The plague has struck humanity repeatedly over our long history. An early mention of the plague occurs in 1 Samuel, in the old Testament, where the Philistines are struck down after they steal the Ark of the Covenant from the Israelis. The description of the disease is identical to that exhibited by the plague. It is believed that the book of Samuel was composed between 630 and 540 BC but used much older source documents. Remarkably, Even older evidence than this has been discovered, dating to 1350 BC, when the fossilised remains of plague fleas were found in Amana Egypt. Obviously, this disease has been around for thousands of years and been responsible for the loss of an unbelievable number of human lives.
The plague is in an acute infectious disease caused by the bacillus Yersinia pestis and is still endemic in indigenous rodent populations of South and North America, Africa and Central Asia. The disease is transmitted to humans by the bite of a flea. Primary hosts of the flea are thought to be the black urban rat and the brown sewer rat.
The Justinian plague of 541 started in central Africa and spread to Egypt and the Mediterranean.
It was named after the Roman emperor of that time. How unfortunate to go down in posterity named after one of the most frightening and virulent diseases! The early historians describe the effect of the disease. They said people had a sudden fever and then they developed swellings on their body, in the groin, inside the armpit and also beside the ears and even on different points on the thighs. Constantinople lost 10,000 of its population per day and by the end of the outbreak a third of the total population of the city had died from the plague. The disease spread as far north as Denmark, west to Ireland and then even to Africa the Middle East and Asia Minor. In total, it is thought that between the years 542 AD and 546 AD the plague killed nearly 100 million people.
An eyewitness, John of Ephesus describes the process.
“[Theodore] made very large pits, inside each of which 70,000 corpses were laid down. He thus appointed men there, who brought down corpses, sorted them and piled them up. They pressed them in rows on top of each other, in the same way as someone presses hay in a loft ... Men and women were trodden down, and in the little space between them the young and infants were pressed down, trodden with the feet and trampled down like spoilt grapes.”
It is difficult to describe the fear, the devastation and the scale of the loss of life at this time. By the end of the plague a quarter of the population of the Roman Empire was dead.
The plague returned as the black death of 1347 AD. This pandemic was brought to the Crimea from Asia Minor. The Tartar armies of Khan Janibeg had laid siege to the town of Kaffa (now Feodosya in Ukraine) but were unsuccessful. Before they left, they catapulted the corpses of plague victims over the walls into the city. The citizens of Kaffa fled in ships, carrying the disease with them all through Europe. Meanwhile, the Tartars also carried the plague with them further to Russia and India. War like fleas, it seems are perfect vectors for the spread of disease. A lesson that humanity, even after thousands of years, it seems has not yet been learned.
In medieval accounts there are descriptions of the symptoms of the disease. It begins with tumours in the groin or armpit some of which grow as large as an apple, others the size of an egg. Then black spots appear on the arms and thighs.
History calls it the Black Death. The overall mortality rate varied from city to city. In Florence, half the population died. People died with such rapidity proper burial or cremation could not occur. Corpses were once again thrown into large pits and putrefying bodies lay in their homes and in the streets. Transmission of the illness was thought to be by disease carrying vapours emanating from the corpses and the from the breath of an infected or sick person. Others thought the Black Death was a punishment from God for their sins. People joined in huge processions of flagellants whipping themselves with nail embedded scourges and incanting hymns and prayers as they passed from town to town. As much as 88% of those afflicted with the disease died. The plague lead to a preoccupation with death and some macabre artwork such as The Triumph of Death by Pieter Breughel the Elder in 1562 AD.
By the end of the outbreak a quarter of the population of Europe, over 25 million people, were dead. The scale of the loss of life was such that by 1430 AD Europe's population was lower than it had been in 1290 AD and indeed would not recover its pre-pandemic level until the 16th century!
In the 15th and 16th centuries doctors wore a peculiar costume to protect themselves from the plague when they attended infected patients. They were clothed from head to foot in leather or oil cloth robes, with leggings, gloves and a hood. This was topped with a wide brimmed hat and a beak like a mask with glass eyes and two breathing nostrils filled with aromatic herbs and flowers to fend off the fumes. They avoided touching their patients and would lance tumours with knives several feet long. Even now the picture is horrific but imagine how it felt for their patients!
Another small epidemic occurred in London in September 1665 AD when 7000 people per week were dying. By the end of that year a fifth of London’s population had died. An old familiar English nursery rhyme published in 1881, reminds us, all too clearly of the symptoms of the plague.
Ring a-ring a roses (a red blistering rash)
a pocketful of posies (fragrant herbs and flowers to ward off the disease)
atishoo, atishoo (the sneeze and the cough heralding pneumonia)
we all fall down.(all dead)
Just in case we think the plague is a thing of the past it's important to realise that outbreaks still occur. Here are the figures over the last few decades.
Given our present antibiotics the death toll from the plague has been reduced to a kill rate of only 16% nowadays. However, It is particularly worrisome that some multi drug- resistant strains of the bacillus are appearing. This is not a good omen for the future. The ways in which we can become infected are also multiplying.
To make matters worse, we are sometimes playing risky games with this age old killer. In 2015 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the US reported (after inspections of an army base in Maryland) one of the Pentagon’s most secure labs, had mislabelled and improperly stored and even shipped samples of potentially infectious plague bacteria!
If history has taught us anything about this dreadful disease over the past three millennium it is surely this.
- we should be on guard against complacency
- avoid unnecessary wars and
- forced movement of millions
- protect the health and well being of all human beings to boost their natural immunity
- and never for a moment assume we have this endemic killer under our total control.
scary facts once you open the webpage click on it to enlarge!
PS Used a lot of info from The History of the Plague - The Three Great Pandemics by John Firth
