Page 9 - My FlipBook

as the Antonine plague. It apparently emerged somewhere in
China, spread steadily westward, and infected Roman soldiers
who were then stationed in what is now Iraq. As large numbers
of them subsequently returned home, they brought the conta-
gion with them.
The famous Greco-Roman physician Galen examined victims
of the plague in 166 and recorded its symptoms, among them
fever, coughing, diarrhea, and ugly skin sores. About the latter, he
observed that eventually, “that part of the surface called the scab
fell away and then the remaining part nearby was healthy and
after one or two days became scarred over.” 12

During the early 1920s, a child is covered by the pustules
characteristic of the lethal contagion smallpox. Historians
think that the Antonine plague, which ravaged the Roman
Empire in ancient times, was a smallpox pandemic.