What Disease was Plague? On the Controversy over the Microbiological Identity of Plague Epidemics of the Past (Brill's Series in the History of the Environment)

In recent decades, alternatives to the established bubonic-plague theory have been presented as to the microbiologcal identity and mechanism(s) of spread of historical plague epidemics. In this monograph, the six important alternative theories are intensively discussed in the light of the historical sources, the central primary studies and standard works on bubonic plague and the alternative microbiological agents, insofar as they are testable. These seven theories are incompatible and at least six of them must be untenable. In the author’s opinion, the arguments against the bubonic-plague theory and for all alternative theories are untenable. This monograph therefore also has been written also as a standard work on bubonic plague, giving a broad and in-depth presentation of the medical, epidemiological and historical evidence and the methodological tenets for identification of historical diseases by comparison with modern medical knowledge. CONTENTS......Page 8 LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES......Page 14 PREFACE......Page 16 PART ONE - THE ISSUE......Page 18 Introduction......Page 20 The Human-Flea Theory of Plague Epidemiology......Page 26 The Revisionists ......Page 33 PART TWO - HOW S.K.COHN MAKES PHYSICIANS AND HISTORIANS “SQUARE THE CIRCLE”......Page 40 Introduction......Page 42 How Cohn Makes Medical Scientists “Square the Circle”......Page 43 Hankin 1: Cohn’s Attack on Hankin’s Observation of Inverse Correlation between Mortality and Population Density......Page 51 Hankin 2: A Brief Study of Cohn’s Technique of Argument......Page 55 “The Ugly Americans” ......Page 61 Cohn’s Accusations of Racism against J. Ashburton Thompson and L.F. Hirst......Page 63 How Cohn Makes “Historians Square the Circle”......Page 71 The Attack on Schofi eld (and Benedictow and L. Bradley) ......Page 79 PART THREE - BASIC CONDITIONS FOR BUBONIC PLAGUEIN MEDIEVAL EUROPE......Page 88 Introduction: How to Study Rats in History......Page 90 The Nature of Rats and the Frame of Reference of the Medieval Mind......Page 95 The Question of the Presence of Rats and the Methodological Fallacy of Inference ex silentio......Page 102 Ars Moriendi Rattorum: Where Have all the Dead Rats Gone?......Page 108 Zoobiological and Zoogeographical Arguments on the Question of Significant Presence of Black Rats in Medieval Europe......Page 115 The Significance of Evolutionary Theory and Adaptation by Selection......Page 133 Rat Bones: Material Evidence of the Presence of Rats in the Middle Ages......Page 139 Sociology of Rat-based Plague......Page 159 Contiguous Spread and Metastatic Spread......Page 168 Effects of the Anti-epidemic Efforts by British Colonial Authorities......Page 211 Introduction......Page 222 Re-infection or Immunity?......Page 229 Did Plague Become a Child Disease aft er the Black Death?......Page 235 Plague according to Social Class, Age and Gender......Page 252 A Demographic Case Study: The Necrology of the Monastery of San Domenico in Camporegio......Page 262 The Real Problem and its Solution: Marriage Rates and Fertility Rates after the Black Death......Page 285 PART FOUR - DEFINING FEATURES......Page 292 INTRODUCTION: CONCEPT OF DEFINING FEATURE......Page 294 7. DEFINING FEATURE 1: LATENCY PERIODS......Page 296 Introduction......Page 306 More Data on the Inverse Correlation in India and Historical Europe......Page 308 Scott and Duncan and the Correlation between Population Densityand Mortality......Page 318 Epilogue: Sweating Sickness and the Inverse Correlation......Page 328 General Introduction......Page 329 Contemporary Notions and Observations of Buboes (and Associated Secondary Clinical Manifestations)......Page 339 Scott and Duncan: The Problem of Buboes......Page 351 Cohn: The Problem of Buboes......Page 357 Cohn and Boccaccio: Buboes, Pustules and Spots......Page 376 10. DEFINING FEATURE 4: DNA OF YERSINIA PESTIS FROMPLAGUE GRAVES......Page 398 Introduction: Bubonic Plague’s Association with Moderately Warm Temperatures and Seasons......Page 413 Seasonality of Historical Bubonic-Plague Epidemics with Emphasis on the Transseasonal Form......Page 415 The Seasonality of Plague and Mortality in England 1340–1666......Page 437 Duration of Vacancies in Parish Benefices during the Black Death......Page 453 Summary and Conclusion......Page 499 PART FIVE - THE ALTERNATIVE THEORIES ......Page 502 INTRODUCTION: THE HISTORY AND ESSENCEOF THE ALTERNATIVE THEORIES......Page 504 Shrewsbury: the Composite, Low-Intensity Theory......Page 506 Morris: the Primary Pneumonic Theory......Page 508 Introduction......Page 510 Karlsson and Benedictow......Page 512 Could Plague Have Come to Iceland from Anywhere?......Page 519 Pure Epidemics of Primary Pneumonic Plague: Fact or Fiction?......Page 528 Primary Pneumonic Plague in Manchuria: A Model for Iceland?......Page 531 The Spontaneous Decline of Epidemics of Primary Pneumonic Plague......Page 535 The Icelandic Climatic Theory of Primary Pneumonic Plague......Page 545 Mortality Rate of the Purported Plague Epidemics in Iceland......Page 547 Summary: Why There Never Was a Plague Epidemic in Iceland......Page 550 Was the Black Death in Bergen (Norway) 1349 Primary Pneumonic Plague?......Page 553 Summary and Conclusion......Page 567 Introduction......Page 570 The Alternative Theory of Anthrax ......Page 572 The Historical Basis: The Use of Obsolete and Peripheral Studies......Page 577 The Telluric-Miasmatic Theory of Anthrax ......Page 579 The Pace of Spread of Plague ......Page 583 Anthrax and the Name Black Death......Page 588 Anthrax’s Historical Association with Other Epizootics among DomesticAnimals and Plague......Page 591 The Black Death’s Origin and Spread and the Anthrax Th eory......Page 597 Twigg’s Demographic Argument......Page 612 Concluding Remarks......Page 625 Introduction......Page 627 Disparaging Views of Historians and Physicians: Motive and Objective......Page 628 The Material Scholarly Basis of Scott and Duncan’s Alternative Theory ......Page 632 The Demography of Historical Plague ......Page 645 The Reed-Frost Th eory of Epidemiology ......Page 650 The Filoviridal Theory of Historical Plague: A Study in AcademicFiction ......Page 653 The Signifi cance of Autopsies ......Page 670 The African Confinement ......Page 678 Summary and Conclusion......Page 679 EPILOGUE......Page 690 APPENDIX ONE......Page 692 APPENDIX TWO......Page 697 APPENDIX THREE......Page 699 GLOSSARY......Page 705 BIBLIOGRAPHY......Page 710 INDEX OF SUBJECTS......Page 734 INDEX OF GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES AND PEOPLE......Page 747 INDEX OF NAMES......Page 757 In recent decades, alternatives to the established bubonic-plague theory have been presented as to the microbiologcal identity and mechanism(s) of spread of historical plague epidemics. In this monograph, the six important alternative theories are intensively discussed in the light of the historical sources, the central primary studies and standard works on bubonic plague and the alternative microbiological agents, insofar as they are testable. These seven theories are incompatible and at least six of them must be untenable. In the author s opinion, the arguments against the bubonic-plague theory and for all alternative theories are untenable. This monograph therefore also has been written also as a standard work on bubonic plague, giving a broad and in-depth presentation of the medical, epidemiological and historical evidence and the methodological tenets for identification of historical diseases by comparison with modern medical knowledge. The issue and the problems The ethics of scholarly work Rats The spread of bubonic plague over distances Mortality in india Was historical plague a viral or bacterial disease? : the question of immunity Defining feature 1 : latency periods Defining feature 2 : inverse correlation between mortality rate and population density Defining feature 3 : buboes as a normal clinical feature in epidemics Defining feature 4 : DNA of yersinia pestis from plague graves Defining feature 5 : seasonality of bubonic plague The beginning : the alternative theories of Shrewsbury and Morris Gunnar Karlsson's alternative theory : that historical plague was pure epidemics of primary pneumonic plague Twigg's alternative theory The alternative theory of Scott and Duncan Cohn's alternative theory. In this monograph, the alternative theories to the established bubonic-plague theory as to the microbiological identity of historical plague epidemics are intensively discussed in the light of the historical sources and the medical primary research and standard works.