THE BUBON PLAGUE Can a single infested rat change the entire course of history? In Shakespeare's time it changed the lives of almost every single person. Shakespeare was greatly affected by the bubonic plague caused by rats. Shakespeare had three sisters and a brother who were killed by this deadly disease. His only son was also killed by the bubonic plague. Many theaters were closed for fear of the disease. Before Shakespeare was born, the outbreak of the plague in 1563 killed over 80,000 people in England. London alone had 20,000 deaths. London was dirty during this whole epidemic and there were no sewage systems. All the sewage was discharged into the River Thames (Alchin 1). The Elizabethan era was a difficult time for all people due to the fear of this terrible disease. The bubonic plague devastated the Elizabethan era and created awareness of this type of destruction for earlier and later types of plague. The bubonic plague was part of the Black Death. The Black Death originally began in Central Asia in the mid-1300s and reached Europe on arriving merchant ships (“Plague” 506). Traveling through Europe, it ended up in England in 1600. The bubonic plague began in the winter of 1664-1665 when England was at war with Holland. The plague began in the poor, overcrowded parish of St. Giles and from there climbed the social tower (Cowie 17). The people were so scared of the plague that they never went out and when they went out they would hurry up and do what they had to do (Cowie 19). Nearly 20-30 million people died during the Black Death (“Plague” 506). There are several symptoms of the Black Death and the Bubonic Plague. A symptom of the Black Death was… middle of paper… in the 1980s, no one really knows how AIDS started. They have some evidence of a man living in the Congo who had the disease in 1959, and the only reason they knew he had it was because a blood sample was collected from him (Guilfoile 25). It was largely ignored when it started to spread and then people started to become aware and they wanted to create a cure for this virus. HIV came from chimpanzees because when the natives slaughtered them and had a cut on their hand, the virus from the chimpanzee's blood would enter the cut person and end up in their bloodstream. It is likely that it comes from chimpanzees in Cameroon and in them it is called SIV (simian immunodeficiency virus). People have been trying to find a cure for this deadly disease since the 1980s. It's not entirely clear what type of immune response is blocking people from becoming infected.