I've spent an interesting Saturday early afternoon pottering around on the internet.
It all started
here at a blog called Retrospectacle. From Part 1 on the Black Death:
It was a disease of rodents and was spread by their fleas. As the rats died, the fleas would frantically look for new hosts, jumping on human beings. Later experiments illustrated how virulent the Plague really was: mice died after being infected with just three bacilli, and fleas can disgorge up to 24,000 in one bite.
Three main 'types' of Plague were then identified-- bubonic, septicaemic, and pneumonic--which varied by the entrance of the infection. Bubonic plague entered a human via the lymph system and was characterized by 'buboes' (swelling of lymph nodes). Septicaemic plague resulted when the bacillus entered the bloodstream directly, and was almost always fatal. Pneumonic plague was the most deadly, and could be acquired without a flea-bite, by breathing the bacillus into the lungs.
There is some recent controversy that Pasteurella pestis is not the actual bacillus involved in the Black Plague. But, you'll have to wait until Part 2
From the comments under Part 1 I learn that my primary school teachers probably lied to me. It seems the idea that the nursery rhyme 'Ring a Rosie' has to do with the Black Death or the Great Plague is actually a 20th century idea - see more at
Snopes(From there the disputed wikipedia article on Ring a Rosie led me to other 'explanations' of nursery rhymes, the idea that cockle shells in Mary Mary quite contrary has to do with the pilgrimmage icon in Roman Catholicism (the Mary being Mary I of England) seems particularly odd, I'm fairly certain it is scallop shells that are associated with the pilgrimmage to Santiago de Compostela)
On to
Part 2 from Shelley:
In Part One, I mentioned that the main scientific consensus regarding the cause of the Black Death was a particularly nasty (and fast-acting) bacteria called Y. pestis, which is responsible for bubonic plague. However, there exist a few alternative theories that scientists have offered over the years. Specifically, that while the modern-day bouts of plague are indeed Y. pestis, the widespread deaths in the 14th century were not from bubonic plague but from anthrax or an Ebola-like virus.
I recommend the rest of that blog entry for an overview of the arguments for and against these other proposed causes of black death. Norman Cantor and anthrrax I will return to. Part of her conclusion:
Despite these theories, most epidemiologists and plague historians agree that Y. pestis is still the best explanation of the widespread deaths during the Black Plague of medieval Europe. The remains of some of the victims of the plague have confirmed that Y. pestis was active during that time-- dental pulp from a plague cemetery in Montpellier, France confirmed DNA from Y. pestis and were negative for anthrax.
To return to Cantor - a medievalist (rather than an epidemiologist) he posits that the plague in Europe doesn't match what might be expected of
Y. pestis and proposes anthrax as a alternative. So I had a look around on google for Norman Cantor and his plague hypothesis and found
this:The Black Death? A timely topic? Well, yes - if you consider this 14th-century catastrophe to be a dry run for our experience with “mad-cow disease” or foot-and-mouth. Cantor seems to adopt this cheerful perspective, and although In the Wake of the Plague purports to be a historical analysis, the reader is never certain whether it is about the breakdown of medieval society or the plight of 21 st-century rural folk in Devon...
...By reading history backwards, Cantor succeeds in unearthing a number of remarkable parallels between our unhappy experience with BSE and HIV/Aids and the medieval Black Death. However, these astonishing parallels appear to be the product of the modern cultural narrative of fear, rather than of any historical discoveries. Using imaginative speculation, Cantor offers an analysis of the plague, which resonates with contemporary concerns about microbes jumping from one species to another. The author questions the historical consensus that regards bubonic plague as being behind the Black Death. He raises the hypothesis that the culprit was not only bubonic plague but also anthrax, a virulent, anti-- humanoid form of cattle disease. There is no scientific evidence to support this thesis, and Cantor makes no attempt to present any hard facts.
That's a review of Cantor's book by
Frank Furedi. Fascinating, Furedi reviews the book from the position that Cantor has gone against scientific and historical consensus and offered little evidence, in fact that Cantor's analysis is tainted by modern concerns (the thread the other day about preparing for 'inevitable Asian flu' springs to mind.)
Did anyone click on the wikipedia link about Frank Furedi? Because if they had they'd discover that Furedi was a leading light in the Revolutionary Communist Party of Great Britain (now defunct). Don't be fooled, it seems they are not what they seem, in fact they seem to have morphed into a pro-business libertarian movement who are associated with the (sued into non-existence) Living Marxism magazine and Spiked and Martin Durkin and the Great Global Warming Swindle and here I stop.
I'm going for a walk.
By the way - most recent plague associated death in the US?
Plague is the probable cause of death of a National Park Service employee at Grand Canyon National Park dated 9 November 2007. Don't be autopsying any dead mountain lions this weekend.
