Medicine
Rats can serve as zoonotic vectors for certain pathogens and thus cause disease, such as Lassa fever, leptospirosis and Hantavirus infection. However the rat is almost never directly responsible for the pathogen. Though it is commonly believed that R. rattus is responsible for the outbreak of bubonic plague the European citizens are to blame. After throwing waste into the street the rats moved where it was easy to find food. The rat flea then spread the plague from there. It is estimated that as many, if not more rats died from the plague than people.
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Famous quotes containing the word medicine:
“After you eat always take a walk, and you’ll never have to go to a medicine shop.”
—Chinese proverb.
Rhyme.
“The only medicine for suffering, crime, and all the other woes of mankind, is wisdom.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“Authority, though it err like others,
Hath yet a kind of medicine in itself,
That skins the vice o’ the top.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)