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Plague: A Disease Which Changed the Path of Human Civilization

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Yersinia pestis: Retrospective and Perspective

Part of the book series: Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology ((AEMB,volume 918))

Abstract

Plague caused by Yersinia pestis is a zoonotic infection, i.e., it is maintained in wildlife by animal reservoirs and on occasion spills over into human populations, causing outbreaks of different entities. Large epidemics of plague, which have had significant demographic, social, and economic consequences, have been recorded in Western European historical documents since the sixth century. Plague has remained in Europe for over 1400 years, intermittently disappearing, yet it is not clear if there were reservoirs for Y. pestis in Western Europe or if the pathogen was rather reimported on different occasions from Asian reservoirs by human agency. The latter hypothesis thus far seems to be the most plausible one, as it is sustained by both ecological and climatological evidence, helping to interpret the phylogeny of this bacterium.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Among the monuments recalling plague, we can mention Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome, which was originally the mausoleum of Hadrian and was converted into a castle at the beginning of the fourteenth century. Legend holds that the Archangel Michael appeared atop the mausoleum in 590 CE, sheathing his sword as a sign of the end of the plague in Rome. Other monuments of note include five plague churches in Venice, erected between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries as vows for deliverance from some of the 70 epidemics of plague recorded in this port to the Levant. Of particular relevance is the School and Church of San Rocco (1485–1550), decorated with paintings by Tintoretto of Saint Roch’s life. St. Roch, the Christian saint especially invoked against the plague, set out from Montpellier as a mendicant pilgrim for Rome during a poorly defined epidemic of plague in the second half of the fourteenth century. He could heal sick people in the public hospitals by prayer, the sign of the cross, and the touch of his hand. To St. Roch is devoted also the Rochuscapelle in Bingen on the Rhine, a chapel erected by the city in 1677 in thanksgiving for surviving the plague of the year before. The festival of St. Roch, which is still held there every year, was notably celebrated by Goethe (Sankt-Rochus-Fest zu Bingen, Hamburger Ausgabe, Band 10, Am 16. August 1814). Other monuments of importance include the Pestsäule of Vienna, erected by Emperor Leopold I in 1687 to celebrate the end of the epidemic, and again in Vienna, a city repeatedly ravaged by the plague, one can see the Karlskirche, built after the plague of 1713 and dedicated to the plague saint, St. Carlo Borromeo. In Florence the loggia Orsanmichele (originally housing a grain market) was transformed into a church to protect the picture of the Virgin who was claimed to have saved the city from the Black Death of 1348. Also in Florence, as a consequence of the plague which badly hit the city during the second half of the fourteenth century, the cultural period of the Rinascimento (Renaissance, from the Italian for “rebirth”) took root and spread, eventually characterizing European history of the fifteenth–seventeenth centuries.

  2. 2.

    Some examples are “to avoid or hate someone or something like the plague” (Italian idiomatic expression); “to stink like the plague” and “the choice between plague and cholera” (German idiomatic expressions); “A Sunday’s child never dies of the plague” and “He who trusts a woman and leads an ass will never be free from plague” (French proverbs); “Nothing is ever well done in a hurry, except flying from the plague or from quarrels, and catching fleas” (Italian proverb); “Plague seize the hindmost” (Latin proverb); “Lies are the plague of speech” and “Forgetfulness is the plague of knowledge” (Arabic proverbs); “A stupid friend is a greater plague than a wise enemy” (Turkish proverb); “An honest wife is a treasure that lasts, a sad wife is worse than the plague” and “A new doctor is a plague on the country” (Sicilian proverbs); “It is better to murder during time of plague” (English proverb); and “If God should listen to rooks, he should send a plague to horses” (Bulgarian proverb).

  3. 3.

    Farina, Jean-Marie (1825). Précis sur les propriétés médicales de l’Eau de Cologne. Warin-Thierry.

  4. 4.

    di Coppo Stefani, Marchionne (1903). Cronica Fiorentina. Citta di Costella: Lapi. 88 pp.

  5. 5.

    In this text, Europe is defined as a geographical entity: the northwestern peninsula of the larger landmass known as Eurasia, separated from Asia by the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, and the crest of the Caucasus Mountains.

  6. 6.

    The distinction between the second and third pandemic is relevant for the western European countries where the last epidemics of the second pandemic occurred in the eighteenth century; these include the Baltic pandemic of 1709–1713, the devastating plague of Messina in 1743, and the plague of Moscow in 1770–1771. Smaller outbreaks were recorded at, e.g., Noja and Malta, ca. 1815. In Eastern Europe there were repeated epidemics throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

  7. 7.

    Several countries in Europe have reported outbreaks of plague (see also Fig. 1.1), the first being Portugal in 1899 with the epidemic of Oporto, which likely arrived from Alexandria (Echenberg, Myron (2007). Plague ports: the global urban impact of bubonic plague, 1894–1901. New York: New York University Press. 366 pp.). Generally, the outbreaks in Europe were rapidly brought under control, with a low number of confirmed cases and deaths.

  8. 8.

    World Health Organization. WHO Report on global surveillance of epidemic-prone infectious diseases – plague [cited 2013 Apr 15]. http://www.who.int/csr/resources/publications/plague/CSR_ISR_2000_1/en/index5.html

    According to another interpretation, the third pandemic, caused by Y. pestis biovar Orientalis, ended at the middle of the last century when the WHO received notification of less than 2000–3000 human cases (during the period 1954–1997). By this interpretation, we are currently in a period of endemic plague caused by representatives of different biovars, including Orientalis (for indication about the phylogeny of current strains, see [70–72]).

  9. 9.

    http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/02/11/us-health-plague-madagascar-idUSKBN0LF1LI20150211; http://outbreaknewstoday.com/plague-death-toll-in-madagascar-reaches-63-58932/

  10. 10.

    http://www.who.int/csr/resources/publications/surveillance/WHO_CDS_CSR_ISR_2000_1/en/

  11. 11.

    Erasmus in 1526 observed: “Twenty-five years ago, nothing was more fashionable in Brabant than public baths; today there are none, the new plague has taught us to avoid them.” Cited by Ashenburg, K. (2007). The dirt on clean: an unsanitized history. New York: North Point Press.

  12. 12.

    Records of autopsies can be found even earlier, see Cohn, Samuel K., Jr. (2010). Cultures of plague: medical thinking at the end of the Renaissance. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 342 pp.

  13. 13.

    Contemporaneous descriptions might have been based on the miasma framework, but seem to have been very aware that plague was contagious through human interactions. This is according to records collected in Horrox, Rosemary (1994). The Black Death. Manchester: Manchester University Press. 364 pp.

  14. 14.

    New observations support the theory that it is not the bacteria engulfed by local macrophages that cause infection. Rather, it is the few bacteria that are freely transported to the lymph nodes within minutes after a victim is bitten which are responsible. Gonzalez R.J., Lane M.C., Wagner N.J., Weening E.H., Miller V.L. (2015). Dissemination of a highly virulent pathogen: tracking the early events that define infection. PLoS Pathogens, 11(1):e1004587.

  15. 15.

    Yersin also observed that the disease was equally carried by many other mammals, including water buffaloes.

  16. 16.

    The terms “enzootic” and “epizootic” are equivalent to nonhuman endemic and epidemic conditions, respectively.

  17. 17.

    http://www.who.int/csr/resources/publications/plague/whocdscsredc992a.pdf

  18. 18.

    A case of dog-to-human transmission of pneumonic plague was recently reported (Runfola J.K., House J., Miller L., et al. (2015). Outbreak of human pneumonic plague with dog-to-human and possible human-to-human transmission – Colorado, June–July 2014. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 64:429–434).

  19. 19.

    Records from the former USSR detail 38 plague outbreaks among camels within the period 1907–1967. http://cns.miis.edu/opapers/pdfs/130904_soviet_antiplague_pdf

  20. 20.

    P. irritans is a cosmopolitan insect with a wide host spectrum, even though its common name suggests a primary affiliation with humans.

  21. 21.

    The SOI is a standardized index calculated on sea level pressure differences between Tahiti and Australia and gives information about large-scale fluctuations in air pressure across the tropical Pacific. Abnormalities of the SST in the same part of the ocean can drive El Niño (and La Niña) episodes. El Niño (La Niña) and the Southern Oscillation (ENSO) affects weather conditions in many parts of the world by sufficient modifications of the atmosphere.

  22. 22.

    http://www.who.int/csr/disease/plague/madagascar-outbreak/en/

  23. 23.

    http://infectiousdiseases.edwardworthlibrary.ie/plague/marseilles-case-study/

  24. 24.

    This is the goal of an ERC Advanced Grant (MedPlag – The medieval plagues: ecology, transmission modalities and routes of the infections. Project No.324249), of which the authors are either members or partners (Barbara Bramanti is the PI). We would like to acknowledge the ERC for support and Samuel K. Cohn Jr., Andrey Anisimov, and Boris V. Schmid for relevant comments and suggestions. The authors are indebted to Sari C. Cunningham for her valuable improvement of the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis (CEES), Department of Biosciences, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

    Barbara Bramanti, Nils Chr. Stenseth & Xu Lei

  2. Department of Physiology, Institute of Basic Medical Sciences, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

    Lars Walløe

  3. State Key Laboratory for Infectious Disease Prevention and Control, National Institute for Communicable Disease Control and Prevention, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 102206, Changping, Beijing, People’s Republic of China

    Xu Lei

Authors
  1. Barbara Bramanti
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  2. Nils Chr. Stenseth
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  3. Lars Walløe
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  4. Xu Lei
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Barbara Bramanti .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Beijing Institute of Microbiology and Epidemiology, Beijing, China

    Ruifu Yang

  2. State Research Center for Applied Microbiology, Moscow Region, Russia

    Andrey Anisimov

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Bramanti, B., Stenseth, N.C., Walløe, L., Lei, X. (2016). Plague: A Disease Which Changed the Path of Human Civilization. In: Yang, R., Anisimov, A. (eds) Yersinia pestis: Retrospective and Perspective. Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology, vol 918. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-0890-4_1

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