Word: pasteurella
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Plague is caused by a bacillus, Pasteurella pestis, whose natural habitat is the rat. Fleas carry it from rats to humans. The disease, called bubonic when it affects the lymph nodes, pneumonic when it attacks the lungs, used to be 90% fatal; nowadays antibiotics and sulfa drugs can defeat it in 90% of cases, and widespread warfare against rats and fleas in underprivileged areas helps prevent outbreaks...
...Moldenkes' new book, Plants of the Bible (Chronica Botanica Co.; $7.50), tries to identify every plant mentioned in the Bible, even to the humble bacterium (Pasteurella pestis) that smote the Israelites with emerods. The job is a tough one, for neither the early writers nor the later translators of the Bible were botanists. They often used the same word for different plants, and different words for the same plant. The botanically innocent scholars who produced the King James Version turned aspens into mulberries and dill into anise. The sycomore that Zacchaeus climbed to catch a glimpse of Jesus...