Black Death Returns; Outbreak Of The Plague Possible Warn Scientists

Before It’s News – by Alton Parish

Historical review provides lessons for the control of the plague

Archaeologists unearthed a ‘Black Death’ grave in London, containing more than a dozen skeletons of people suspected to have died from the plague. The victims are thought to have died during the 14th century and archaeologists anticipate finding many more as they excavate the site.  

The Plague is by definition a re-emerging infectious disease which affects the lungs and is highly contagious, leading to mass outbreaks across populations. History shows us that population levels suffered globally due to the plague, with around 75 million people globally perishing during the 14th century Black Death.

This study, published in Infection, Genetics and Evolution, analysed the Great Plague of Marseille, which caused 100,000 deaths between 1720 and 1723. The researchers aimed to highlight issues we are facing with infectious diseases today, to identify the best ways to respond to epidemics and whether we are still at risk of the plague re-emerging again.

Pieter Bruegel’s The Triumph of Death (c. 1562) reflects the social upheaval and terror that followed the plague which devastated medieval Europe

File:Thetriumphofdeath.jpg
Results show that a number of factors show we are still at risk of plague today. This is largely due to transport trade and novel threats in developing countries where multi-drug resistant pathogens are currently emerging and spreading rapidly. This genetic change has also contributed to a development in the way the bacteria infect new hosts meaning they can now live in mammalian blood.

The study also highlighted the need for effective management of epidemics in future. Fear of in infection can have a negative impact on a population’s economic situation due to a significant loss of tourism, and widespread panic. History has shown us that providing the necessary information about diseases and improving the management of epidemics are vital steps for avoiding panic and containing diseases.

Skeletons in a mass grave from 1720–1721 in Martigues, France, yielded molecular evidence of the orientalis strain of Yersinia pestis, the organism responsible for bubonic plague. The second pandemic of bubonic plague was active in Europe from AD 1347, the beginning of the Black Death, until 1750.

File:Bubonic plague victims-mass grave in Martigues, France 1720-1721.jpg

Credit: Wikipedia

Black Death

The Black Death was one of the most devastating pandemics in human history, peaking in Europe between 1348 and 1350, and killing between 75 million and 200 million people. Although there were several competing theories as to the etiology of the Black Death, recent analysis of DNA from victims in northern and southern Europe indicates that the pathogen responsible was the Yersinia pestis bacterium probably causing several forms of plague.

Plague victims being blessed, shown with symptoms from a late 14th century manuscript Omne Bonum by James le Palmer

File:Plague victims blessed by priest.jpg

Credit: Wikipedia

The Black Death is thought to have started in China or central Asia. It then travelled along the Silk Road and reached the Crimea by 1346. From there, it was probably carried by Oriental rat fleas living on the black rats that were regular passengers on merchant ships. Spreading throughout the Mediterranean and Europe, the Black Death is estimated to have killed 30 to 60 percent of Europe’s population.All in all, the plague reduced the world population from an estimated 450 million to a number between 350 and 375 million in the 14th century.

The aftermath of the plague created a series of religious, social and economic upheavals, which had profound effects on the course of European history. It took 150 years for Europe’s population to recover. The plague reoccurred occasionally in Europe until the 19th century.

Major outbreaks

There have been three major outbreaks of plague. The Plague of Justinian in the 6th and 7th centuries is the first known attack on record, and marks the first firmly recorded pattern of bubonic plague. From historical descriptions, as much as 40 percent of the population of Constantinople died from the plague. Modern estimates suggest half of Europe’s population was wiped out before the plague disappeared in the 700s. After 750, major epidemic diseases did not appear again in Europe until the Black Death of the 14th century. The Third Pandemic hit China in the 1890s and devastated India, but was confined to limited outbreaks in the west.

The Black Death originated in or near China and spread by way of the Silk Road or by ship. It may have reduced world population from an estimated 450 million to between 350 and 375 million in 1400.

The plague is thought to have returned at intervals with varying virulence and mortality until the 18th century. On its return in 1603, for example, the plague killed 38,000 Londoners.

Other notable 17th-century outbreaks were the Italian Plague (1629–1631); the Great Plague of Seville (1647–1652); the Great Plague of London (1665–1666); and the Great Plague of Vienna (1679). There is some controversy over the identity of the disease, but in its virulent form, after the Great Plague of Marseille in 1720–1722,the Great Plague of 1738 (which hit Eastern Europe), and the Russian plague of 1770-1772, it seems to have gradually disappeared from Europe.

Plague Riot in Moscow in 1771: During the course of the city’s plague, between 50,000 and 100,000 died (1/6 to 1/3 of its population).

File:Chumbunt.gif

By the early 19th century, the threat of plague had diminished, but it was quickly replaced by a new disease. The Asiatic cholera was the first of several cholera pandemics to sweep through Asia and Europe during the 19th and 20th centuries.

The 14th-century eruption of the Black Death had a drastic effect on Europe’s population, irrevocably changing the social structure, and resulted in widespread persecution of minorities such as Jews, foreigners, beggars, and lepers (see Persecutions). The uncertainty of daily survival has been seen as creating a general mood of morbidity, influencing people to “live for the moment,” as illustrated by Giovanni Boccaccio in The Decameron (1353).

Naming

Medieval people called the catastrophe of the 14th century either the “Great Pestilence”‘ or the “Great Plague”. Writers contemporary to the plague referred to the event as the “Great Mortality”. Swedish and Danish chronicles of the 16th century described the events as “black” for the first time, not to describe the late-stage sign of the disease, in which the sufferer’s skin would blacken due to subepidermal hemorrhages and the extremities would darken with a form of gangrene, acral necrosis, but more likely to refer to black in the sense of glum or dreadful and to denote the terror and gloom of the events.

The German physician and medical writer Justus Hecker suggested that a mistranslation of the Latin atra mors (terrible, or black, death) had occurred in Scandinavia when he described the catastrophe in 1832 in his publication “Der schwarze Tod im vierzehnten Jahrhundert”. The work was translated into English the following year, and with the cholera epidemic happening at that time, “The Black Death in the 14th century” gained widespread attention and the terms Schwarzer Tod and Black Death became more widely used in the German- and English-speaking worlds, respectively.

Symptoms

Contemporary accounts of the plague are often varied or imprecise. The most commonly noted symptom was the appearance of buboes (or gavocciolos) in the groin, the neck and armpits, which oozed pus and bled when opened. Boccaccio’s description is graphic:

“In men and women alike it first betrayed itself by the emergence of certain tumours in the groin or armpits, some of which grew as large as a common apple, others as an egg…From the two said parts of the body this deadly gavocciolo soon began to propagate and spread itself in all directions indifferently; after which the form of the malady began to change, black spots or livid making their appearance in many cases on the arm or the thigh or elsewhere, now few and large, now minute and numerous. As the gavocciolo had been and still was an infallible token of approaching death, such also were these spots on whomsoever they showed themselves.”

Ziegler comments that the only medical detail that is questionable is the infallibility of approaching death, as if the bubo discharges, recovery is possible.

A hand showing how acral gangrene of thefingers due to bubonic plague causes theskin and flesh to die and turn black.

Credit: Wikipedia

An inguinal bubo on the upper thigh of a person infected with bubonic plague. Swollen lymph glands (buboes) often occur in the neck, armpit and groin (inguinal) regions of plague victims

Credit: Wikipedia

This was followed by acute fever and vomiting of blood. Most victims died two to seven days after initial infection. David Herlihy identifies another potential sign of the plague: freckle-like spots and rashes which could be caused by flea-bites.

Some accounts, like that of Louis Heyligen, a musician in Avignon who died of the plague in 1348, noted a distinct form of the disease which infected the lungs and led to respiratory problems and which is identified with pneumonic plague.

Worldwide distribution of plague-infected animals 1998File:World distribution of plague 1998.PNG

“It is said that the plague takes three forms. In the first people suffer an infection of the lungs, which leads to breathing difficulties. Whoever has this corruption or contamination to any extent cannot escape but will die within two days. Another form…in which boils erupt under the armpits,…a third form in which people of both sexes are attacked in the groin.”

This article is “Small oversights that led to the Great Plague of Marseille (1720 – 1723): Lessons from the past” by Christian A. Devaux (DOI: 10.1016/j.meegid.2012.11.016,) and appears in Infection, Genetics and Evolution published by Elsevier.

Contacts and sources:

Sacha Boucherie

Elsevier

8 thoughts on “Black Death Returns; Outbreak Of The Plague Possible Warn Scientists

  1. And let me guess……plague would be completely controllable of we all lived in Agenda 21’s “sustainable developments”.

    “bring out yer dead……bring out yer dead”
    “but I’m not dead yet”
    whack

    1. Monty Python’s best movie.

      I have every episode ever made on dvd. My brother saw them live at the Hollywood Bowl (lucky so-and-so). When John Cleese walked out on stage with the parrot cage, the audience was laughing so hard that he started cracking up too. He had to go backstage to compose himself, and start over again. Wish I could have seen that one!

  2. Hmmm

    Of course there is a threat from the “plague” the US military has been working on biowarfare using these types of diseases for decades. I am sure they have a closet full of them.

    The difference in the next “outbreak'” will be twofold. First it will not a random act of nature. Rather this will be a deliberate release by one or more governments. Second, instead of millions dying for lack of a cure; hundreds of millions will die because the government(s) that released the plague in the first place refuse to give the general population the cure.

    In short it will be genocide on a continental scale. The great thing about this type of war against the people is that it doesn’t damage the infrastructure in the process of culling the population. And it is so much cheaper. In fact by far the biggest expense will be disposing of the bodies. Perhaps that is why DHS bought millions and millions of caskets…….. Who knows but one can bet the same slimy b*stards that have all the money now are planning to get rid of most of us one way or another. They just don’t need that much labor anymore.

  3. If that isn’t the height of stupidity?
    To keep on excavatiing it.
    It just goes to show you, having a univeristy degree doesn’t make for intelligence.

    Unltess they’re doing it deliberately with the intention of starting the Plague.

    And could it be that they’re taking samples for the lab, to develop a lethal virus, to spread the Plague?

    We do know that the ole profs are being funded by the Feds, after all.

    1. They won’t release any bugs until they have a vaccine for themselves, henceforth, the reason for the “research”.

  4. There’s a connection between this Excavation, and the Feds funding the dig.

    The Elite like Ted Turner and David Rockefeller, and his demon cohort have been saying for years, that they want to depopulate the planet, bring population down 3/4. *That there is not enough food and water.

    (They should kill themselves first.)

    And such creatures like Ted and David, are the ones funding the Feds, who fund the universities.

    *There is plenty of food for the Planet, it’s just that the Feds order it destroyed.

    There would be plenty of water, if it weren’t being contaminated by the Corporations, worldwide.

  5. They are talking about the Black death now? Remember just a week or so ago they were talking about that new strain of TB in LA, and they even brought up monkey pox. What the f is going on in this screwed up world?…………… Why sould anyone realy care anyway about these deseases, after all the ptb are planing for WW 3 anyway and to eliminate most of the population off this planet we all live on. In other words if the deseases don`t get us WW 3 and the ptb will get us all. Get ready ya`ll.

  6. Original Recipe for Four Thieves Formula –

    During the black plague there were thieves who somehow escaped the disease. When captured the judge told that if they disclose how they were able to not be infected he would go easy on them.

    The recipe is below…share with your family and friends. Take care of yourself.

    3 pints
    white wine vinegar
    handful
    wormwood
    handful
    meadowsweet
    handful
    juniper berries
    handful
    wild marjoram
    handful
    sage
    50
    cloves
    2 oz.
    elecampane root
    2 oz.
    angelica
    2 oz.
    rosemary
    2 oz.
    horehound
    3 g
    camphor
    Dr. Valnet has a variation of his own described as an antiseptic vinegar:

    Marseilles Vinegar or Four Thieves Vinegar
    40 g.
    greater wormwood, Artemesia absinthum
    40 g.
    lesser wormwood, Artemesia pontica
    40 g.
    rosemary
    40 g.
    sage
    40 g.
    mint
    40 g.
    rue
    40 g.
    lavender
    5 g.
    calamus
    5 g.
    cinnamon
    5 g.
    clove
    5 g.
    nutmeg
    5 g.
    garlic
    10 g.
    camphor (do not use synthetic camphor)
    40 g.
    crystallized acetic acid
    2500 g.
    white vinegar
    Instructions: steep the plants in the vinegar for 10 days. Force through a sieve. Add the camphor dissolved in the acetic acid, filter.

    Valnet says this remedy, i.e., his formula is useful in the prevention of infectious diseases. He says to rub it on the face and hands and burn it in the room. It can also be kept in small bottles that are carried on the person so that the vapors can be inhaled.

Join the Conversation

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *


*