Cool clear morning here,as well. This is a pretty dark subject, I think, Cyn. Hmmmm.....

Nancy.

Good morning everyone. It is a very cold, windy morning here in the north. -28C or -19F with the windchill. Brrrrrr! My little feather dusters are waiting for their warmed food. I think I'm going to build a little shelter for them for next winter; poor little guys.....

Trivia question seems very broad this morning Cyn. Hmmmmm....... Are you talking medical cause, accidental cause, preventable cause? Or direct cause as in reported on an autopsy??? I watch so much History channel, Dr Oz, and Discovery and they all say something different.... If I listen to the gloom and doomers, I have already lived for 40 years with the leading cause of death! Confused.....

Ginny

Mornin all, after giving this some thought I'll guess we are, the human species, sad isn't it.

Annette

My first thought was natural causes/old age, but what is natural causes anymore. It seems people who reach a nice old age (85-90ish) seem to succumb to cancer/accidents etc., anyway (having just lost an older(85) cousin to heart disease. so maybe disease like cancer, heart etc.?
Accidents?--car, plane, work related etc?
WOW this is a broad subject! :)
Got any hints to narrow it down? :)

PS Cynthia,the red/blue/Romeo connection is in video games. My grandaughters play......

Ginny

I'm going with influenza. Pandemics, such as 1918 Spanish Flu, have killed hundreds of millions of people. I believe that I read somewhere that hundreds of thousands of people die of the flu every year.

Okay, let's narrow it down. Excluding man (guessing Annette could have something there if we used straight numbers) and time, the greatest percentage of dead in the world-wide population throughout history(wow-awkward syntax there, sorry)is attributable to this one cause. I think Nancy may have given you a clue to the disease. Can you also identify its cause (some debate here-going with most accepted)? It caused upheavals in religion and politics.

I should have phrased the question better. Sorry. I am usually doing these questions on the fly since I don't start thinking about it until I get home Friday night! :(

Cynthia

If I were to be flippant in response to this question I would say that "life" is the leading cause of death across time. But I would rather give an honest, thoughtful response so I am going to say that improper nutrition is the cause leading to the cause of death the world over. I hestitate to use the word malnutrition as most associate that word with underfed. I studied nutrition and diatetics in University for 4 years from 1991 - 1995 and if my memory serves me well, more disease and ill health is caused by malnutrition than anything else. Malnutrition, contrary to popular belief, includes eating disorders, obesity, vitamin deficiency, and metabolic disorders as well as starvation and famine. It leads to a lowered immune system first and foremost which leaves the human body suceptible to any number of secondary diseases, infection or invasion. Diabetes, heart disease, influenza, vascular, skeletal, joint, alergies, cancer, ect. ect. On a global scale, this is happening at an exorbitant rate. Not to mention just the rate at which people die every minute from starvation in famine striken countries world wide. Nuff said.

That is my final answer and I'm sticking to it. :)

Ginny

PS
So the disease is a dark subject??

Ginny

I think I once heard that the mosquito is one of the most dangerous animals in the world, so I was leaning toward malaria as an answer. But if the cause of the ailment is not totally understood, that leaves out malaria and a host of others. I am trying to think how a pretty dark subject can figure into the answer.

TM

PPSS My guess to the major cause of malnutrition is Money, politics, greed, religion, war ect. ect. Absolute "power" corrupts absolutely!!

Ginny

And I can't even spell "dietetics"! Sheesh! Probably broke about 30 rules of grammar and punctuation too! But Cynthia misspelled "trivia" so she'll forgive me......hehe ;)

Ginny

Ok Rethinking this on another level. Could this be related to religion as in atheism? Or prejudism as in religious secular predjudism?

Ginny

heehee. Didn't even notice my spelling. Now it will be here for all time-darn. Of course, read phonetically, one might say it is a new word meaning "Terrible (tirrible) Trivia."

Think total percentages of an unprecedented number of populations that all fell to the same thing. Although many die from malnutrition, it is not endemic around the world. Think history more than current events.

Well, the wild one has joined us today. Clouseau has been scratching and biting over the last week. Hope it isn't anything that Koda can get. The kids will boiling mad if he brings anything home.

Off to set the table-guests tonight.

Cynthia

I guess that is what I was getting at when I said this is a broad question. That said, I would have to enter a couple of (guesses).

War or war related actions (violence, suicide or homocide, or illness in war zones)deaths would account for concentrated populations around the world. Another would be plague or influenza (which also took many soldiers and civilians lives during the wars). Hmmmmmm...... again, I'm not sure of the answer you are looking for??? In any case, IMO, the leading cause of war and/or destruction is the desire for power be it religious, economical, political or what have you. As for the flu viruses, the ones that come to mind were started in chickens (birds) or pigs? Swine flu? I believe the Bubonic Plague was carried by rats?

Ginny

If it's down to disease are we looking for a specific disease, if not I'd say plague.

Annette

Ginny said it first, but I am going to go with the plague.

TM

Rats didn't carry the Black Plague.

I'm going to say that religion has caused more deaths in human history than anything else. I'm thinking of The Burning Times (when millions were put to death for being witches), the Spanish Inquisition, the Holocaust (Jewish people killed because of their religion or religious heritage), wars waged in the name of religion, such as The Crusades.

When I was in 9th grade, a semester of the English class was devoted to Shakespeare. It happened that we read "Romeo and Juliet" at the same time as Jane Asher (Paul McCartney's girlfriend at that time) was touring with ACT, playing Juliet. My friend asked the teacher if she would arrange a field trip to see the play. The teacher was ecstatic about the request, absolutely thrilled with the idea. She did arrange the field trip, and it was a terrific experience all the way round. :-)

No, I know that, it was the fleas on the rats or any other flea bearing animals.

I don't think it was a plague anyway. Thinking about the responses so far, I think the answer is the H1N1 influenza virus or Swine Flu pandemic of 1918 (to be most specific) in which it spread to the soldiers in WWI. The same way Parvo Virus in dogs is spread like wildfire through kennels where there is a large concentration of dogs. A ship, foxhole, camp or otherwise is a perfect place for tired, weary, immunodeficient soldiers to easily contact a virus. Many civilians also died from that particular virus or a strain of it. Just the concentration of men and women during wartime made it such an effective killer....

So I would have to change my answer to a virus or viruses as the #1 cause of death worldwide across history. And there are many sadly. :(

Ginny

PS Just to add "germ warfare" to the damage to tie in the political and religious connections. Yikes!!!! What other ingenious ways can we come up with to kill off human kind????

Ginny

okay back again and reading through it all it is occuring to me that I read once that the black plague was the cause of millions of deaths---wiping out a huge percentage of the population at once.

(black being my answer to 'a dark subject' :)

Well I'll have to go with the Bubonic Plague then just to connect Nancy's clue. I think there is still controversy about what virus killed more but that is another discussion. So the Black Plague it is. I think it was called "black" after the connection to the trading that went on in the Black Sea? Who knows really? Probably had been lying dormant years before in some cave somewhere.......:)

Ginny

:))

Nancy.

fleas....

Hey, welcome back frog! We've missed you!

Just got back from my visit with Dad and all the others in the nursing home I have come to know. They all kinda gather in Dad's room when I come to visit. Sad really that they get so few visits from their families. Dad still has an open door policy even in there. Makes it tough to keep him supplied with candy but he doesn't get as lonely. :)

Well we all got talking about the TIRIVA question (lol Teach) and they are all adamant that the Black Death is the answer, far and beyond any other killer. And they should know cause they all lived through it apparently!! hehe I believe them because I remember my mom telling me about the Bubonic Plague when I was a little kid and I was 11 when I lost Mom. She was there too I guess. When you asked the question this morning Cyn, that was my first gut response and then I had to "think" about it.......I've said before, it is confusing to be psychic.....:) I also get confused with English since my first language is Alien! Long story short, once I'm confused I can't be responsible for what jibberish comes out of my mind and the order it is typed in. Looking back on the posts, I can see that I came around to my first gut answer and also that I think faster than I can type and not loud enough for others to hear. Translation gets lost somewhere from my brain to my fingers..... Shall have to work on that. Can I come to school with you Cynthia?

Also got talking with one of the nurses at the home who is from India. We were talking about the cause of the plague and decided that it is in fact bacterial and not viral which makes it treatable with modern day antibiotics. Very interesting.

Where ever did this question come from Cynthia? Or any of your questions for that matter? Just curious. :)

Ginny

Good morning cottagers!

For me, it was hard to phrase this in a way that gave you a narrow subject. I was hoping the idea of percentages would help. The Romeo and Juliet reference was because of the statement by Mercutio when he says, "A plague on both your houses." The dog's scratching was to lead you toward fleas (thank goodness for frog!). Boiling mad was supposed to lead you to the idea of boils or more precisely buboes. Yuck.

So, four stars for Nancy, who got it immediately, Frog, TM, Annette, GG, and Ginny. ****

The Bubonic Plague is bacterial and the bacterium was carried by fleas, although there are new alternative theories, but not going there. The first recorded outbreak was in the 6th century in the Byzantine Empire, but the most famous outbreak (known as the Black Death) was in the 14th century. It began in China and reached the Crimea in 1347. It spread to Constantinople, Alexandria Egypt, and through Europe. It moved into the Middle East to Mecca, Jerusalem, Damascus, etc. Oddly, parts of the Netherlands, Belgium, and all of the Kingdom of Poland were unaffected according to one source I read. No reason for that was given. At the same time, the pneumonic plague spread as well.

Boccaccio wrote The Decameron about his experience in Florence during the plague. As far as percentage of population that died as a result of the plague, it varies. In 2007, Philip Daileader wrote:
"The trend of recent research is pointing to a figure more like 45 percent to 50 percent of the European population dying during a four-year period. There is a fair amount of geographic variation. In Mediterranean Europe, areas such as Italy, the south of France and Spain, where plague ran for about four years consecutively, it was probably closer to 75 percent to 80 percent of the population. In Germany and England ... it was probably closer to 20 percent."

Half of the residents of Paris died, the population of Florence fell from ~120,000 to 50,000, 60% of Hamburg and Bremen's populations perished.

The epidemic brought down the Yuan Dynasty in China. It helped to pave the way for the Peasant's Revolt. Higher wages were demanded for labor since the number of workers was diminished. Peasants were less and less tied to one lord. The idea that those in power were divinely-ordained began to lose its hold.

When both national and local epidemics are taken into account, England endured thirty plague years between 1351 and 1485, a pattern mirrored on the continent, where Perugia was struck nineteen times and Hamburg, Cologne, and Nuremburg at least ten times each in the fifteenth century. Deadliness of outbreaks declined, perhaps ten to twenty percent in the second plague (pestis secunda) of 1361-2, ten to fifteen percent in the third plague (pestis tertia) of 1369, and as low as five and rarely above ten percent thereafter and became more localized; however, the Black Death's persistence ensured that demographic recovery would be slow and socioeconomic consequences deeper. Europe's population in 1430 may have been fifty to seventy-five percent lower than in 1290 (Cipolla, 1994; Gottfried, 1983).

Guess that is enough for today. Oh, except to say there was one case of the plague in Oregon in 2010 and in New Mexico in 2011. Plague outbreaks continue in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Thank goodness for antibiotics!

Ginny, to answer your question, I haven't put the Frontline on the pups this month (always a little uncomfortable about thos pesticides), but Clouseau has been biting and scratching this week despite no signs of fleas. So, I was searching the internet for info on fleas hoping to find an alternative that really works and voila! A little more research and there you have it. My initial idea was to lead you all to fleas-Frog got it and TM was heading that way with his answer of mosquitoes. I just thought it was interesting and unexpected that fleas have caused more deaths

Thanks for playing everyone.

Cynthia

Cyn - that was a great question!! Interesting, even though the patient/victim's skin would eventually turn blackish, that is not why it was called the Black Death. It was because the people considered it to be dark, or "black" days!! We took pandemics when I studied my bit of medical knowledge. The people were clueless as to the cause, as you noted. For a time they even killed many cats, not making the link to rats and their fleas!! Sad times as well. So, off to post my question. ;-))

Nancy.

Thanks Cyn. I've been in Florida with my mom for two months.

Great question, Cynthia, and lots of good hints that I was not smart enough to pick up on. :)

TM

The lack of cats was one of the main reasons for the major outbreaks of plague. During The Burning Times almost all cats were killed because they were considered the familiars of witches. (London paid bounty money to cat killers.) The rat population exploded without cats around to keep the numbers down. The particular type of flea which carries the plague lives on rodents, primarily Norway rats. The rats easily traveled from country to country on ships. Rats could get off the ships via hiding in cargo, and via traversing the mooring ropes.

I could see that the answer wanted was the Black Plague but remembered recently reading that the Influenza Pandemic of 1918 killed more people than the Black Plague. Since it is flu season there are lots of articles about flu and the need for vaccination.

This morning I found: "The influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 killed more people than the Great War, known today as World War I (WWI), at somewhere between 20 and 40 million people. It has been cited as the most devastating epidemic in recorded world history. More people died of influenza in a single year than in four-years of the Black Death Bubonic Plague from 1347 to 1351. Known as "Spanish Flu" or "La Grippe" the influenza of 1918-1919 was a global disaster."

Here is a link that might be useful: The 1918 Influenza Pandemic

And from another article: "The reason this is not considered the worst, however, is that the Black Death killed those 100 million over a period of 200 years. The Great Influenza killed that number in six months.

Here is a link that might be useful: The Worst Outbreaks of disease

Good question Cynthia! I had no idea you were looking for fleas! That one I knew all along since my mom was born in Scotland and lived among rats (with fleas) for most of her childhood! She was absolutely terrified of them which is why she told me of the plague from the time I can remember. When I was about 9 a friend of mine gave me 2 white rats as pets (being the extreme animal lover I am) that her big sister got from the university labs. I remember my older brother telling me that I'd better not let Mom find them or she would feed them to his hawk. Mom did find them and they went back to the lab. I was heartbroken but at least she didn't feed them to the hawk! all night I dreamt rats were taking over my yard and trying to get into the house when I was bringing the dogs in! Then they turned into skunks!! I have bi black shelties.......

No fleas as a rule here in the cold north but I groomed for many years and did the odd fleazy dog that had been to other countries in shows ect. I feel for you!!! They can be very tough to get rid of. Not quite as bad as bedbugs though, thank God!
There are lots of natural things that will repell fleas without having to resort to Revolution or Frontline. IMO that stuff is worse than the fleas for the dogs. Hopefully your problem is just dry skin. What kind of dog is he?

Lots of fun! Thanks for the question Cyn! Now I am on to Nancy's question. Must get my whelping kennel ready today since hubby is home and it is warming up. Puppies are due I think around the 2nd of Dec.

Ginny

Mnwsgal ~ I too was not sure what Cynthia was looking for as I was thinking over all time and worldwide. I beleive influenza has actually killed more than the plague simply for the fact that it is a virus and is very much still alive! Why I made the comment about "germ warfare". No cure or control for viruses as yet and they are crafty little leaches! And even in our day and age, we still live with malnutrition and in close quarters so a virus just has a hay day! Such is the balance of nature........I apologize if my words are misunderstood. Can't always type what my mind is thinking.......
Good answer anyway!

Ginny

True, however the number of deaths in the 1918-1920 epidemic amounted to approximately 3% of the population. That is nowhere near the percentages of populations that died during the 14th c. period of the Plague when up to 80% of some populations died. It also did not have the same repercussions through society, governments, the church. The plague was also world-wide to the extent of the known world at that time and followed the trade routes from China to the Middle East to Africa to Europe.

As a comparison, today if something were to kill one billion people, it would not be the same percentage as the mortality during the plague's height. Yes, it would be a higher number, but to equal the percentage of dead, we would need to see deaths in the area of 3 billion at minimum.

Cynthia

My dogs are a mother/son tag team. Mom is part border collie, but looks sort of like a miniature Newfoundland (pointier snout, though), so there is something long-haired with a double coat in there somewhere. Clouseau looks like a golden in the face, but his coloring is more shepherd or collie than border collie-he does have Annabelle's white tip on his tail and boots and chest blaze.
{{gwi:615683}}From Drop Box
{{gwi:615685}}From Drop Box

Oh my, they are beautiful! You must have a lot of fun with them!
Double coats are so prone to dry skin, especially if we are feeding them dogfood. High in fat and preservatives but not nutrients. Often leads to dry skin. I feed fresh and add fats and oils by measurement. I find my dogs are healthier and stay a healthy weight. I realize not everyone feeds this way and that is their choice and I still have dry skin problems. My combate is lots of grooming. Keeps the skin breathing better and stimulates it to release natural oils.

Border collies have double coats just like shelties and so do Goldens (if he is part golden). Keeps them warm in their natural environment but adds to dry skin in our homes unfortunately.

Very handsome dogs. Give em a hug and puppy kisses ^^^^^^from this dog lover!

Ginny

This is Chloe and Painter last winter being fed by the birds. They are on their second litter of pups now. Chloe was pregnant in that picture with her first litter.

Ginny

{{gwi:615687}}

SO beautiful. I love that picture. I didn't realize BCs and Goldens have double coats. Good to know. Had a Golden before, but he didn't seem to have a double coat. These guys have an unbelievable undercoat! Clouseau loves being out as soon as the weather cools of. I think he would stay out all night if we let him, but too many critters around.

Thanks for the advice. I did figure it was just dry skin. We do add olive oil to their food and we give them Taste of the Wild or something like that from our natural foods pet store. Should probably cook fresh, but I rarely cook for us these days! Ha.

I guess the forum didn't like my use of the word b***h for a female dog???? Oh well. I'll write this again.
Short form, the girls usually have heavier coats after they are altered unless they are in peak breeding form. The girls are best coming into season and in whelp. The boys are best in cold weather. Altered girls usually produce a big male coat due to reduced estrogen and altered males don't often get big man coats due to reduced testosterone. Undercoat is usually heaviest in the winter months in all of them. This year everyone seems to be messed up, even the birds! Weird weather.

I have 5 crock pots and at least one is in use at all times around here. I cook brown rice with olive oil in a huge soup pot about twice a week and add veggies,frozen or cooked fresh, to the rice then top with meat since the pregnant girls get more meat.

I have bathed my dogs in buttermilk for dry skin and it seemed to help sooth the itch. Although they did lick half of it off while they were soaking! :)

Angel ungroomed this last summer. She is almost 9 and still in really good shape.

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Beautiful dogs, Cynthia and Ginny.

I missed the clarification of the original posting, thinking total numbers throughout history.

The effects on society were certainly greater regarding the BD due to the percentage of deaths of people of in all age groups and total population of the world at the time. Interesting subject.