Antonine PlagueInfectious Disease ModellingPathogen EpidemiologyPathogen PrevalenceSingle CityNormal Life SpanPathogenesisEpidemiological DynamicMedical HistoryDisease OutbreakDisease EmergenceDisease TransmissionMedicineEpidemiology
Highly contagious plagues do not strike a single city at a single time and then disappear. The normal life span for an epidemic is 30 to 40 years. In the first attack a majority of the population would be infected. Those that survived would develop a total or limited immunity, depending on the disease. However, within a few years, new children would be born who did not have that immunity. Also some of those who might not have contracted the disease in the first outbreak might catch the disease in the second. For example, our records are particularly good for smallpox during the eighteenth century in Mexico. Severe outbreaks occurred in 1761, 1779/80, 1797/98, with a declining mortality rate with each outbreak2). Another example of the 'life-span' of a plague (most likely smallpox) can be seen in the Antonine plague which struck the Roman empire in the second century A.D.3). This epidemic began