The Black Death: 1340-1400

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The Black Death1340-1400
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Origins

• immediate source was Asiatic (probably marmots)
  but possibly African originally
• first reports China, 1330s
• via traders and Mongol armies Constantinople
  and Trebizond 1347
• the flying corpses of Caffa and arrival in
  Sicily 1347

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Spread into Europe(N.B. diffusion pattern)
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Symptoms

• It started with a headache, then chills and
  fever, which left the victim exhausted and
  prostrate. Nausea, vomiting, back pain, soreness
  in the arms and legs.
• Within a day or two, the swellings appeared. They
  were hard, painful, burning lumps on his neck,
  under the victims arms, on the inner thighs.
  Soon they turned black, split open, and began to
  ooze pus and blood. They may have grown to the
  size of an orange.

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• It was possible to recover. But more than likely,
  death would come quickly. Because after the lumps
  appeared the victim would start to bleed
  internally. There would be blood in his urine,
  blood in his stool, and blood puddling under his
  skin, resulting in black spots all over his body.
• Everything that came out of his body smelled
  utterly revolting. He would suffer great pain.
• And he would die barely a week after he first
  contracted the disease.

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Causes?

• Prime suspect bubonic plague (Yersinia pestis)
• carried by fleas (vector)
• and in turn by rats
• N.B. Black vs. Brown Rats

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Black Death plague?

• symptoms largely a good match
• occasional pneumonic plague symptoms reported
• disease known to be endemic in Asia
• rapid spread could be due to mutation to airborne
  form

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Other possibilities

• Iceland no rats, but still Black
  Deathpneumonic transmission?
• Cohn (2002) was it another disease?
• candidates
• Anthrax (cattle murrain in C14th Europe)
• Ebola-like virus
• some unknown and now dormant disease (perhaps
  Yersinia pseudotuberculosis?)

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Impact on human populations

• records are poor
• best estimate35-70 morbidity
• 75 mortality rate
• overall mortalityc.1/3 to (locally) 1/2 of
  Europes population
• 75 million total 25-50 million in Europe

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Later history

• repeated outbreaksin Europe until late C17th
  (e.g. 1665-66, England)
• still endemic in CentralAsia and (non-human)SW
  USA
• could it return? YES!But now penicillin