I saw a show last night that claimed Black Death was not bubonic plague. Based on the symptoms, the pattern of how it spread, the (claimed) fact that there were no reports of large numbers of dead rats appearing before or during the outbreaks, and that the rats in question are known (claimed) not to like traveling across open country, the show concluded that Black Death was actually an unknown form of hemorrhagic fever.
What’s the straight dope?
The Plague - that is, pestis, comes in two forms: bubonic and pneumonic.
Bubonic plague features high fever and buboes (hence the name “bubonic”) which are grostequely infected and swollen lymph nodes, but does not affect the lungs appreciably. Usually spread by infected flea bites, from fleas that normally inhabit rats but will happily flee to humans if massive numbers of rats die off.
Pneumoic plague is caused by the same bacteria but this time infecting the lungs. It, too, features high fevers and sometimes swollen lymph nodes but one of the key features of pneumonic plague is the coughing up of highly infectious bloody sputum. This can spread human-to-human without fleas or rats, and if humans can cross open ground they can easily bring this along with themselves.
Both forms of pestis can cause hemmoraghing, although if I recall it’s more likely to occur with the pneumoic form. Sub-dermal bleeding can result in a darkening or blacking of the skin, hence “Black Death”. Because severe infection can interefere with blood clotting you can get features of hemmorhagic fevers, again, more likely with the pneumoic form.
So, no, it probably wasn’t the bubonic plague but it certainly could have been the same bacterium in it’s pneumonic manifestation, and while it could have been an unknown pathogen the pestis one does fit the bill as well so I’m not sure we should be compelled to discount pestis without more evidence.
Johnny. How about putting a name to the show you watched.
I agree. I consider most of what I see on these documentaries to be highly suspect.
One bit of evidence they used to support their theory is the spread of the disease in one small town. According to death records (the guy who owned the land kept records of his tenants, and how much they woed him when they died) the disease seemed to spread – in this town – among familial lines. A contemporary document by a doctor claimed that even touching the infected person would pass the disease along to the person doing the touching. So that may indicate an ebola-like infection (yes, I’m aware that there are people who care for ebola victims who are not infected) that spreads among caregivers instead of by vectors carried by rats that (presumably) would roam randomly.
They also said something about rat fleas vs. human fleas. I don’t recall that bit. Something like: rat fleas take up the pestis bacteria and it clogs their innards until they explode, while the bacteria would not have that effect on human fleas. I remember something about human fleas being able to pass on the infection if they had infected blood on their proboscises and if they bit another human within three hours. As I said, I don’t remember the reasoning here; but they seemed to be saying that (whatever the reasoning) this would make the disease more difficult to spread as rapidly as it did. (London to Scotland in several months.)
I wonder if there is viable DNA in 700-year-old corpses, so that they can determin if the deaths were caused by pestis, another bacterium, or a virus?
Return of the Black Death, on the Discovery Channel.
I saw it too.
Johnny, it seemed to me that they didn’t even take into account that Pneumonic Plague also was part of the Black Death. They focused only on Bubonic, and it seemed to me that Bubonic could turn into Pneumonic, thus beginning a whole new stage of infection.
There is also Septecemic Plague, when it get’s into the bloodstream. Oddly, no one mentioned this either.
They also didn’t seem to consider other factors: like the very bad winters they’d been having during the 1300s, prior flu epidemics, bad nutrition, bad hygiene etc. would ultimately effect how fast the plague spread through Europe.
I’m not saying that there might have been other causes, I’m just saying that the “experts” they featured on the special really seemed to be grasping at straws.
Well, I can’t pretend to give the whole story, but “The Black Death” is a blanket term for a patchwork of epidemics at different times and places over a period ranging from over a decade to centuries depending on the historian and their primary focus. It wasn’t a monolithic front advancing across Europe.
Many of the outbreaks, at least displayed classic bubonic symptoms , as reported in medical accounts of the time. Could some be hemorrhagic fever? Yes – but it would take a lot more proof to raise that above mere possibility.
If the primary focus of the documentary was indeed that the plague couldn’t have spread from village to village without waves of scurrying rats (etc.) then it is deeply flawed. We’ve seen the plague spread, even in the 20th century.
Rats may have been important to the spread of the plague in urban centers, but they are not the primary vectors of either infection or geographic spread. The plague was actaully spread more by fleas and humans. Though the plague EPIDEMICS are often, perhaps rightfully, blamed on public sanitation, the plague itself was spread from community to community by fleas and men. They two are almost inseparable: in that era even royalty might have fleas. Many outbreaks were traced (rightly or wrongly, according to the testimony of those who were there) to specific individuals or travel parties.
Certainly infected or flea-infested humans were seeen “scurrying like rats” across the countryside from infected communities, carrying flea infested hides, clothing, beddings, and other possessions with them by the sack- and cartload. Is there any doubt that man carried the plague to England in his ships? Or do we really need to find accounts of waves of rats swimming the Channel?
Further, the bubonic plague can take other forms, like a pneumonic (airborne) form or phase if the infection proceeds to the lungs rather than consolidating in foci in the lymph nodes (I do not know the exact physiologic mechanism of the difference, but I believe the mode of infection is most important: if you get it by inhaling the bacteria, you are more likely to get the pneumonic form, while a infected flea bite tothe extremities is more likely to cause the bubonic form)
While some viral hemorrhagic fevers are more virulent and infectious than the bacterium Yertsina pestis that causes plague, almost any major mode of spread that you envision for your viral fever works for the plague as well.
Tracked it down. Return Of The Black Death on The Science Channel.
The Straight Dope is that its still a bit of a controversial topic. I have a book from 1984 by one Graham Twigg, a zoologist, called The Black Death: A Biological Reappraisal, which makes the argument that there was a lack of proper vectors available in northern Europe at that time for plague to have established itself so forcefully. He suggested anthrax instead. He makes a solid argument, which my parasitology professor was impressed with in 1986, when I showed it to him.
You can see part of his argument from a 1992 symposium here :
http://www.history.ac.uk/cmh/epitwig.html
However his and others arguments have hardly been unhesitatingly accepted. For a short essay that decides they are wrong ( in part based on some French DNA evidence ), see here:
However, however, later studies ( very recent ) how completely failed to confirm that earlier finding. See here:
http://mic.sgmjournals.org/cgi/content/full/150/2/341
So, the topic remains open and ongoing. I don’t know about the anthrax theory, but I am sceptical about Yersinia pestis.
Lilacs is quicker than I.
Which is why I watch these documentaries with a jaundiced eye.
I was just happy to find a question I finally knew a little about! 
Kinda like watching Jeopardy. Oh! I know this one!
The position is complicated by the fact that many diseases at the time were classed as ‘plagues’ - they didn’t, of course, diagnose in the modern sense. There may have been several diseases going at the same time, typhus has been suggested. The ‘Black Death’ name wasn’t used until long afterwards, contemporary records seem to have referred to it as the ‘Great Pestilence’
For what it’s worth (and with Wikipedia, that’s always in question) here’s the Wiki on alternative explainations of the Black Death. Appearing, as it did, over a spread of centuries and various cycles and flareups, and with the understanding that the medical minds of the day, such as they existed, had no notion of the germ theory of illness and infection, it is entirely possible that the Black Plague has not a single pathology but instead a number of different agents that and syndrome that have been collectively lumped under the the moniker of “The Plague”. At least some of the records of epidemics offer a sufficiently accurate and descriptive account of symptoms to verify that the illness was most likely due to the Yersinia pestis (the bacterium that causes bubonic, pneumonic, and septicemic); others may be due to different highly infectious agents with somewhat similar results.
Stranger