The plague through the ages
What did the plague do to people?
Medieval accounts are varied and lurid, but the most commonly noted symptom was the appearance of buboes: black welts and bulges, sometimes the size of an apple, would appear in the groin or armpits. Modern science tells us that the disease incubates for one to seven days, and takes three main forms, depending on the location of the infection. Bubonic plague – spread by flea bite – attacks the lymph nodes, causing flu-like symptoms, then buboes, with diarrhoea and vomiting; and finally, organ failure. Untreated, it has a case fatality rate of 30% to 60%. If the bacterium infects the lungs it causes pneumonic plague (which can be spread by airborne droplets) causing sufferers to cough up blood, contract pneumonia and die in nine out of ten cases. Finally, there’s septicaemic plague, which infects its carriers’ blood, causing visible patches of black to appear beneath the skin. It kills 100% of untreated sufferers: hence the name the Black Death.
Who got the blame for the plague?
Initially, beggars and lepers were banished. Homosexuals were also blamed, as were people with loose morals. But by far the most commonly scapegoated group were the Jews. In Chillon, in Switzerland, a Jewish surgeon was forced to confess, under torture, that Jews were poisoning wells. From 1348 on, there were pogroms across Europe: in Toulon, Flanders, Barcelona, Strasbourg, Basel and the Rhineland. In Mainz, the 3,000-strong
Jewish population was wiped out.
Historians and scientists argued for decades about the true cause of the Black Death, but genetic analysis of graves has established beyond doubt that it was caused by Yersinia pestis. Not only that, but DNA evidence indicates that the same pathogen caused the Plague of Justinian 800 years earlier, which is estimated to have killed at least 25 million people – up to half of the population – as it spread slowly through Asia, North Africa, Arabia and Europe. Yersinia also caused other great epidemics: the Italian Plague, which ravaged northern and central Italy, killing at least 280,000 people in 1629-31; and the Great Plague of
London 1665-1666, which killed around 100,000. The last major plague pandemic began in Yunnan, China, in 1855, before spreading around the world in waves during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, killing an estimated 12 million people. It was in Hong
Kong in 1894 that the French physician Alexandre Yersin discovered the bacterium now named after him, and established that it was spread by rats. Modern hygiene has inhibited its spread, and since the 1930s the plague has been effectively treated by antibiotics. But it still kills. From 2010 to 2015, 3,248 cases of the plague were recorded worldwide, and 584 deaths.
What were its long-term effects?
“The entire inhabited world changed,” wrote the Arab scholar Ibn Khaldun. The plague “devastated nations and caused populations to vanish... Cities and buildings were laid waste, roads were obliterated, settlements and mansions became empty, dynasties and tribes grew weak.” The effects were profound. The Church lost prestige; many survivors reportedly turned to “gluttony” and sexual licence. England’s gross domestic product plunged by 26% between 1348 and 1351, according to a University of Warwick study. Labour shortages meant that workers were in demand and wages were driven up. Historians have argued that the Black Death – combined with earlier famines and social tensions – cleared the way for the end of feudalism in Europe.