This week on the site we have another FirstScience Exclusive in the form of an article by Susan Scott and Christopher Duncan on The History of the Black Death. And next week I have arranged for a follow up article on 'The Black Death - Modern Nightmare' which will address the potential return of this killer disease.

Long suffering readers of this column may remember that I wrote a ramble (Number 8 - Rrrr only a youngster in rambling terms. Who would have thought we would get to 62! The rest are here) way back on the 2nd May 2003 called SARS 2003 - Influenza 1918 - A Warning From History? where I took a look at SARS at the height of last year's outbreak from the mindset of worrying parallels with the past 1918 Influenza outbreak. Thankfully, whilst SARS has lingered in China (the World Health Organization page for SARS has a report as recently as 18th May 2004 at the time of writing) it does seem to be under control. But this latest research by Susan and Christopher (they have just published a book called 'Return of the Black Death'), does serve once more to highlight the fact of how these silent killers that we had assumed had gone the way of kipper ties, are prone to return if we aren't on our guard.

Accordingly, just to keep us all chipper, chirpy and cheerful at our impending doom. I thought I would dig out some happy facts from 'Return of the Black Death' for you to cogitate on.

1/ Possibly the oldest reference to plagues appears in the biblical book of I Samuel. In about 1320BC, the Philistines stole the Ark of the Covenant from the Israelites and returned home;

'the Lord's hand was heavy upon the people of Ashdod and its vicinity; he brought devestation upon them and afflicted them with tumours. And rats appeared in their land, and death and destruction were throughout the city ... the Lord's hand was against that city, throwing it into a great panic. He afflicted the people of the city, both young and old, with an outbreak of tumours in the groin'.

2/ Nursery Rhyme Time...

Ring a ring of roses,
A pocket full of posies,
Atishoo, atishoo,
We all fall down.

The first line of the rhyme depicts the round red rash that appeared on the victim's skin. The sweet smelling posies were what people held to their noses to ward off infection. Sneezing was an early symptom of the disease, and this was closely followed by 'falling down' or sudden death.

3/ The Black Death wiped out nearly one half of medieval Europeans.

4/ In the middle of the seventeenth century, a great plague struck London and killed up to a fifth of the population. Samuel Pepys recorded the events in his diary.