Plague historians in lab coats

Past and Present

Volumn 213, Issue 1, 2011, Pages 267-290

  Little, Lester K ^a  

^a SMITH COLLEGE   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

COMMUNICABLE DISEASE; ECONOMICS; EDUCATION; EPIDEMIC; ETHNOLOGY; FRANCE; HISTORY; PERSONNEL; PLAGUE; PUBLIC HEALTH; REVIEW;

COMMUNICABLE DISEASES; EPIDEMICS; FRANCE; HISTORY, 20TH CENTURY; HISTORY, MEDIEVAL; PLAGUE; PUBLIC HEALTH; RESEARCH PERSONNEL;

EID: 84855253719     PISSN: 00312746     EISSN: 1477464X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/pastj/gtr014     Document Type: Review

References (100)

1. Michel Drancourt et al., 'Detection of 400-year-oldYersinia pestisDNAin Human Dental Pulp: An Approach to the Diagnosis of Ancient Septicemia', Proc. Nat. Acad. Sciences, xcv (1998), 12637-40.
2. Didier Raoult et al., 'Molecular Identification by "SuicidePCR" ofYersinia pestis as the Agent of Medieval Black Death', Proc. Nat. Acad. Sciences, xcvii (2000), 12800-3.
3. Stephanie Haensch et al., 'Distinct Clones of Yersinia pestis Caused the Black Death', Public Library of Science, Pathogens, vi, 10 (2010), e1001134.
4. Giovanna Morelli et al., 'Yersinia pestis Genome Sequencing Identifies Patterns of Global Phylogenetic Diversity', Nature Genetics, xlii (2010), 1140-3.
5. Carol Benedict, Bubonic Plague in Nineteenth-Century China (Stanford, 1996), ch. 5.
6. Oddly, neither Koch himself nor his intellectual heirs of the past century and a quarter ever settled on a single, canonical formulation of these postulates: see Thomas D. Brock, Robert Koch: A Life in Medicine and Bacteriology (Washington, DC, 1999), 179-82.
7. For Koch's initial version, in an essay entitled 'Methods for the Study of Pathogenic Organisms' (1881)
8. Milestones in Microbiology, 1546 to 1940, ed. and trans. Thomas D. Brock (Washington, DC, 1999), 101-8.
9. Myron Echenberg, Plague Ports: The Global Urban Impact of Bubonic Plague, 1894-1901 (New York, 2007), 32-8
10. Shibasaburo Kitasato, 'The Bacillus of Bubonic Plague', Lancet, 25 Aug. 1894, 429.
11. Alexandre Yersin, 'La Peste bubonique a' Hong-Kong', Annales de l'Institut Pasteur, viii (1894), 662-3
12. Andrew Cunningham, 'Transforming Plague: The Laboratory and the Identity of Infectious Disease', in Andrew Cunningham and Perry Williams (eds.), The Laboratory Revolution in Medicine (Cambridge, 1992), 238-44, quotation at p. 242.
13. Peregrine Horden, 'Mediterranean Plague in the Age of Justinian', in Michael Maas (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Justinian (Cambridge, 2005), 134-60.
14. Lester K. Little (ed.), Plague and the End of Antiquity: The Pandemic of 541-750 (Cambridge, 2007).
15. Lawrence I. Conrad, 'The Plague in the Early Medieval Middle East' (Princeton Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1981).
16. For an example of the more restrictive view, see Ole J. Benedictow, The Black Death, 1346-1353: The Complete History (Woodbridge, 2004).
17. For the more comprehensive approach, see Jean-Noël Biraben, Les Hommes et la peste en France et dans les pays européens et méditerranens, 2 vols. (Civilisations et sociétés, xxxv-xxxvi, Paris, 1975-6), i, 375-449, which lists all recorded plague epidemics by country and year from the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries.
18. While Michael W. Dols, The Black Death in the Middle East (Princeton, 1977), is mainly of the former sort, he does include a brief section (pp. 305-14) on recurrences of plague to 1517.
19. These are merely the ones dealt with in detail in Echenberg, Plague Ports
20. Paul-Louis Simond, 'La Propagation de la peste', Annales de l'Institut Pasteur, xii (1898)
21. On vaccines and antibiotics, see Elizabeth Carniel, 'Plague Today', in Vivian Nutton (ed.), Pestilential Complexities: Understanding Medieval Plague (London, 2008), 120-1.
22. .
23. Mark Achtman et al., 'Yersinia pestis, the Cause of Plague, Is a Recently Emerged Clone of Yersinia pseudotuberculosis', Proc. Nat. Acad. Sciences, xcvi (1999), 14043-8.
24. MarkAchtman et al., 'Microevolution and History of the Plague Bacillus, Yersinia pestis', Proc. Nat. Acad. Sciences, ci (2004), 17837-42, quotation at p. 17837.
25. J. Parkhill et al., 'Genome Sequence of Yersinia pestis, the Causative Agent of Plague', Nature, cdxiii (2001), 523-7.
26. Graham Twigg, The Black Death: A Biological Reappraisal (London, 1984)
27. David Herlihy, The Black Death and the Transformation of theWest, ed. Samuel K. Cohn Jr (Cambridge, Mass., 1997).
28. Susan Scott and Christopher J. Duncan, Biology of Plagues: Evidence from Historical Populations (Cambridge, 2001).
29. Samuel K. Cohn Jr, The Black Death Transformed: Disease and Culture in Early Renaissance Europe (London, 2002), 1.
30. An exhaustive review of this controversy to 2009, highly and at times bitterly critical of the Y. pestis deniers, Cohn above all, is found in Ole J. Benedictow, What Disease Was Plague? On the Controversy over the Microbiological Identity of Plague Epidemics of the Past (Leiden, 2010).
31. See n. 1 above.
32. Raoult et al., 'Molecular Identification by "Suicide PCR" of Yersinia pestis', 12800.
33. Alan Cooper and Hendrik N. Poinar, 'Ancient DNA: Do It Right or Not at All', Science, 18 Aug. 2000, 1139.
34. M. Thomas P. Gilbert et al., 'Absence of Yersinia pestis-specific DNA in Human Teeth from Five European Excavations of Putative Plague Victims', Microbiology, cl (2004).
35. Graham Twigg, 'The Black Death and DNA', Lancet Infectious Diseases, iii (2003), 11
36. Cohn, Black Death Transformed, 248
37. Christina Garrelt and Ingrid Wiechmann, 'Detection of Yersinia pestis DNA in Early and Late Medieval Bavarian Burials', in Gisela Grupe and Joris Peters (eds.), Decyphering Ancient Bones: The Research Potential of Bioarchaeological Collections (Documenta archaeobiologica, i, Rahden, 2003), 247-54.
38. Paul the Deacon, History of the Lombards, trans. William Dudley Foulke, ed. Edward Peters (Philadelphia, 1974), 56-8, 127-8, 152-3.
39. See nn. 25 and 26 above.
40. Michel Drancourt et al., 'Genotyping, Orientalis-Like Yersinia pestis, and Plague Pandemics', Emerging Infectious Diseases, x (2004), 1585-92.
41. Michel Drancourt et al., 'Yersinia pestis Orientalis in Remains of Ancient Plague Patients', Emerging Infectious Diseases, xiii (2007), 332-3.
42. Ingrid Wiechmann and Gisela Grupe, 'Detection of Yersinia pestis DNA in Two Early Medieval Skeletal Finds from Aschheim (Upper Bavaria, 6th Century AD)', Amer. Jl Physical Anthropol., cxxvi (2005), 48-55.
43. Carsten M. Pusch et al., 'Yersinial F1 Antigen and the Cause of Black Death', Lancet Infectious Diseases, iv (2004), 484-5.
44. The text actually says that they agree with the deniers, but the lead author later explained that this was an error that crept in during the final editing process: see Benedictow, What Disease Was Plague?, 389 n. 28(6).
45. Raffaella Bianucci et al., 'Plague Immunodetection in Remains of Religious Exhumed from Burial Sites in Central France', Jl Archaeol. Science, xxxvi (2009), 616-21.
46. Samuel K. Cohn Jr, 'Epidemiology of the Black Death and SuccessiveWaves of Plague', in Nutton (ed.), Pestilential Complexities, 100.
47. Susan Scott and Christopher Duncan, Return of the Black Death: The World's Greatest Serial Killer (Chichester, 2004), 227
48. For an example of the view that bubonic plague's appearances in Europe were limited to areas close to the Mediterranean. See also Twigg, 'Black Death and DNA', 11, where he says that he and other critics of the prevailing bubonic-plague interpretation 'accept that the disease could have been present in southern Europe where conditions in terms of climate and vector availability were suitable'.
49. Haensch et al., 'Distinct Clones of Yersinia pestis Caused the Black Death'.
50. Still more recently, the Marseille group has reported the successful use of both methods of detection in Venice: see Thi-Nguyen-Ny Tran et al., 'High Throughput, Multiplexed Pathogen Detection Authenticates Plague Waves in Medieval Venice, Italy', Public Library of Science, ONE, vi, 3 (2011), e16735.
51. Along with this report, the authors attempted to list all sites in Europe with positive biomedical identifications of plague to date, but readers need to be aware that on the accompanyingmapfive of the twenty-six sites are missing and five others are incorrectly placed
52. Morelli et al., 'Yersinia pestis Genome Sequencing', 1142, 1143.
53. William H. McNeill, Plagues and Peoples (New York, 1998), ch. 4.
54. Procopius of Caesarea, History of theWars: Books I and II (PersianWar), ed. and trans. H. B. Dewing (New York, 1914), 452-3.
55. Peter Sarris, 'Bubonic Plague in Byzantium: The Evidence of the Non-Literary Sources', 120-3
56. Michael McCormick, 'Toward a Molecular History of the Justinianic Pandemic', 303-4, both in Little (ed.), Plague and the End of Antiquity.
57. See also Michael McCormick, 'Rats, Communications, and Plague: Toward an Ecological History', Jl Interdisciplinary Hist., xxxiv (2003), 7-8.
58. Conrad, 'Plague in the Early Medieval Middle East', 99-114, map on p. 116.
59. McNeill, Plagues and Peoples, 147
60. Various historians, including Sarris, 'Bubonic Plague in Byzantium', 122
61. McCormick, 'Toward a Molecular History of the Justinianic Pandemic', 301, who cite only this page in McNeill's book
62. The compendium of AD 610 is by ChaoYuanfang, Zhubing yuanhou lun [Treatise on the Causes and Symptoms of Various Diseases]. The translated passage is found in Wu Lien-teh et al., Plague: A Manual for Medical and Public Health Workers (Shanghai, 1936), 11.
63. Joseph H. Cha, 'Epidemics in China: A Check List', appendix in McNeill, Plagues and Peoples, 297-306.
64. Benedictow, Black Death, 41
65. On the highly bureaucratized writing of early Chinese official history, see Denis Twitchett, The Writing of Official History under the T'ang (New York, 1992), 198-205
66. Chinese History, A Manual, ed. Endymion Wilkinson (Cambridge, Mass., 1998), ch. 3.
67. McCormick, 'Rats, Communications, and Plague'
68. See also Frdrique Audoin-Rouzeau, Les Chemins de la peste: le rat, la puce et l'homme (Rennes, 2003)
69. A. W. Bacot and C. J. Martin, 'Observations on the Mechanisms of the Transmission of Plague by Fleas', Jl Hygiene, xiii (1914).
70. G. Blanc and M. Baltazard, 'Recherches exprimentales sur la peste: l'infection de la puce de l'homme, Pulex irritans L.', Comptes rendus hebdomadaires des sances de l'Acadmie des sciences, ccxiii (1941), 813-16.
71. G. Blanc and M. Baltazard, 'Rôle des ectoparasites humains dans la transmission de la peste', Bulletin de l'Acadmie Nationale de Mdecine, cxxvi (1942), 446-8.
72. L. Fabian Hirst, The Conquest of Plague: A Study of the Evolution of Epidemiology (Oxford, 1953), 239-46.
73. See also Benedictow, What Disease Was Plague?, 9-16
74. Rebecca J. Eisen et al., 'Early-PhaseTransmission of Yersinia pestis by Unblocked Fleas as a Mechanism Explaining Rapidly Spreading Plague Epizootics', Proc. Nat. Acad. Sciences, ciii (2006), 15380-5.
75. Kenneth L. Gage and MichaelY. Kosoy, 'Natural History of Plague:Perspectives from More than a Century of Research', Ann. Rev. Entomology, l (2005), 514-17.
76. Rebecca J. Eisen et al., 'Early-Phase Transmission of Yersinia pestis by Unblocked Xenopsylla cheopis (Siphonaptera: Pulcidiae) Is as Effective as Transmission by Blocked Fleas', Jl Medical Entomology, xliv (2007), 678-82.
77. See also Aryn P. Wilder et al., 'Oropsylla hirsuta (Siphonaptera: Ceratophyllidae) Can Support Plague Epizootics in Black-Tailed Prairie Dogs (Cynomys ludovicianus) by Early-Phase Transmission of Yersinia pestis', Vector-Borne and Zoonotic Diseases, viii (2008), 359-67.
78. Carniel, 'Plague Today', 116-17, 122
79. Note the innovative initiatives of Michael McCormick, who heads the Science of the Human Past Program at Harvard and also led the drive to establish an aDNA laboratory in that university: see MichaelMcCormick, 'MolecularMiddle Ages: Early Medieval Economic History in the Twenty-First Century', in Jennifer R. David and Michael McCormick (eds.), The Long Morning of Medieval Europe: New Directions in Early Medieval Studies (Aldershot, 2008), 94-7.
80. The pioneering work, though for many years rarely followed up, was J.-N. Biraben and J. Le Goff, 'La Peste dans le hautMoyen-Â ge', Annales ESC, xxiv (1969).
81. Much credit goes to the pioneering efforts of Abraham L. Udovitch and two of the doctoral students he supervised at Princeton, Lawrence Conrad and Michael Dols, whose works are cited respectively in nn. 11 and 12 above.
82. Mike Baillie, Exodus to Arthur: Catastrophic Encounters with Comets (London, 1999)
83. David Keys, Catastrophe: An Investigation into the Origins of the Modern World (London, 1999)
84. I. Antoniou and A. K. Sinakos, 'The Sixth-Century Plague: Its Repeated Appearances until 746 AD and the Explosion of the Rabaul Volcano', Byzantinische Zeitschrift, xcviii (2005), 1-4.
85. For a critique, see Antti Arjava, 'The Mystery Cloud of 536 CE in the Mediterranean Sources', Dumbarton Oaks Papers, lix (2005)
86. Bruce M. S. Campbell, 'Nature as Historical Protagonist: Environment and Society in Pre-Industrial England', Econ. Hist. Rev., lxiii (2010), 305-6.
87. See the brief and inconclusive discussion of possible connections in Daniel Antoine, 'The Archaeology of "Plague" ', in Nutton (ed.), Pestilential Complexities, 113-14.
88. For India, see Laurie Garrett, Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health (New York, 2000), ch. 1.
89. For the future, see Kenneth L. Gage et al., 'Climate and Vector-Borne Diseases', Amer. Jl Preventive Medicine, xxxv (2008).
90. Kyrre Linn Kausrud et al., 'Modeling the Epidemiological History of Plague in Central Asia: Palaeoclimatic Forcing on a Disease System over the Past Millennium', BioMed Central, Biology, viii (2010).
91. The methods pioneered in France and elsewhere in Europe are already being tried in China but without positive results to date. I owe this information to a private communication from Lin Fu-shih, National Chung-Hsing University, Taiwan, and for putting me in contact with him, I am grateful to Yang Shao-yun, Ph.D. student in history at the University of California, Berkeley. My colleague Richard Lim was most helpful in facilitating my contact with Chinese scholars.
92. Claire Cornelius et al., 'Protective Immunity against Plague', Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology, dciii (2007), 415.
93. See also David T. Dennis, 'Plague as a Biological Weapon', in I. W. Fong and Kenneth Alibek (eds.), Bioterrorism and Infectious Agents: A New Dilemma for the 21st Century (New York, 2005).
94. For Mesopotamia, specifically Basra, in 706, see Lawrence I. Conrad, 'Arabic Plague Chronologies and Treatises: Social and Historical Factors in the Formation of a Literary Genre', Studia Islamica, liv (1981), 55.
95. For fourteenth-century England (epidemics of 1361, 1369, 1378 and 1390)
96. The Black Death, ed. and trans. Rosemary Horrox (Manchester, 1994), 85, 86, 88, 91.
97. The substance of this question was put to me - not sarcastically as in Graham Twigg's comment ('Black Death and DNA', 11; and see above at n. 27) - but seriously by David Soren of the University of Arizona, whose excavation at a fifth-century AD site north of Rome led to the first positive identification of malaria DNAin ancient human remains.
98. See Robert Sallares, Abigail Bouwman and Cecilia Anderung, 'The Spread of Malaria to Southern Europe in Antiquity: New Approaches to Old Problems', Medical Hist., xlviii (2004), 319-22.
99. Verena J. Schuenemann et al., 'Targeted Enrichment of Ancient Pathogens Yielding the pPCP1 Plasmid of Yersinia pestis from Victims of the Black Death', Proc. Nat. Acad. Sciences, cviii (2011), E746-E752, quotation at E751.
100. Kirsten I. Bos et al., 'A Draft Genome of Yersinia pestis from Victims of the Black Death', Nature, cdlxxviii (2011).