History Of Plague Research Articles

A History of Plague in Java, 1911–1942

A History of Plague in Java, 1911–1942

The Natural and Clinical History of Plague: From the Ancient Pandemics to Modern Insights.

The human pathogen Yersinia pestis is responsible for bubonic, septicemic, and pneumonic plague. A deeply comprehensive overview of its historical context, bacteriological characteristics, genomic analysis based on ancient DNA (aDNA) and modern strains, and its impact on historical and actual human populations, is explored. The results from multiple studies have been synthesized to investigate the origins of plague, its transmission, and effects on different populations. Additionally, molecular interactions of Y. pestis, from its evolutionary origins to its adaptation to flea-born transmission, and its impact on human and wild populations are considered. The characteristic combinations of aDNA patterns, which plays a decisive role in the reconstruction and analysis of ancient genomes, are reviewed. Bioinformatics is fundamental in identifying specific Y. pestis lineages, and automated pipelines are among the valuable tools in implementing such studies. Plague, which remains among human history's most lethal infectious diseases, but also other zoonotic diseases, requires the continuous investigation of plague topics. This can be achieved by improving molecular and genetic screening of animal populations, identifying ecological and social determinants of outbreaks, increasing interdisciplinary collaborations among scientists and public healthcare providers, and continued research into the characterization, diagnosis, and treatment of these diseases.

Emergence, continuity, and evolution of Yersinia pestis throughout medieval and early modern Denmark

The historical epidemiology of plague is controversial due to the scarcity and ambiguity of available data.1,2 A common source of debate is the extent and pattern of plague re-emergence and local continuity in Europe during the 14th-18th century CE.3 Despite having a uniquely long history of plague (∼5,000 years), Scandinavia is relatively underrepresented in the historical archives.4,5 To better understand the historical epidemiology and evolutionary history of plague in this region, we performed in-depth (n= 298) longitudinal screening (800 years) for the plague bacterium Yersinia pestis (Y.pestis) across 13 archaeological sites in Denmark from 1000 to 1800 CE. Our genomic and phylogenetic data captured the emergence, continuity, and evolution of Y.pestis in this region over a period of 300 years (14th-17th century CE), for which the plague-positivity rate was 8.3% (3.3%-14.3% by site). Our phylogenetic analysis revealed that the Danish Y.pestis sequences were interspersed with those from other European countries, rather than forming a single cluster, indicative of the generation, spread, and replacement of bacterial variants through communities rather than their long-term local persistence. These results provide an epidemiological link between Y.pestis and the unknown pestilence that afflicted medieval and early modern Europe. They also demonstrate how population-scale genomic evidence can be used to test hypotheses on disease mortality and epidemiology and help pave the way for the next generation of historical disease research.

The Plague Doctor, the Pandemic Doctor, and Surgical Protective Clothing

Objectives Infectious diseases have tormented humans for thousands of years, and severe outbreaks have led to the devastation of entire communities. Even before globalization, parasites and pathogens traveled along trade routes with their human hosts. The protective clothing worn by physicians during epidemics serves as a powerful historical record chronicling accepted theories of disease transmission and treatments. The materials and designs of modern-day protective equipment reflect the contributions of surgeons to the ways doctors protected themselves and their patients during epidemics. Methods Historical texts and journal articles were reviewed regarding the history, epidemiology, and pathophysiology of epidemics of plague, influenza, and coronavirus. Results The Justinian Plague of the 540s CE was the first pandemic to be fully documented and began the long history of plagues through the Black Death of the Middle Ages. Believing that the etiology was foul-smelling bad air (miasma), doctors protected themselves by wearing dramatic head-to-toe coverings. Heavy boots, pants, long coats, gloves, and brimmed hats were made of leather sealed with animal fat. Most important was the infamous face mask with glass eye coverings and a long beak filled with aromatics intended to purify disease-causing vapors. An appreciation of droplet theory in the 19th century made beaked masks obsolete, replacing them with cloth face masks. Surgeons continued to pioneer the development of gloves and gowns, initially to protect themselves and later to protect their patients. Their outfits were worn by healthcare workers during the epidemics of the 20th century. Similar to the plague doctors, present-day physicians treating patients suffering from COVID-19 don themselves in head-to-toe protective outwear, although heavy leather and beaked-masks have long since been replaced by disposable fabrics and the N95 respirator. Conclusions The evolution of physicians’ protective clothing from the iconic beaked mask of the 17th century plague doctor to the hazmat-esque suits of the COVID-19 pandemic doctor reflects the substantial advancements in the detection, treatment, and containment of communicable diseases. Much of this is due to the dedicated efforts of surgeons to better safeguard their patients as well as protect themselves against diseases contained in bodily fluids.

A New Definition of the Black Death: Genetic Findings and Historical Interpretations

The field of infectious disease history has been transformed in the past decade in large part because of fortuitous developments in several adjacent fields, most importantly genetics. The medieval period (ca. 500 to ca. 1500) has proved particularly important for these developments, not simply because it is now the earliest period from which whole genomes of several bacterial and viral pathogens have been retrieved, but also because the narratives that can be constructed about disease emergence and dissemination are most robust for this period thanks to the amount of surviving archival evidence. This essay introduces the transformative work in molecular biology that has allowed reconstruction of the evolutionary histories of pathogens afflicting humankind. Plague, the disease caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, has been at the forefront of this new work. An extraordinarily lethal disease, plague gives a prime example of how the evolutionary narratives of genetics yield information valuable to historians, precisely because they allow us to see phenomena at a hitherto invisible microscopic level. This essay proposes a new definition of the Black Death, or more properly, the Second Plague Pandemic, which is based on a new, evolutionary understanding of the pandemic’s pathogen. However, scientific approaches are not inherently more productive of unassailable truths than are traditional humanistic or archaeological methods for the study of disease history. The complementarity of material and cultural sources is especially fruitful for work employing the perspectives of global history. Although most historiography on the late medieval pandemic has focused on Europe, whose crisis with plague did not begin until 1347, I argue that such a limited geographic definition occludes not only as much as a century and a half of plague activity, but also occludes connected events in Asia and Africa. Given the urgency of understanding pandemics in a world of rapid change, the history of plague offers us the best available model for thinking about pandemics.

The "Nastas'in Pestilence": the Great Plague of 1417-1425 in Rus

The plague pandemic ("The Black Death") that struck Eurasia in the middle of XIV century, "settled" this lethal disease in Europe for a long time. The new outbreaks of this disease, with breaks of several years, occurred in single cities, regions and states, covering sometimes entire continent over the next centuries. However, impression that "The Black Death" made upon minds of European scribes, staggering European society by its inevitability, for a long time determined particular angle of view under which it is accepted to consider the history of plague in Europe in the epoch of Middle Ages and early New Age. The image of The Great Plague of XIV century overshadowed all subsequent outbreaks of this lethal disease, so its subsequent occurrences are traditionally given less attention. The article, being based on on analysis of numerous chronicle evidences, for the first time in Russian historiography analyzes the history of plague in Rus during first decades of XV century and restores chronology of its occurrence and development and determines areas affected by the plague in the first place, estimating caused damage.

Divine Visitation: The 1662 Prayer Book’s Theology of Sickness and Plague

AbstractWhen it began to be clear that COVID-19 was a global phenomenon, clerics were scrambling for liturgical ways to address the crisis. But it turned out that most twentieth-century Anglican Prayers Books have few, if any, prayers for times of plague or great sickness. This was not always the case. In light of the current pandemic and the pastoral challenges it has introduced, this article explores the theology of sickness and plague in the Church of England’s 1662 Book of Common Prayer in light of the devastating history of plagues and sicknesses in England, both before and after the sixteenth-century reformations. This exploration makes use of the lens of ‘divine visitation’ as an ordering principle, one of the distinctive phrases that the Prayer Book uses repeatedly to speak of bodily illness.

HF01-10 THE PLAGUE DOCTOR, THE PANDEMIC DOCTOR, AND SURGICAL PROTECTIVE CLOTHING

You have accessJournal of UrologyHistory of Urology Forum I (HF01)1 Sep 2021HF01-10 THE PLAGUE DOCTOR, THE PANDEMIC DOCTOR, AND SURGICAL PROTECTIVE CLOTHING Alexis Steinmetz, and Ronald Rabinowitz Alexis SteinmetzAlexis Steinmetz More articles by this author , and Ronald RabinowitzRonald Rabinowitz More articles by this author View All Author Informationhttps://doi.org/10.1097/JU.0000000000001992.10AboutPDF ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints ShareFacebookLinked InTwitterEmail Abstract INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVE: Infectious diseases have tormented humans for thousands of years, and severe outbreaks have led to the devastation of entire communities. Even before globalization, parasites and pathogens traveled along trade routes along with their human hosts. The protective clothing worn by physicians during epidemics serves as a powerful historical record chronicling accepted theories of disease transmission and treatments. The materials and designs of modern-day protective equipment reflect the contributions of surgeons to the ways doctors protected themselves and their patients during epidemics. METHODS: Texts and journal articles were reviewed regarding the history, epidemiology, and pathophysiology of epidemics of plague, influenza, and coronavirus. RESULTS: The Justinian Plague of the 540s CE was the first pandemic to be fully documented and began the long history of plagues through the Black Death of the Middle Ages. Believing that the etiology was foul-smelling bad air (miasma), doctors protected themselves by wearing dramatic head-to-toe coverings. Heavy boots, pants, long coats, gloves, and brimmed hats were made of leather sealed with animal fat. Most important was the infamous face mask with glass eye coverings and a long beak filled with aromatics intended to purify disease-causing vapors. An appreciation of droplet theory in the 19th century made beaked masks obsolete, replacing them with cloth face masks. Surgeons continued to pioneer the development of gloves and gowns, initially to protect themselves and later to protect their patients. Their outfits were worn by healthcare workers during the epidemics of the 20th century. Similar to the plague doctors, present-day physicians treating patients suffering from COVID-19 don themselves in head-to-toe protective outwear, although heavy leather and beaked-masks have long since been replaced by disposable fabrics and the N95 respirator. CONCLUSIONS: The evolution of physicians’ protective wear from the iconic beaked mask of the 17th century plague doctor to the hazmat-esque suits of the COVID-19 pandemic doctor reflects a century of substantial advancements in the detection, treatment, and containment of communicable diseases. Much of this is due to the dedicated efforts of surgeons to better safeguard their patients. Source of Funding: None © 2021 by American Urological Association Education and Research, Inc.FiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Volume 206Issue Supplement 3September 2021Page: e231-e231 Advertisement Copyright & Permissions© 2021 by American Urological Association Education and Research, Inc.MetricsAuthor Information Alexis Steinmetz More articles by this author Ronald Rabinowitz More articles by this author Expand All Advertisement Loading ...

Princess and the Plague


 
 
 Recent bioarchaeological and phylogenetic studies have identified Central Asia as an early reservoir for Yersinia pestis, the bacterium responsible for the bubonic plague in humans and animals. Lacking documentary evidence, however, historians have heretofore been unable to find a place for South, East, and Central Asia in the premodern history of the plague. This article uses Tibetan-, Chinese-, and Khotanese-language sources to tell a history of the bubonic plague in Central Asia between the seventh and ninth centuries. From official Tibetan histories, we learn of human and animal plagues at the turn of the eighth century. From the prophetic narratives of Khotan, we learn of an unnamed Chinese princess who died in Tibet with a black pox on her chest. Finally, interpreting Tibetan and Khotanese translations of an Āyurvedic medical text in light of bioarchaeological data, we can begin to retrospectively diagnose the plagues of Central Asia. More than just the documentary history of a specific plague outbreak, these sources demonstrate the variegated responses to centuries of plague in Central Asia, including narrative description, scapegoating, ritual protection, humoral diagnosis, and pharmacological and surgical therapies. The end result is an integrated account of the bubonic plague in Central Asia based on Tibetan and Khotanese explanations of epidemics.
 
 

How a microbe becomes a pandemic: a new story of the Black Death

In 2011, palaeogeneticists at McMaster University, Canada, and Tübingen University, Germany, reconstructed the genomes of Yersinia pestis, the causative organism of plague, from two 14th-century cemeteries below the centre of London.1,2 Since then, the Black Death and subsequent outbreaks of plague have been documented by additional genetic material—aDNA—retrieved from gravesites throughout Europe and southern Russia dating from the 14th to 18th centuries. One story this aDNA tells is that the most important event in plague history was not the Black Death, but something that preceded it: the Big Bang.

History of Pandemics and COVID-19: What We are Learning from this Pandemic to Be Prepared for the Next One

Since the beginning of human history, the pathogens affect the humankind. The emerge of the new outbreak of coronavirus-19 (COVID-19) is not new in the history of plagues. However, this pandemic has a huge difference from the others due to its ability to affect worldwide at the same time, which brings new perspectives to our future. In this review, we listed some of the worst epidemics and pandemics of human civilization and the new outbreak, listing the pathogens, the spread, and the consequences for mankind. Our search included articles in the main database (PubMed/Medline, Elsevier Science Direct, Scopus, Isi Web of Science, Embase, Exerpta Medica, UptoDate, Lilacs, Novel Coronavirus Resource Directory from Elsevier), in the high-impact international scientific Journals (Scimago Journal and Country Rank - SJR - and Journal Citation Reports - JCR), such as The Lancet, Science, Nature, The New England Journal of Medicine, Physiological Reviews, Journal of the American Medical Association, Plos One, Journal of Clinical Investigation, and in the data from Center for Disease Control (CDC), National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and World Health Organization (WHO). We prior selected meta-analysis, systematic reviews, article reviews, and original articles in this order. We reviewed 192 articles and used 94 from March to June 2020, using the terms coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, novel coronavirus, Wuhan coronavirus, severe acute respiratory syndrome, 2019-nCoV, 2019 novel coronavirus, n-CoV-2, COVID, n-SARS-2, COVID-19, corona virus, coronaviruses, history of pandemics and epidemics, pathogens, plagues, with the tools MeSH (Medical Subject Headings), AND, OR, and the characters [,“,; /., to ensure the best review topics. We concluded that this pandemic will change the social and economic order, as well as it is the first that affects us quickly. So, the experience of COVID-19 could teach us how to be prepared for other outbreaks in the future.

Plagues: Perceptions of Risk and Social Responses

Plagues:Perceptions of Risk and Social Responses William H. Foege (bio) polybius taught us, over 2000 years ago, that the world is an organic whole,1 where everything affects everything. Plagues demonstrate that truth—crossing cultures, crossing time, but also joining cultures and time inextricably, influencing the births and deaths of people, careers, and nations. Indeed, in a recently overworked phrase, "plagues bend history." Perhaps rivaling the Black Death, which has received so much attention, was the pandemic of cholera which broke the boundaries of India in the early nineteenth century, moved across Russia by 1830, caused havoc at Mecca in 1831, moved across Europe in 1831 and 1832, arrived in the United States and went by canal boat to Albany and then to the Missouri River by 1833, where it became the determining factor for many wagon trains over the next years. In 1835, Marcus Whitman, the first medical missionary to the American west, made his initial journey to Oregon and was credited with saving a wagon train by stopping a cholera outbreak.2 That epidemic allowed him to earn his reputation and start a career. Twelve years later, another epidemic, this one of measles, led to the Whitman Mission massacre, ending his career and the lives of the mission personnel.3 The Whitman Mission story becomes a paradigm for what has happened across cultures and nations. In the early eighteenth century, British troops began to receive variolation with smallpox virus, after Lady Montagu introduced the practice she had observed in Turkey, [End Page 305] where her husband was ambassador.4 Fifty years later, the battle of Quebec, where American troops outnumbered the British two to one, was lost by American troops when smallpox swept through their ranks but spared the British troops who had been variolated. (Some Canadians to this day worship smallpox as the deliverer from United States citizenship.) In 1801, Thomas Jefferson acquired smallpox vaccine and personally administered it to his family and neighbors at Monticello. In 1804, he gave vaccine to Lewis and Clark, instructing them to administer it to Indians because of their high mortality rates due to smallpox. But it was too little and smallpox opened the west, decimating tribes and breaking their spirit. DeVoto writes about the 1837 outbreak, "All summer long not a single Indian came to Fort McKenzie. … Early in the fall Culbertson set out to … find out what was wrong. … Then at the Three Forks he found a village. No sound came from it as he approached, there were no horses or dogs, no children, no uproar. Presently they smelled the stench and then 'hundreds of decaying forms of human beings … lay scattered everywhere among the lodges.'"5 On July 14 a young Mandan died of smallpox. Six months later only a hundred of the 1600 Mandans were still alive and no tribal organization could be maintained. There are no full-blooded Mandans today. What lessons have we learned from this continuous flow of plague history? Are we truly better off because of what has happened upstream, or do the problems continue to change so dramatically that the lessons are only marginally beneficial? In this first session, we can only touch on some of the lessons of plague history. My attempts will be modest—to say something about: (a). the definition of plagues (b). the perception of risk (c). responses [End Page 306] DEFINITION The definition of plague offered by the 1986 Webster Medical Desk Dictionary, describing plague as an epidemic disease causing a high rate of mortality, is inadequate for several reasons. Epidemiologists now commonly use the term epidemic to describe an unusual occurrence of a disease or condition. Thus, while a single case of smallpox would constitute an epidemic, the million cases of gonorrhea each year in the United States would be considered an endemic disease but not necessarily an epidemic. Therefore, two problems with Webster's definition of the term are particularly significant. First, plagues do not have to be epidemic: a plague can be endemic, a constant presence. Second, mortality rates should not be the criterion for measurement. In describing one plague, the Old Testament notes the presence of fiery serpents, now known to be...

English

Murine (endemic) typhus is a flea-borne infectious disease caused by Rickettsia typhi. The disease transmission cycle has similarities to that of Yersinia pestis causing plague. It is hypothesized that murine typhus is prevalent in areas with plague transmission. This study aims at detection of R. typhi in rodent fleas by conventional polymerase chain reaction (PCR). A cross sectional study was carried out in Mbulu district in villages with, and without previous history of plague from November 2018 to February 2019. Sherman® traps were set in forest and agricultural habitats while box traps were set inside houses. Captured rodents were anaesthetized using halothane and fleas were removed from the fur using a hard brush and preserved in 70% ethanol. PCR amplification of the targeted citrate synthase (gltA) gene of R. typhi was done using primers RpCS.877p and RpCS.1258n. 12 (24%) of the DNA from rodent fleas was positive for R. typhi. Of these, 5 (10%) and 2 (4%) were from farms and forests with previous plague history respectively, while 3 (6%) and 2 (4%) were from houses and farms with no previous plague history, respectively. This suggests the prevalence of murine typhus is independent of plague infections. Key words: Polymerase chain reaction (PCR), plague, prevalence, Rickettsia typhi, rodents.

Pandemics and Asymmetric Shocks: Evidence from the History of Plague in Europe and the Mediterranean

The history of plague suggests that severe pandemics can have extremely important and potentially permanent asymmetric economic consequences. However, these consequences depend upon the initial con...

The Dramaturgy of Epidemics.

My essay focuses on Charles Rosenberg's provocative and enduring ideal type of epidemic drama in three acts, which he assembled from a vast knowledge of disease history that stretched from the end of the seventeenth century to his then-present pandemic, HIV/AIDS of the 1980s. Reaching back to the Plague of Athens, my essay elaborates on Rosenberg's dramaturgy by questioning whether blame, division, and collective violence were so universal or even the dominant "acts" of epidemics not only before the nineteenth century but to the present. Instead, with certain pandemics such as yellow fever in the Deep South or the Great Influenza of 1918-20, unity, mass volunteerism, and self-abnegation played leading roles. Finally, not all epidemics ended "with a whimper" as attested by the long early modern history of plague. These often concluded literally with a bang: lavish planning of festivals of thanksgiving, choreographed with processions, innumerable banners, commissions of paintings, ex-voto churches, trumpets, tambourines, artillery fire, and fireworks.

The Under-Appreciated Rodent: Harbingers of Plague From the Middle Ages to the Twenty-First Century

The history of the rat and the wider rodent family in relation to bubonic plague suggests multiple ways in which different research disciplines can contribute to the understanding of mortality, morbidity, and epidemics in the past: For instance, demographic approaches can can clarify long-term trends in, and disruptions to, patterns of mortality; the study of psychological responses to disease since 1850 can lend insights into past disease behaviors; and archaeological discoveries and the still-developing technology of ancient dna analysis can help in the determination of causes and effects. As the link between the black rat and bubonic plague shows, without the collaboration of interdisciplinary methods, our understanding would surely suffer. The history of plague and the Black Death encompasses far more than the involvement of rats, but the enduring sylvatic reservoirs of plague infection that the rats and their many rodent cousins constituted in the past, and still constitute, should not be blithely discounted.

Linking European building activity with plague history

Variations in building activity reflect demographic, economic and social change during history. Tens of thousands of wooden constructions in Europe have been dendrochronologically dated in recent decades. We use the annually precise evidence from a unique dataset of 49 640 tree felling dates of historical constructions to reconstruct temporal changes in building activity between 1250 and 1699 CE across a large part of western and central Europe largely corresponding to the former Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. Comparison with annual records of 9772 plague outbreaks shows that construction activity was significantly negatively correlated to the number of plague outbreaks, with the greatest decrease in construction following the larger outbreaks by three to four years after the start of the epidemics. Preceding the Black Death (1346–1353 CE) by five decades and the Great Famine (1315–1322 CE) by two decades, a significant decline in construction activity at c. 1300 CE is indicative of a societal crisis, associated with population stagnation or decline. Another dramatic decline in building activity coincides with the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648 CE) and confirms the devastating nature of this conflict. While construction activity was significantly lower during periods of high grain prices, no statistically robust relationship between the number of felling dates and past temperature or hydroclimate variations is found. This study demonstrates the value of dendrochronological felling dates as an indicator for times of crisis and prosperity during periods when documentary evidence is limited.

Climate change and plague history in Europe

Previous research that reported the linkage between climate change and plague activity primarily refers to the immediate effect of short-term climatic variation. Yet, decades of discussion about the climate-plague association cannot determine the precise role of climate in shaping plague dynamics. One reason for this discrepancy originates from the narrow selection of spatio-temporal settings for comprehensive analysis of the correlation, leading to a limited consideration of the complexity of possible dynamics. By analyzing a 414-year long record of plague outbreak in pre-industrial Europe and the corresponding climatic data in multi-scale, we find little evidence to support climate-plague correlation in (1) both climatic variations and large-scale climatic phenomena, (2) both country scale and continental scale, (3) annual to inter-annual scale, and (4) both linear and non-linear analytic approaches. The null-result should not be viewed as a general rejection of other recent findings related to climate-plague association; nevertheless, it suggests that a wider consideration of scales, sensitivity checks and consideration of contexts should be included in explaining and predicting plague transmission under contemporary global climate conditions.

Review and reflection of the research of history of plague in modern China in recent 25 years

Influenced by the research on history of disease abroad, the research on the history of plague in modern China began in 1989. For the recent 25 years, the related researches on plague mainly took place in Guangzhou, Hong Kong, the Northeast and Shanxi, supplemented by other places, showing its clear regional characteristic, with diversified research views, methods and application of materials. As an important content of research on disease history, the research of history of plague in modern China revealed obvious defects, viz. mainly traditional and one-way or linear research, reflecting the research was still at the borderland. Of late years, some scholars began to break through the limitation of traditional historical concept and method, and try to apply the interdisciplinary view for widening the research scope. With the promotion of this academic concept, the research of plague history began " to regard history by a bottom-up approach" , and paid more attention to the living space.

Genetic variation at the MHC DRB1 locus is similar across Gunnison's prairie dog (Cynomys gunnisoni) colonies regardless of plague history.

Yersinia pestis was introduced to North America around 1900 and leads to nearly 100% mortality in prairie dog (Cynomys spp.) colonies during epizootic events, which suggests this pathogen may exert a strong selective force. We characterized genetic diversity at an MHC class II locus (DRB1) in Gunnison's prairie dog (C. gunnisoni) and quantified population genetic structure at the DRB1 versus 12 microsatellite loci in three large Arizona colonies. Two colonies, Seligman (SE) and Espee Ranch (ES), have experienced multiple plague‐related die‐offs in recent years, whereas plague has never been documented at Aubrey Valley (AV). We found fairly low allelic diversity at the DRB1 locus, with one allele (DRB1*01) at high frequency (0.67–0.87) in all colonies. Two other DRB1 alleles appear to be trans‐species polymorphisms shared with the black‐tailed prairie dog (C. ludovicianus), indicating that these alleles have been maintained across evolutionary time frames. Estimates of genetic differentiation were generally lower at the MHC locus (F ST = 0.033) than at microsatellite markers (F ST = 0.098). The reduced differentiation at DRB1 may indicate that selection has been important for shaping variation at MHC loci, regardless of the presence or absence of plague in recent decades. However, genetic drift has probably also influenced the DRB1 locus because its level of differentiation was not different from that of microsatellites in an F ST outlier analysis. We then compared specific MHC alleles to plague survivorship in 60 C. gunnisoni that had been experimentally infected with Y. pestis. We found that survival was greater in individuals that carried at least one copy of the most common allele (DRB1*01) compared to those that did not (60% vs. 20%). Although the sample sizes of these two groups were unbalanced, this result suggests the possibility that this MHC class II locus, or a nearby linked gene, could play a role in plague survival.