Medieval Black Death Was Probably Not Bubonic Plague

Science Daily ^ | Posted 4/15/2002 | Penn State

[Gladwin]

Evolution in action

[Gladwin]

I am a little curious what they think could be the Black Death, if it wasn't bubonic plague.

It is too bad that they couldn't sample dead bodies from that time period for bacterial genetic material. I don't know if that is even possible.

[mewzilla]

...not the modern disease known as the bubonic plague...

Uh, duh. It could have been a different strain of the bubonic plague. It could have included a bunch of different diseases that were lumped in with bubonic plague. I hope these folks have got an infectious disease specialist or two on their team.

[SpringheelJack]

This article was posted a few days ago, and anyway, I think it's bunk. As though rats couldn't find a way to get across rivers. These scientists need to take a trip into the real world.

[KarlInOhio]

"You know, medicine is not an exact science, but we are learning all the time. Why, just fifty years ago they thought a disease like your daughter's was caused by demonic possession or witchcraft. But nowadays, we know that Isabelle is suffering from an imbalance of bodily humors, perhaps caused by a toad or a small dwarf living in her stomach."
--Theodoric of York

[mewzilla]

And bone up on the lifestyles of the furry and flea-infested.

[Black Agnes]

Ask and ye shall receive.

Suicide PCR Identifies Yersinia pestis DNA in Black Death Victims

[Psalm 73]

"You know, medicine is not an exact science..."

"Broom Gilda - more leaches..."

[firebrand]

Once people are infected, they infect other people very rapidly. So all the stuff about barriers to rats would only apply to the earliest stage of the plague. When it hit heavily populated areas, it became a person-to-person disease.

[humbletheFiend]

Whatever it was, it sure killed a lot of people and actually resulted in a significant reduction in the supply of able-bodied workers. The surviving peasants shamelessly exploited that dislocation by demanding and receiving a totally unjustifiable improvement in their standard of living at the direct expense of their employers.

[wimpycat]

I am a little curious what they think could be the Black Death, if it wasn't bubonic plague.

I've got a book called "Diseases and History", a very interesting read, that suggests that the Black Death was actually two diseases working at once: the Bubonic plague, which is spread by rats, and Pneumonic Plague, which is spread by airborne droplets and was highly,highly contagious, which would correspond to the theory in this article, that "the researchers believe that the Black Death was transmitted through person-to-person contact, as are measles and smallpox.

The book I own is fairly old, so I don't know why the researchers in the article do not address Pneumonic Plague at all.

[mewzilla]

I didn't know that the bubonic plague could be spread person to person? I thought fleas were the vector? And that a flea had to bite an infected person, then bite another victim in order to spread the disease?

[scholar]

Modern bubonic plague typically needs to reach a high frequency in the rat population before it spills over into the human community via the flea vector.

Here in the US bubonic plague is endemic in the West due to prairie dog populations and their flea vectors. Don't these so-called scientists have anything better to do with our tax dollars than to spend their time trying to debunk accepted science.

[mewzilla]

Yup, that makes a lot more sense.

[Gladwin]

I don't know how far rats travel, or really much about the bubonic plague.

[mewzilla]

Probably because they neglected to talk to anyone with actual infectious disease experience?

[Black Agnes]

Actually, both bubonic and pneumonic are the same organism, y. pestis. In the case of pneumonic, the patient has bubonic and some respiratory disease simultaneously, causing the cough droplets to be infected with y. pestis as well. The deadliest and most scary form of the disease is actually septicaemic plague. In that form, it infects the blood stream and few or no 'buboes' form. This was the form it took in patients who went to sleep healthy and never woke up.

[Don Myers]

"I am a little curious what they think could be the Black Death, if it wasn't bubonic plague. "

Before they are done, they might well try to prove that the people were infected with that fatal disease called Conservatism.

[mewzilla]

FWIW, two excellent books on infectious disease:

Evolution of Infectious Disease, by Paul Ewald; and The Coming Plague by Laurie Garrett. Garrett has another book out on public health issues that I haven't read, but it's supposed to be very informative.

[Gladwin]

That is a good link that you posted, and has a lot of real science.