Navigable rivers facilitated the spread and recurrence of plague in pre-industrial Europe.

Ricci P H Yue,Connor Y H Wu,Harry F Lee

doi:10.1038/srep34867

Ricci P H Yue, Connor Y H Wu + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1038/srep34867

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Abstract

Infectious diseases have become a rising challenge to mankind in a globalizing world. Yet, little is known about the inland transmission of infectious diseases in history. In this study, we based on the spatio-temporal information of 5559 plague (Yersinia pestis) outbreaks in Europe and its neighboring regions in AD1347–1760 to statistically examine the connection between navigable rivers and plague outbreak. Our results showed that 95.5% of plague happened within 10 km proximity of navigable rivers. Besides, the count of plague outbreak was positively correlated with the width of river and negatively correlated with the distance between city and river. This association remained robust in different regression model specifications. An increase of 100 m in the width of river and a shortening of 1 km distance between city and river resulted in 9 and 0.96 more plague outbreaks in our study period, respectively. Such relationship shows a declining trend over our study period due to the expansion of city and technological advancement in overland transportation. This study elucidates the key role of navigable river in the dissemination of plague in historical Europe.

Highlights

The plague dynamics in Asia, Africa and North America are relatively well understood, the one in pre-industrial Europe remains insufficiently explored
If cases that are transmitted through maritime trade routes are discounted, every inland plague outbreak incident is caused by previous plague outbreak nearby
Of the 5559 plague outbreaks in our study period, 95.5% of them happened within the 10 km proximity of navigable rivers (Table 1)

Summary

Introduction

The plague dynamics in Asia, Africa and North America are relatively well understood, the one in pre-industrial Europe remains insufficiently explored. We hypothesized that trade and transportation brought by navigable rivers was an important medium for the spread of plague in European inland. To prove this hypothesis, we extracted historic plague records from Büntgen, et al.[19] geo-referenced plague database. OLS regression estimates were employed to investigate the influence of navigable rivers on plague outbreak. We based on the resultant coefficients of association to determine the contribution of navigable rivers on plague outbreak. We suggested the possible pathways of how rivers determined the pattern of plague outbreak in pre-industrial Europe. We sought to shed light on inland transmission of plague in pre-industrial Europe and contributing to plague prevention in underdeveloped world nowadays

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