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From: Tom Cadmus
T1: cadmust
Date: 4/13/98
Time: 11:54:52 AM
Remote Name: 130.68.92.25
Snell's discussion and description of the Black Plague reminded of an ariticle I read a short time ago about a more recent epidemic, polio. After reading Snell's essay I noticed some familiar behavorial similarities. People's reactions to ravaging diseases haven't changed much. Many travellers were forcibly kept in towns where the plague had begun to spread. As well many towns baricaded themselves and would allow no one passage into their walls. During the polio epidemic many families in New York City tried to leave the city and flee to New Jersey. Both the Hoboken docks and the Lincoln Tunnel were barricaded by law to these families and they were turned back. Snell's graphic accounts of Bubonic Plague's syptoms illustrates rather well why infected persons and their famalies were walled into their homes before they had even expired. The estimated population loss figures whether exagerrated or not showed that the social and economic ramifactions must have been immediate and long standing for the survivors.