I picked up a book about pandemics while I was in the States for $1 at a bookshop in Canyon, Texas. And I left it in a motel somewhere between there and Atlanta.

However, it did discuss the plague of Athens in some detail. Chicken pox, measles, mumps and a number of other now well-known and rarely-fatal diseases (including a virulent form of thrush) were considered and rejected for various reasons. The only thing the research quoted in the book seems to agree on for certain is that it wasn't bubonic plague. And I seem to remember a figure of 20-25 million being given for the 1918 Influenza Epidemic, although I don't believe the author stated that as a definitive range. It was, rather a conservative estimate. Could have been higher.


The idiot also known as Capfka ...