People
may be unaware of the fact that the Plague, that devasted Europe centuries ago,
is still with us.
Yup!
That PLAGUE!
Of
course, we have come a long way in the recognition and treatment of the
disease. There has not been a major outbreak since the 17th century,
at least ones that resulted in mass deaths. But it did affect the population of
several European cities into the early 1800s.
Three
pandemics of the disease are well described in articles about The
History of Plague by John Frith:
·
First (Justinian) – “The first great pandemic
of bubonic plague where people were recorded as suffering from the
characteristic buboes and septicaemia was the Justinian Plague of 541 CE, named
after Justinian I, the Roman emperor of the Byzantine Empire at the time. The epidemic
originated in Ethiopia in Africa and spread to Pelusium in Egypt in 540. It
then spread west to Alexandria and east to Gaza, Jerusalem and Antioch, then
was carried on ships on the sea trading routes to both sides of the
Mediterranean, arriving in Constantinople (now Istanbul) in the autumn of 541.”
·
Second
(Black Death) – “In 1346 it was known in the European seaports that a plague
epidemic was present in the East. In 1347 the plague was brought to the Crimea
from Asia Minor by the Tartar armies of Khan Janibeg, who had laid siege to the
town of Kaffa, a Genoese trading town on the shores of the Black Sea. . . In
panic the Genoese traders fled in galleys with ‘sickness clinging to their
bones’ to Constantinople and across the Mediterranean to Messina, Sicily, where
the great pandemic of Europe started. By 1348 it had reached Marseille, Paris
and Germany, then Spain, England and Norway in 1349, and eastern Europe in
1350.”
·
Third
– “The plague re-emerged from its wild rodent reservoir in the remote Chinese
province of Yunnan in 1855. From there the disease advanced along the tin and
opium routes and reached the provincial capital of K’unming in 1866, the Gulf
of Tonkin in 1867, and the Kwangtung province port of Pakhoi in 1882. In 1894
it had reached Canton and then spread to Hong Kong. It had spread to Bombay by 1896
and by 1900 had reached ports on every continent, carried by infected rats
travelling the international trade routes on the new steamships.”
Since
the beginning of the 20th century, there have been occasional
infection of individuals around the world, the latest reported in June 2018 of
probable bubonic plague in an American teenager in Idaho.
The
bacterium, Yersinia pestis, is hosted
in rodents and spread by fleas that live on these hosts.
The
generally accepted theory of how the disease develops expands and spreads is
during periods of climate change, in particular in regions that are normally
dry and that become wet through an increase in rainfall.
In
nature, the bacteria live in wild rodents and in the soil of their habitat. In
areas that are hot and dry, the populations of these animals are stable, as are the numbers of fleas that live on them. During the latter part of the 13th
century, in central Asia, the climatic conditions changed, bringing more
rainfall over many years. The semi-arid habitat was transformed allowing the
entire grassland ecosystem to grow. The rodent numbers – marmots, susliks and
gerbils – exploded along with the accompanying pathogen-carriers, the fleas. There
is a great summary of the history of the plague and its attack on Europe,
beginning in the 14th century, in The Great Transistion by Bruce M.
S. Campbell (2016).
The
wild rodents were eventually overpowered by the bacteria and began to die in
large numbers, possibly aided by occasional droughts. That fostered the jump to
other rodent and small mammal populations which had a wider range, including
many that coexisted with humans. The infected rodents and their parasitic
insects moved westward with the trade caravans. Eventually the domestic rats began
to die off en masse and the infected fleas and lice transferred to humans. The
result, with people interacting on a wide regional scale, was a pandemic that
quickly spread across all of Europe.
The
bacterium has mutated over the centuries, with different strains causing
epidemics. Antibiotics now assist in the recovery of plague victims. Death
tolls have been reduced from 50% of those affected to about 10%, or better if
treatment is begun within 24 hours of diagnosis.
Plague
bacteria still exist in many locations around the world, mainly in particularly
warm and dry regions. The diagram below shows the Global Distribution of Plague
 |
(A)
Map showing countries with known presence of plague in wild reservoir species
(red). For US only the mainland below 50° N is shown. (B) Annual number of
human plague cases over different continents, reported to WHO in the period
1954–2005. (C) Cumulative number of countries that reported plague to WHO since
1954
In
North America, plague cases have been restricted to the western regions. Plague
was first seen in the US in 1900, introduced by rats from steamships that had
arrive from affected areas in Asia. The last urban outbreak occurred in Los
Angeles in 1924-25. Thirty people died during a two-week period (Viseltear,
1974).
Since
the Los Angeles occurrence, isolated cases have been diagnosed, mostly in rural
areas. Over 80% have been of the bubonic form. People of all ages have
contracted the disease at the rate of about seven cases per year.
 |
Reported
cases of human plague in the United States between 1970 and 2016; one dot
placed randomly in most likely county of exposure for each confirmed case
(retrieved 21 August 2018 from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website)
The
modern world does not have much to fear from this disease anymore, but
genealogists my find many of their ancestors were exposed to it, possibly
succumbing as the survival rates were very low.
What is interesting is that it
has never gone away!
References:
Campbell,
Bruce. M. S. (2016). The Great Transition.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Chodosh,
S. (2018). Five things you might not know about the plague (not including the
fact that it still exists). Popular
Science website.
Frith,
John. (2012). The History of Plague – Part 1: The three great pandemics. Journal of Military and Veterans’ Health.
20(2).
Stenseth,
N. C., B. B. Atshabar, M. Begon, S. R. Belmain, E. Bertherat, E. Carniel, K. L.
Gage, H. Leirs & L. Rahalison. (2008). Plague: Past, Present, and Future. http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0050003
Viseltear,
A. J. (1974). Pneumonic Plague epidemic of 1924 in Los Angeles. Journal of Biology and Medicine. Volume 1,
pp 40-54. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2595158/pdf/yjbm00152-0044.pdf
Plague
(disease) – Wikipedia
Plague
– World Health
Organization
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