Plague Outbreaks Research Articles

The final plague outbreak in Scotland 1644-1649: Historical, archaeological, and genetic evidence.

This paper has several aims: to determine if Yersinia pestis was the causative agent in the last Scottish plague outbreak in the mid-17th century; map the geographic spread of the epidemic and isolate potential contributing factors to its spread and severity; and examine funerary behaviours in the context of a serious plague epidemic in early modern Scotland. Results confirm the presence of Y. pestis in individuals associated with a mid-17th century plague pit in Aberdeen. This is the first time this pathogen has been identified in an archaeological sample from Scotland. The geographic spread of the plague from 1644 through to 1649 is generally, with some key exceptions, restricted to the central lowlands of Scotland. The role of administrative responses to the epidemic in managing its spread and distribution is unclear. Finally, normative funerary practices tended to co-exist with mass burial scenarios. In conclusion, the distribution of the epidemic is arguably a function of population density/distribution, transportation networks, and the chaos associated with the concurrent civil war. Administrative responses to the epidemic likely had a variable, albeit limited, effect in the central lowlands. More peripheral cities, such as Aberdeen, while also employing sophisticated plague prevention measures, were perhaps initially spared simply due to their distance from the central plague belt. It is unclear if a general fear of the dead and contracting the Pest from plague victims can be used to characterise mid-17th century Scottish public opinion. Mass burial appears to have been a practical approach to the logistical problems mass mortality presented, while many instances of normative burial treatment can also be seen.

Screening of promising molecules against potential drug targets in Yersinia pestis by integrative pan and subtractive genomics, docking and simulation approach.

This study focuses on Yersinia pestis, the bacterium responsible for plague, which posed a severe threat to public health in history. Despite the availability of antibiotics treatment, the emergence of antibiotic resistance in this pathogen has increased challenges of controlling the infections and plague outbreaks. The development of new drug targets and therapies is urgently needed. This research aims to identify novel protein targets from 28 Y. pestis strains by the integrative pan-genomic and subtractive genomics approach. Additionally, it seeks to screen out potential safe and effective alternative therapies against these targets via high-throughput virtual screening. Targets should lack homology to human, gut microbiota, and known human 'anti-targets', while should exhibit essentiality for pathogen's survival and virulence, druggability, antibiotic resistance, and broad spectrum across multiple pathogenic bacteria. We identified two promising targets: the aminotransferase class I/class II domain-containing protein and 3-oxoacyl-[acyl-carrier-protein] synthase 2. These proteins were modeled using AlphaFold2, validated through several structural analyses, and were subjected to molecular docking and ADMET analysis. Molecular dynamics simulations determined the stability of the ligand-target complexes, providing potential therapeutic options against Y. pestis.

The Need for Historical Fluency in Pandemic Law and Policy.

The primary claim of this essay is that historical fluency is required for effective work in crafting legal and policy interventions as a part of public health emergency preparedness and response (PHEPR). At a broad level, public health law is explicitly recognized as a key systems-level component of PHEPR practice.1 This essay therefore focuses on the extent to which historical fluency is necessary or at least useful to all aspects of PHEPR that draw on or deploy legal and policy mechanisms (e.g., design, planning, implementation, dissemination, monitoring and evaluation, etc.). The essay collectively refers to these legal and policy mechanisms as epidemic law and policy response (ELAPR). Part I explains the concept of historical fluency. Part II explores the foundations of public health law both as a way of highlighting key structural features of ELAPR and in supporting the claim that historical fluency is critical for ELAPR. Part III applies the previous arguments to a specific case study to highlight the promise and power of historical fluency - the outbreak of bubonic plague in San Francisco in 1900. Tracking this essay's pragmatic focus, part IV offers several recommendations for how specifically historical fluency in public health law and ethics can be operationalized in PHEPR practice and policy. Part V summarizes and concludes.

Ecologic, Geoclimatic, and Genomic Factors Modulating Plague Epidemics in Primary Natural Focus, Brazil.

Plague is a deadly zoonosis that still poses a threat in many regions of the world. We combined epidemiologic, host, and vector surveillance data collected during 1961-1980 from the Araripe Plateau focus in northeastern Brazil with ecologic, geoclimatic, and Yersinia pestis genomic information to elucidate how these factors interplay in plague activity. We identified well-delimited plague hotspots showing elevated plague risk in low-altitude areas near the foothills of the plateau's concave sectors. Those locations exhibited distinct precipitation and vegetation coverage patterns compared with the surrounding areas. We noted a seasonal effect on plague activity, and human cases linearly correlated with precipitation and rodent and flea Y. pestis positivity rates. Genomic characterization of Y. pestis strains revealed a foundational strain capable of evolving into distinct genetic variants, each linked to temporally and spatially constrained plague outbreaks. These data could identify risk areas and improve surveillance in other plague foci within the Caatinga biome.

Well supplied in life, set aside in death: A multi-isotope study of Justinian plague victims from Saint-Doulchard (France, 7th-8th centuries AD).

Justinian plague and its subsequent outbreaks were major events influencing Early Medieval Europe. One of the affected communities was the population of Saint-Doulchard in France, where plague victim burials were concentrated in a cemetery enclosure ditch. This study aimed to obtain more information about their life-histories using the tools of isotope analysis. Dietary analysis using carbon and nitrogen isotopes was conducted on 97 individuals buried at Le Pressoir in Saint-Doulchard, with 36 of those originating from the enclosure ditch. This sample set includes all individuals analyzed for plague DNA in a previous study. Mobility analysis using strontium isotope analysis supplements the dietary study, with 47 analyzed humans. The results are supported by a reference sample set of 31 animal specimens for dietary analysis and 9 for mobility analysis. The dietary analysis results showed significantly different dietary behavior in individuals from the ditch burials, with better access to higher quality foods richer in animal protein. 87Sr/86Sr ratios are similar for both studied groups and indicate a shared or similar area of origin. The results suggest that the ditch burials contain an urban population from the nearby city of Bourges, which overall had a better diet than the rural population from Saint-Doulchard. It is implied that city's population might have been subjected to high mortality rates during the plague outbreak(s), which led to their interment in nearby rural cemeteries.

‘Imitate the Motions of Those that are Infected’: Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost in Margaret Cavendish’s The Convent of Pleasure

Abstract Despite a Restoration vogue for adapted—or ‘improved’—productions of Shakespeare’s plays, Love’s Labour’s Lost (c.1594) fell out of the theatrical repertoire after 1660. The play’s immediate afterlife exists solely in Margaret Cavendish’s inversion of the play in her closet drama The Convent of Pleasure (1668). This essay argues that both plays respond to the virulent plague outbreaks which immediately preceded them in their depiction of single-sex cloistering, and engage with contemporaneous debates around the efficacy of household quarantine as a public health response. Love’s Labour’s Lost offers a complicated defence of public theatre in the face of quarantine restrictions which saw the playhouses forcibly closed for 11 months. Convent repurposes Shakespeare’s portrayal of infection risk in a public theatre for the closet environment. But transferring a play predicated upon the fear of contagious bodies from the commercial stage to the ‘Stage of Imagination’ has potentially dangerous consequences for its readers. Cavendish’s vitalist materialism renders the recreation of the public stage within the mind an act of potential self-harm. Yet Cavendish’s adaptation of a Shakespearean play preoccupied with plague allows her to think through her own theory of imitation as the driving force behind both contagion and sympathetic inclination.

Соціотопографія Вільнюса в XVII–XVIII ст.: основні особливості та напрямки розвитку

The article summarises the characteristics of the development of the Vilnius community in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, regarding the context of historical events between the 17th and 18th centuries. The summary is part of a scientific project carried out between 2018 and 2021, based on a research of real estate registers and lists of taxes collected by the magistrate. The research used a statistical method, a spatial relational database and the structured query language (SQL) as well as Python programming language libraries NumPy and Pandas for managing and analysing big data. A detailed description of the study and its results can be found in the collective monograph published in 2021. Based on these sources, the value of real estate in different districts of Vilnius, spatial distribution, size and function of the buildings as well as the distribution of their owners in the city between first half of the 17th and the end of the 18th century were analysed. It was determined that frequent large fires were causing the biggest changes to the spatial structure of Vilnius. The greatest changes in demography and sociotopography were recorded after the occupation of Vilnius by the Moscow army between 1655 and 1661 and plague outbreaks in 1657 and between 1709 and 1710. During these times, the city has lost between 30 and 50 percent of its population. As a result, the mediaeval spatial structure of the old city gradually disappeared and its current appearance was formed with large, almost completely built-up plots of land, elite residences and dominant brick architecture of the Baroque style. The social structure has been partially changed. Poor townspeople and some artisans moved from the city centre to the suburbs. In the fortified centre, most real estate passed from the hands of ordinary citizens to wealthy individuals and organisations, who often acquired entire groups of empty land areas. However, some characteristics of the sociotopography of the 16th and first half of the 17th centuries remained unchanged, including the locations of some areas where social groups were living.

Prevalence of the crayfish plague pathogen in red swamp crayfish populations in western France: How serious is the risk for the native white-clawed crayfish?

The crayfish plague pathogen Aphanomyces astaci has been implicated in a number of mass mortalities and irreversible population declines of native crayfish across Europe. At present, the reservoirs of the pathogen in Europe are mainly populations of invasive North American crayfish species. In southwestern Europe, including France, a particularly widespread invader is the red swamp crayfish Procambarus clarkii. Recent distribution data confirm that P. clarkii is present in at least 75 French departments, i.e. more than 78% of those in metropolitan France. We analysed the prevalence and pathogen load of A. astaci in 42 populations of this species in western France (Nouvelle Aquitaine region), where the species is most densely distributed, particularly in a wide range of environments around the Gironde estuary. The pathogen was detected by two different quantitative PCR assays in more than three quarters of the populations studied (34 out of 42); 163 out of 480 analysed crayfish individuals tested positive for the presence of A. astaci. In most cases, individual infection levels were very low, detectable with quantitative PCR but not sufficient for pathogen genotyping. In seven P. clarkii individuals from four populations, however, we were able to assess A. astaci variation by microsatellite markers and sequencing of mitochondrial markers. All these host specimens carried A. astaci genotype group D, haplotype d1, which has caused the majority of crayfish plague outbreaks in neighbouring Spain. In contrast, the French outbreaks genotyped to date (including eight newly analysed in this study) were mostly caused by strains of genotype group B, specific to the signal crayfish Pacifastacus leniusculus. Haplotype d1 found in P. clarkii was involved in one of the newly characterised outbreaks. Our study confirms that P. clarkii is a potentially important reservoir of the crayfish plague pathogen in France, but not the main source of the pathogen in mass mortalities of A. pallipes, probably due to different ecological requirements of the different invasive host crayfish. However, as P. clarkii continues to spread, the threat posed by this species to native crayfish is likely to increase.

Segregation and plague: King William's Town and the plague outbreaks of 1900-1907

Studies in the history of bubonic plague in Cape Town and Port Elizabeth revealed the close connection between the Victorian obsession with sanitation and the development of urban segregation in South Africa. The response of the medical officials and local authorities in the cities was mirrored in King William's Town, where racial prejudges were compounded by the Town Council's incompetence and reluctance to incur any expenditure from its own coffers.

Plague and local response in North China, 1900-28.

Breakthroughs in international biomedical science circa 1900 meant that plague could be contained through strict quarantine regulations. These measures were successfully deployed with help from local governments during outbreaks of pneumonic plague in Manchuria (1910-11), Shanxi (1918), and elsewhere in North China. This containment shows the effectiveness of uniting international knowledge and local cooperation in disaster response. Yet, in later outbreaks in similar locations, control measures identical to those instituted a decade earlier were rejected, and plague spread largely unchecked. Historical case studies of the control and spread of infectious disease in North China reveal the complexities of the relationship between global knowledge and its broader, local integration, variation in what constitutes effective 'local' cooperation in adopting international knowledge, and the paramount importance of the locality to the landscape of disaster response. History can reveal critical issues in localisation of disaster response still salient today.

The Figure of the Staggering Rat: Reading Colonial Outbreak Narratives Against the Grain of "Virus Hunting".

The image of dazed, plague-infected rats coming out of their nests and performing a pirouette in front of the surprised eyes of humans before dying is one well-known to us through Albert Camus's The Plague (1947). This article examines the historical roots of this image and its emergence in French missionary narratives about plague outbreaks in the Chinese province of Yunnan in the 1870s on the eve of the Third Plague Pandemic. Showing that accounts of the "staggering rat" were not meant as naturalist observations of a zoonotic disease, as is generally assumed by historians, but as a cosmological, end-of-the-world narrative with a colonial agenda, the article argues for an approach to historical accounts of epidemics that does not succumb to the current trend of "virus hunting" in the archive, but rather takes colonial outbreak narratives ethnographically seriously.

Plague and the Mongol conquest of Baghdad (1258)? A reevaluation of the sources.

This paper reexamines the sources used by N. Fancy and M.H. Green in "Plague and the Fall of Baghdad (1258)" (Medical History, 65/2 (2021), 157-177). Fancy and Green argued that the Arabic and Persian descriptions of the Mongol sieges in Iran and Iraq, and in particular, in the conquest of Baghdad in 1258, indicate that the besieged fortresses and cities were struck by Plague after the Mongol sieges were lifted. This, they suggested, is part of a recurrent pattern of the outbreak of Plague transmitted by the Mongol expansion across Eurasia. Fancy and Green concluded that the primary sources substantiate the theory driven by recent paleogenetic studies indicating that the Mongol conquests of the thirteenth century set the stage for the massive pandemic of the mid-fourteenth century. The link between the Plague outbreak and the Mongol siege of Baghdad relies on three near-contemporaneous historical accounts. However, our re-examination of the sources shows that the main text (in Persian) has been significantly misunderstood, and that the two other texts (in Syriac and Arabic) have been mis-contextualized, and thus not understood properly. They do not support the authors' claim regarding Plague epidemic in Baghdad in 1258, nor do other contemporary and later Arabic texts from Syria and Egypt adduced by them, which we re-examine in detail here. We conclude that there is no evidence for the appearance of Plague during or immediately after the Mongol conquests in the Middle East, certainly not for its transmission by the Mongols.

PANDEMIC POETRY AND SURVIVOR COMPLEX IN REMI RAJI’S WANDERER CANTOS (2021)

Historical occurrences have always been one of the sources that critics have linked with the inspiration and composition of literary writings. Like their other counterparts in the world, Nigerian artists have been inspired immensely by historical occurrences which are sourced from oral history or tangible experiences of the nation and the world. The experiences that have been mirrored in global art, however, had remained localised until the outbreak of the coronavirus plague in 2019. For the first time after a long time, historical experiences coincide in literary writings across the world on account of the covid-19 surge. This paper takes a critical look at Remi Raji’s latest poetry collection, Wanderer Cantos (2021), with a particular focus on his covid-19 section - “Coronavirus Cantos and Monologues: My Life in the Bush of Impossible Virus”. The inquiry into Remi Raji, regarded as a third generation Nigeria poet, engages with the evolutionary trends in modern Nigerian poetry After noting that Remi Raji’s covid-19 compositions are different from others because of his personal experience as a victim of the virus, the paper points out how the poet has used his encounter to meditate on the social trauma that beclouded his space and the world during the lockdown. The aggregation of the personal, domestic and universal experiences mirrored by the poet in the isolated verses, leads to a conclusion that emphasises common humanity as the thrust of Remi Raji’s covid-19 intervention but also exposes to re-interrogation settled theorising such as the postcolonial.

Plague, Religion and Urban Space in Sixteenth-Century Antwerp.

Antwerp's response to the outbreak of plague in the 1570s offers new insights into the effects of epidemics on urban communities in relation to their religious, economic, and spatial fabric. Antwerp's transition from a Catholic to Calvinist government in 1577, and back to Catholicism in 1585, allows us to study its reaction to and the effects of plague across religious boundaries within a short time span. Using GIS, we have compared various rich datasets concerning plague: the register of houses locked in quarantine; the health certificates issued by authorities; plague fatalities recorded in St. Jacob's parish; a wide range of urban regulations; and information about the size of households, their composition, rents and real estate values in Antwerp. Combined analysis shows that Catholics and Protestants, whose houses were concentrated in different city districts and who had distinct professional and economic profiles, experienced plague quite differently, both physically and spiritually.

High genetic diversity of the himalayan marmot relative to plague outbreaks in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, China

Plague, as an ancient zoonotic disease caused by Yersinia pestis, has brought great disasters. The natural plague focus of Marmota himalayana in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is the largest, which has been constantly active and the leading source of human plague in China for decades. Understanding the population genetics of M. himalayana and relating that information to the biogeographic distribution of Yersinia pestis and plague outbreaks are greatly beneficial for the knowledge of plague spillover and arecrucial for pandemic prevention. In the present research, we assessed the population genetics of M. himalayana. We carried out a comparative study of plague outbreaks and the population genetics of M. himalayana on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. We found that M. himalayana populations are divided into two main clusters located in the south and north of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. Fourteen DFR genomovars of Y. pestis were found and exhibited a significant region-specific distribution. Additionally, the increased genetic diversity of plague hosts is positively associated with human plague outbreaks. This insight gained can improve our understanding of biodiversity for pathogen spillover and provide municipally directed targets for One Health surveillance development, which will be an informative next step toward increased monitoring of M. himalayana dynamics.

Demographic Systems of Medieval Italy (6th–15th century AD)

AbstractIn this article, we bring together a variety of studies, both old and new, to examine continuity and change in population dynamics in Italy during the medieval millennium (476–1492 AD). Though the available data are often sporadic and should be interpreted with great caution, it is possible to clarify certain dynamics, which can be useful for guiding future research. First, population fluctuations were not impacted by migration into or out of Italy. Second, medieval Italy was characterized by a high‐pressure demographic regime: e0 was around 20 years, with high adult mortality, and the birth rate was around 50 per mill. Third, despite high mortality, the Italian population grew (+50 percent) from the ninth century to 1347, mainly—but not exclusively—due to the absence of plague. Fourth, the stagnant population of the periods between the sixth and the eighth centuries and the 14th and 16th centuries was determined by the recurrent outbreaks of plague. Fifth, the population stagnation during the first and the last medieval centuries is also partly related to the increase in age at first marriage, while the demographic growth between the ninth and mid‐14th century is possibly connected to the decrease in age at first marriage among women. Sixth, the vitality of the medieval Italian population was partly ensured by a high rate of remarriage among widows. Seventh, data on statures show that mortality levels were determined by epidemic factors, rather than living standards. Finally, when the plague ceased in Europe in the middle of the Early Modern Age, adult survival was significantly higher than in the ancient and medieval centuries, despite the fact that neither hygienic‐sanitary nor epidemiological conditions, and certainly not nutrition, were better than in the centuries preceding the Black Death.

The Pen Behind the Pathogen: Yersinia pestis and the Lombard Conquest in Paul the Deacon's Historia Langobardorum

Abstract: Paul the Deacon's Historia Langobardorum has long underpinned histories of the First Pandemic in Italy, with the text's narrative account of a plague outbreak in Liguria, Venetia, and greater Italy typically dated to 565. The following pages examine the modern and premodern treatment of the Ligurian Plague, highlighting the problems with and debates about its date, reconsidering its murky origins in Paul's writing, and reframing it as an editorially complex account of disease. A thematic and structural analysis of Paul's text alongside those of other key western Mediterranean plague narrators—namely, Gregory of Tours and Gregory the Great—suggests this Historia Langobardorum plague passage was neither wholly original nor based on detailed accounts from northern Italy. Instead, it was a product of the geography of Paul's narrative and his wider attempt to rehabilitate the history of the Lombard conquest, resulting in an apocalyptically-tinged report of mid-sixth-century plague that is both geographically and chronologically unreliable. In calling into question popular claims about the Ligurian Plague's geography and chronology, this microstudy offers a novel method of interrogating late antique plague texts and further elucidates Paul's process as a narrator of Lombard and Italian history.

An Analysis and Research on Ways to Enhance the Identification of Traditional Chinese Culture in the Context of Cross-Cultural Communication

Any nation can only establish cultural self-confidence and national self-confidence by scrupulously abiding by its own cultural identity. A nation without cultural identity and cultural self-confidence is difficult to survive and develop in the increasingly fierce international competition. Cultivating and establishing cultural identity and cultural self-confidence is the cornerstone of a nation's development and progress. At present, we are facing a crisis of Chinese traditional cultural identity. In the current cross-cultural communication context, it is our urgent task to speed up the establishment of the Chinese traditional cultural identity. There are two ways to enhance the Chinese traditional cultural identity. Most of the epidemics from the 19th century to the 20th century were caused by the health environment, such as plague, cholera, and smallpox. To this end, Macau promulgated a series of environmental improvement systems, such as the "Urban Improvement Report" in 1883, the "Epidemic Prevention Regulations" and the "Epidemic Prevention Regulations" in 1894, and the later improved "New Epidemic Prevention Regulations". A series of measures to improve the sanitation environment, such as streets, rebuilding old houses, building new toilets, cleaning houses, cleaning sewers and planting plants to improve climate and air. In addition, in response to the characteristics of different epidemics, corresponding environmental control measures have been made, such as installing rodent-proof siphons at sewers during the plague outbreak.

Public Health in Private

ABSTRACT Elite women seized the public health campaign during the 1900 plague outbreak to assert political influence and advocate for sanitation reform grounded in their domestic experiences. These women advocated for their inclusion in the political sphere by valuing their domestic experiences as knowledge relevant for public health initiatives. This reframing of experience positioned them as viable citizens in the imminent Federation. Applying Laura Zanotti's concept of relational ontology, this analysis frames their actions as not simply a battle against institutional authority but as careful and strategic interactions with their era's political context, exploiting aspects of it that were beneficial to them. Their ambivalent involvement in the public health campaign illustrates a complex chapter in Australian medical history. Women used the opportunity of plague to reevaluate their experience of the home as a form of knowledge relevant to public health. At the same time, they leveraged their growing status as political subjects to oppress others.

Public Health and Political Governance

Abstract In the light of the Covid-19 pandemic, its mutations, concealment by people and the resistance to vaccines against it, it is relevant to examine the outbreak of bubonic plague in colonial Lagos during the early twentieth century and the response by the British colonial authorities. The methodology applied to this study is historical, drawing information from medical, sanitary, land use and physical planning documents accessed from various archives as well as some secondary sources. It is clear that the colonial government’s housing and public health regulations, which allowed authorities to inspect people’s homes for cases of infectious disease, drove people to escape into the hinterland, increasing the spread of the plague. Consequently, the colonial authorities carried out a massive structural and physical reorganisation of towns and villages. They also embarked on large-scale land reclamation, decongested overcrowded houses and introduced sanitary measures to make the environment more habitable. This paper argues that through effective political governance structures the colonial government strategically eliminated the bubonic plague in Lagos.