What is the nastiest disease?

Answer 1

There are so many, but probably most people would say that the nastiest disease was the "Black Death", which may have been the Bubonic Plague. According to WikiPedia, "The total number of deaths worldwide is estimated at 75 million people, approximately 25-50 million of which occurred in Europe. The Black Death is estimated to have killed 30% to 60% of Europe's population. It may have reduced the world's population from an estimated 450 million to between 350 and 375 million in 1400." Most people died within a week of becoming infected.

Besides the death toll this pandemic took on the population, the symptoms were also especially gruesome and nasty. Symptoms that gave it the name "Black Death" were the large black boils that erupted in the lymph nodes located in the groin, the neck, and the armpits and small black pustules covering much of the rest of the body. The large lymph masses, called buboes, looked black from the collection of blood within them from the oozing of blood and pus.

Death came from blood poisoning, fever, septic shock, and the resulting failure and shut down of the internal organs.