Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 57. Chapters: Plague, Salmonella, Epidemic typhus, Lassa fever, Trichinosis, Q fever, Endocarditis, Rabies, Sarcocystis: Host-parasite relations, Lymphocytic choriomeningitis, Leptospirosis, Bubonic plague, Mycoplasma, Hantavirus, Bartonella, Flavivirus, Hepatitis E, Hymenolepiasis, Rat-bite fever, Cryptosporidium parvum, Oriental rat flea, Argentine hemorrhagic fever, Lujo virus, Bolivian hemorrhagic fever, Junin virus, Andes virus, Streptobacillus, Puumala virus, Haverhill fever, Venezuelan hemorrhagic fever. Excerpt: Plague is a deadly infectious disease that is caused by the enterobacteria Yersinia pestis, named after the French-Swiss bacteriologist Alexandre Yersin. Primarily carried by rodents (most notably rats) and spread to humans via fleas, the disease is notorious throughout history, due to the unrivaled scale of death and devastation it brought. Until June 2007, plague was one of only three diseases specifically reportable to the World Health Organization (the two other ones were cholera and yellow fever). Depending on lung infection, or sanitary conditions, plague also can be spread in the air, by direct contact, or by contaminated undercooked food or materials. The symptoms of plague depend on the concentrated areas of infection in each person: such as bubonic plague in lymph nodes, septicemic plague in blood vessels, pneumonic plague in lungs, and so on. Medicines can cure plague if detected early. Plague is still endemic in some parts of the world. The epidemiological use of the term "plague" is currently applied to bacterial infections that cause buboes, although historically the medical use of the term "plague" has been applied to pandemic infections in general. Plague is often synonymous with "bubonic plague" but this only describes one of its manifestations. Other names have been used to describe this disease, such as "The Black Plague" and "The Black Death", the latter is now used primarily to describe the second, and most devastating, pandemic of the disease. The etymology of the word "plague" is believed to come from the Latin word plaga ("blow, wound") and plangere ("to strike, or to strike down"). Transmission of Y. pestis to an uninfected individual is possible by any of the following means. Yersinia pestis circulates in animal reservoirs, particularly in rodents, in the natural foci of infection found on all continents except Australia. The natural foci of plague are situated in a broad belt in the tropical and sub-tropical latitudes and the warmer parts