Abstract
The plague, an infectious disease caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, is widely considered to be responsible for the most devastating and deadly pandemics in human history. Starting with the infamous Black Death, plague outbreaks are estimated to have killed around 100 million people over multiple centuries, with local mortality rates as high as 60%. However, detailed pictures of the disease dynamics of these outbreaks centuries ago remain scarce, mainly due to the lack of high-quality historical data in digital form. Here, we present an analysis of the 1630–1631 plague outbreak in the city of Venice, using newly collected daily death records. We identify the presence of a two-peak pattern, for which we present two possible explanations based on computational models of disease dynamics. Systematically digitized historical records like the ones presented here promise to enrich our understanding of historical phenomena of enduring importance. This work contributes to the recently renewed interdisciplinary foray into the epidemiological and societal impact of pre-modern epidemics.
Highlights
The plague, an infectious disease caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, is widely considered to be responsible for the most devastating and deadly pandemics in human history
Disease outbreaks of the plague in the past centuries have been so devastating throughout Eurasia that the very term plague has become synonymous with a devastating epidemic
While previous studies have highlighted some common traits to plague epidemics[9], such as the high impact on densely-inhabited cities acting as hotspots[10,11], the importance of human-to-human transmission[12] and the effect of the plague on different s exes[13], little is known about local outbreaks, due to the lack of detailed historical data
Summary
The plague, an infectious disease caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, is widely considered to be responsible for the most devastating and deadly pandemics in human history. We analyze high-quality data from death records created during the 1630–1631 plague epidemic in Venice, whose initial investigation is limited and dated[14].
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