“ … the plague bacillus never dies or disappears for good; … it bides its time in bedrooms, cellars, trunks, and bookshelves; and perhaps the day would come when, for the bane and the enlightening of men, it would rouse up its rats again and send them forth to die in a happy city.” Albert Camus, The Plague.
Few other pathogens have caused as much devastation in human history as Yersinia pestis, the etiologic agent of the plague, or the Black Death, as the disease was aptly named in the Middle Ages. Y. pestis is generally transmitted through the bites of the rat flea Xenopsylla cheopis, while the two other related pathogenic Yersinia species, Y. pseudotuberculosis and Y. enterocolitica, are food-borne pathogens that cause various gastrointestinal syndromes (1). All three species of Yersinia are pathogenic for humans and rodents...
