War and plague in Athens. Review of the possible origin of the athenian epidemic of 430-426 BC
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3989/asclepio.2019.01Keywords:
Athens, Peloponnesian War, epidemic, clinical, epidemiologyAbstract
The Peloponnesian War began in the year 431 BC. In the summer of the second year, the Peloponnese attacked the Attic Peninsula, and its inhabitants sought refuge inside the city walls of Athens. Days later, an unprecedentedly deadly plague spread throughout the city. The plague rampaged the city for the rest of the year and the following one, and made reappearances in both 427 and 426 BC. During five years, successive waves of the epidemic annihilated almost a third of the city’s population. The only source describing this outbreak is the work by Thucydides, an Athenian historian who lived through the epidemic, and who described the extent and impact of the plague in his second book of the History of the Peloponnesian War (47-52). The objective of this journal article is to review, with the methodological caution required to approach an illness that occurred more than 2500 years ago, the various medical theories proposed as the cause of this epidemic.
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