every possible body system, including but not limited to: rashes, fevers, sweats, intense thirst to the point where many victims drowned to death trying to get enough water, diarrhea, bloating, etc. Then if you survived (not likely), it was nearly impossible for you to escape without some serious impairment, including but not limited to: blindness, mental incapacity, gangrene, loss of limb, and paralysis.

It's also my favorite because it caused far more anarchy than any ensuing plague, including the Black (aka Bubonic) Plague. The whole society ran completely amok. Nobody believed they were going to live, so they just did whatever they felt like. Men masturbated in the streets. People killed each other over trifles, knowing there were nowhere near enough people there to create a court of law, especially not people who cared. In the beginning, they tried to bury their dead. Then they ran out of both room and live people, so they started burning them. Then they just quit altogether and left them wherever they died.

From Thucydides' Peloponnesian War Book II Chapter VII:

"The bodies of dying men lay one upon another, and half-dead creatures reeled about the streets and gathered round all the fountains in their longing for water. The sacred places also in which they had quartered themselves were full of corpses of persons that had died there, just as they were; for as the disaster passed all bounds, men, not knowing what was to become of them, became utterly careless of everything, whether sacred or profane. All the burial rites before in use were entirely upset, and they buried the bodies as best they could. Many from want of the proper appliances, through so many of their friends having died already, had recourse to the most shameless sepultures: sometimes getting the start of those who had raised a pile, they threw their own dead body upon the stranger's pyre and ignited it; sometimes they tossed the corpse which they were carrying on the top of another that was burning, and so went off."

Even today, scientists, biologists, anthropologists, and doctors are unsure of exactly what this plague was. They believe it may actually have been several plagues at once, but this seems to me unlikely, especially since that never again happened.

Wow. I just wrote a whole entry about a plague. Ah well, it's interesting to ME anyway.

You're right, Becky, I probably shoulda been a doctor. Or an epidemiologist, one. Never would have made it through all that school, though.

More later. Maybe. Probably, since none of the other Playstation games look easy enough for me.

onehanded