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:
“Good medicine is bitter to the taste.”
—Chinese proverb.
“No medicine in the world can do thee good;
In thee there is not half an hour’s life.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“We have to ask ourselves whether medicine is to remain a humanitarian and respected profession or a new but depersonalized science in the service of prolonging life rather than diminishing human suffering.”
—Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (b. 1926)