Produced by Jasmyn Belcher Morris for StoryCorps
“It was the first case of plague in New York City in over a hundred years.”
In 2002, Lucinda Marker and her husband, John Tull, came down with the bubonic plague—the same bacterial infection that killed about one-third of Europe’s population in the Middle Ages.
Today, the plague is rare in the U.S., only a handful catch it each year and it’s mostly found in Southwest states—where Lucinda and John live.
They were bitten by fleas infected with plague near their home in New Mexico, and fell ill while vacationing in New York City.
Marker and Tull shared the experience of their rare and unexpected illness with StoryCorps .
Photo credit: Katja ZSM/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
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