BLACK DEATH OR REVENGE OF THE UNKNOWN
BLACK DEATH OR REVENGE OF THE UNKNOWN
Posted on August 18, 2010 by chepeyja
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BLACK DEATH
Though Nobel Laureate Albert Camus immortalized it as a metaphor of the evil that lies dormant everywhere, in the fiction, The Plague, and Robert Downey, Meg Ryan and Hugh Grant made more than a passing reference to it in the movie, Restoration, Black Death or Black Plague seems to have slipped down from people’s memory of past horrors. This pandemic of the 14th century surpassed the loss of life in a catastrophe for all time to come. It is generally thought to be caused by the bacteria Yersinia Pestis (Bubonic plague) but recent findings point to other diseases as well. It is believed to have started first in Central Asia, from where it spread to Europe around 1340. Decimating a total of about 75 million people in the contemporary world, it brought about a loss of 50 million lives (or nearly 60 percent of population) in Europe. Changing medieval demography, it is thought to have reduced world population from an estimated 450 million to 375 million in 1400.
The plague continued with its visits to Europe till the end of the 18th century but its spread and death toll varied. There were about 100 plague outbreaks during this period, among which the London plague of 1603 finished 38,000. Other killer epidemics were Italian (1629-31), Seville (1647-52), London (1665-66), Vienna (1679), Marseille (1720) and Moscow (1771). The origins of such virulent forms of the disease are debated but from the 19th century on it seemed to have been absent in Europe. The looming threat of death at all times affected the society and the Roman Catholic faith to a great extent and gave rise to intolerance of minorities like Jews, foreigners, beggars and lepers. In 1833, the term black death was first used, derived from the symptoms like blackening of skin and gangrene of limb extremities. There was also the bubonic type, in which glands swelled in armpits and other parts of the body leading to formation of buboes. The buboes filled with pus and burst open subsequently. Patients usually died within 3-5 days after the appearance of the buboes and disease spread through flies sitting on the dead. It was believed earlier that the epidemic was spread by black rats and flies, but recent research suggests that it is always present and is only lying dormant.
BEGINNING AND SPREAD
Though populations of ground rodents in Central Asia are common carriers of the disease, it is not clear how the 14th century outbreak started. The popular belief is that it began in the steppes of Central Asia while some think that North India was the place of origin. Yet another view is that considering the historical evidence of Mediterranean epidemics (plague of Justinian and so on) it probably began in Africa and found among the rodents of Central Asia a suitable vector and then travelled to Mongolia via the Silk Route. The trading city of Caffa in Crimea was besieged by the Mongols under Janibeg in 1347. When his soldiers died of the disease, the Mongol chief catapulted dead bodies over the city walls in order to infect the citizens. Genoese traders living in the city fled by ships and brought the disease to Sicily, from where it spread to Europe. Though it is merely a hypothesis, it points to several factors like war, weather and famine as contributing to the spread. Mongol invasion of China in the !4th century severely affected agriculture and trade, brought famines and reduced the Chinese population by nearly 60 million. Then came the plague killing a further 20 million.
Europe had unusually warm periods intermittently throughout the !4th century, at the end of which there were harsh winters leading to reduced harvests. Before that time, in the centuries preceding, European population had been increasing steadily, and a stage was reached when the agricultural output was barely sufficient. When a famine started in North Western Europe in 1315, it quickly assumed catastrophic dimensions. Innovative farming practices like heavy plows and three-field system introduced in the mediterranean for bringing in virgin lands under cultivation were not successful in North Europe because of the clayey soil there. Consequently, high prices were prevailing even a century before the plague, everything was scarce and hunger and malnutrition was rampant. People became vulnerable to diseases due to feeble immune systems. Compounding the situation further, the ruling classes of England and France, afraid that their lifestyles would go down, raised taxes. With diets getting limited by the day, the poor suffered terribly, and their health conditions became increasingly bad. Then it began to rain heavily in late 1314, several years of bitingly cold winters followed, the already reduced harvests went down further and the seven-year famine began killing about 10 percent of the population. Such was the economic and social condition when portends of the calamity in waiting appeared. The first was a typhoid outbreak in which many thousands perished in congested urban areas like Ypres. The second was a disease of unknown origin (presumably anthrax) killing in 1318 a large number of animals in Europe and affecting food source and income of people.
IN ASIA
Probable conditions which had caused the plague to break out in Central Asia were similar to those recorded during the first reports of the disease in the Chinese province of Hubei in 1334. Thereafter, following the catastrophe in Europe, the plague appeared in Jiangxi, Shanxi, Hunan, Guangdong and Suiyuan in China in 1353-54. There are extensive records of the pestilence and social disruption of the times in Chinese, but no one seems to have studied them properly. In 1347, the plague struck the trading cities of Constantinople and Trebizond and then spread among the soldiers of Mongol chief Janibeg laying a siege on the Genoese commercial enclave of Caffa in Crimea. Probably the first in history to wage a biological warfare, Janibeg catapulted the dead bodies of his soldiers over the city walls to infect the citizens. The strategy worked and Genoese traders left the city. The ships sailed into the Sicilian port of Messina in October 1347 carrying infected crews and rats, some were ghost ships with everyone on board dead from the disease, while some more ran aground to be looted by people living by the shores. There was thus no dearth of carriers or vectors of the disease, which spread to Genoa, then Venice and next to most of Italy. Onto France, Spain, Portugal and England by June 1348, when it turned and ravaged Germany and Scandinavia between 1348 and 50. Skipping Poland and some remote areas of Belgium and Holland, the vectors finally travelled to North Western Russia in 1351. As regards the horrors experienced by people, a resident of Siena in Tuscany, Italy wrote:
“They died by the hundreds, both day and night, and all were thrown in … ditches and covered with earth. And as soon as those ditches were filled, more were dug. And I, Agnolo di Tura … buried my five children with my own hands … And so many died that all believed it was the end of the world.”
IN THE MIDDLE EAST
The plague spread in the countries in the Middle East after reaching the port city of Alexandria in Egypt in the autumn of 1347 presumably through trading connections of the city with Constantinople and ports on the Black Sea. Next year, it travelled to Gaza in east and then to north to eastern coastal cities of Lebanon, Ashkelon, Acre, Israel, Jerusalem, Sidon, Damascus and Aleppo. Antioch came under its attack in 1348-49, when most of the residents deserted the city to go to north and died during the journey. The spread of infection, however, did not stop and struck the people of Asia Minor. Makkah fell to the disease in 1349 and so did Mawsil (modern Mosul) where records show a large number of deaths due to the pandemic. In Baghdad, it struck twice. King Mujahid of Yemen released from imprisonment in Cairo returned to his kingdom in 1351 and apparently brought the disease with his party.
RETURN VISITS
Without any census figures to depend on, historians usually estimate the population of England between 4 to 7 million in 1300 and as low as 2 million after the plague. It was absent from 1350 but never really extinct in England. In the next few centuries, it returned time and again, notably at Norwich (1579) and Newcastle (1636) killing nearly 40 percent of people there. Actually, 8 major outbreaks in Tudor and Stuart England coincided with those in Germany, Belgium and Holland in the years 1498 to 1636. Europe and the Mediterranean were under its attack repeatedly from the 14th to 17th century, and there are isolated instances of bubonic plague even today. The Great Plague of London (1665-66) is regarded as one of the last major outbreaks, others being Italian Plague (due to army movements in war, 1629-31), Vienna (1679), Moscow (2 lakkhs dead, 1654-56), Oslo (1654), Naples (1.5 lakh, 1656), Amsterdam (1665) and Helsinki & Stockholm (1710).
HOW BUBONIC INFECTION STARTS
Michel Drancourt prepared models of sporadic, limited and large plague outbreaks by reviewing the ecology of Yersinia pestis in soil and in rodents along with a study of human ectoparasites. It is found that plague among prairie dogs are more due to occasional reservoirs of infection like an infectious carcass than the conventional “blocked fleas” theory. It was also observed that epidemiology, appearance, spread and eventual disappearance of plague from Europe was due to the succession by another species of the flea-bearing rodent reservoir of disease. Originally introduced by trade from Asia to Europe, the black rat was subsequently displaced by the bigger brown rat in Europe. That specis was not as prone to transmit germ-bearing fleas to