Plagues in World History (38 page)

46. This argument is made with particular reference to identifying the three pandemics of plague as all caused by the same disease: See A. Cunningham, “Transforming Plague: The Laboratory and the Identity of Infectious Disease,” in
The Laboratory Revolution in Medicine
, ed. A. Cunningham and P. Williams, 209–44 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 209; D. Harrison, “Plague, Settlement and Structural Changes at the Dawn of the Middle Ages,”
Scandia
59 (1993): 19; and Jon Arrizabalaga, “Facing the Black Death: Perceptions and Reactions of University Medical Practitioners,” in Practical Medicine from Salerno to the Black Death
, ed. L. García-Ballester, R. French, J.

Arrizabalaga, and A. Cunningham, 237–88 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 239. This position is refuted by C. J. Duncan and S. Scott,
Biology of Plagues: Evidence from Historical Populations
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 53; and Robert Sallares, “Ecology, Evolution, and Epidemiology of Plague,” in
Plague and the End of Antiquity: The Pandemic of 541–750
, ed. L. K. Little, 231–89 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 255–56.

47. Cohn,
Black Death Transformed
, 83–95.

48. For example, in 1998–2000, a French team announced it had isolated
Yersinia pestis
DNA from the dental pulp of fourteenth-and sixteenth-century plague victims at Montpellier, which they offered as conclusive evidence that the Black Death was true plague: see Michel Drancourt et al., “Detection of 400-Year-Old
Yersinia pestis
DNA in Human Dental Pulp: An Approach to the Diagnosis of Ancient Septicemia,”
Proceedings Notes to Pages 17–20 y 189

of the National Academy of Science
95 (1998): 12637–40; and Michel Drancourt et al., “Molecular Identification by ‘Suicide PCR’ of
Yersinia pestis
as the Agent of Medieval Black Death,”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Science
97 (2000): 12800–803.

While their identification still remains controversial, the French team’s results have now been duplicated in London and Germany: see essays by Lester K. Little, Robert Sallares, and Michael McCormick in
Plague and the End of Antiquity: The Pandemic of 541–750
, ed. L. K. Little (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 19–20, 254, and 294–97, as well as references cited there in footnotes.

49. For example, William McNeill, even though he acknowledged the role that Native American attitudes toward disease played in the Spanish conquest of the Americas, failed to draw any contrasts between the native view of disease and that of Europeans that could explain that role. Instead, he simply noted that both sides saw disease as coming from divine sources and put any differences in response down to immunity (or lack thereof).

See McNeill,
Plagues and Peoples
, 20–21, 215–17.

50. See especially Hays,
Burdens of Disease
, esp. 1–7; and Hays, “Historians and Epidemics,” 33–36, 52–56.

1. Lawrence I. Conrad, “Plague in the Early Medieval Near East” (PhD diss., Princeton University, 1981), 488.

2. Based on personal telephone interview conducted with John Tull and Lucinda Marker on February 20, 2004.

3. For a comprehensive, up-to-date summary of fleas’ role in spreading bubonic plague, see Kenneth L. Gage and Michael Y. Kosoy, “Natural History of Plague: Perspectives from More than a Century of Research,”
Annual Review of Entomology
50 (2005): 505–28.

Older works still worth consulting on this topic include the following: Wu Lien-Teh, J. W. H. Chun, R. Pollitzer, and C. Y. Wu,
Plague: A Manual for Medical and Public Health Workers
(Shanghai, China: Weishengshu National Quarantine Service, 1936), 265–70; R.

Pollitzer,
Plague
(Geneva: World Health Organization, 1954), 346–55; Graham Twigg,
The Black Death: A Biological Reappraisal
(New York: Schocken Books, 1984), 16–17.

4. Many of these statistics were collected during the Third Pandemic in India and Egypt and presented in the
Journal of Hygiene
, but they are conveniently summarized in Ole J. Benedictow,
Plague in the Late Medieval Nordic Countries: Epidemiological Studies
(Oslo, Norway: Middelalderforlaget, 1992), 164; and Robert Sallares, “Ecology, Evolution, and Epidemiology of Plague,” in
Plague and the End of Antiquity: The Pandemic of 541–750
, ed.

L. K. Little, 231–89 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 278.

5. Personal telephone interview conducted with John Tull, February 20, 2004.

6. Wu Lien-Teh (Liande),
A Treatise on Pneumonic Plague
(Geneva: Publications of the League of Nations, 1926), 162–64, 252–55, 296–306.

7. W. F. Gatacre,
Report on the Bubonic Plague in Bombay, 1896–97
(Bombay, India: Times of India Steam Press, 1897), 138–39; J. K. Condon,
The Bombay Plague, Being a History of the Progress of Plague in the Bombay Presidency from September 1896 to June 1899

190 y Notes to Pages 21–23

(Bombay, India: Education Society’s Steam Press, 1900), 72–73; Lien-Teh,
Treatise on Pneumonic Plague
, 245; Lien-Teh et al.,
Plague
, 309–16; Pollitzer,
Plague
, 411–18, 441.

Marker noted an inexplicable sense of foreboding or “doom” that accompanied what she otherwise thought were symptoms typical of the flu at the onset of her case of plague.

8. Samuel K. Cohn Jr., “The Black Death: End of a Paradigm,”
American Historical Review
107 (2002): 716–17; Sallares, “Ecology,” 240–41.

9. Condon,
The Bombay Plague
, 73; Lien-Teh et al.,
Plague
, 158, 311, 314, 322; Pollitzer,
Plague
, 420–21, 424–27.

10. Gatacre,
Report on the Bubonic Plague
, 50; Sallares, “Ecology,” 236.

11. Procopius of Caesarea,
History of the Wars
, II:xxii.17, trans. H. B. Dewing (London: W. Heinemann and Macmillan, 1914–1940); John of Ephesus’ description is available in English translation in Pseudo-Dionysius of Tel-Mahre,
The Chronicle of Zuqnīn, Parts III and IV
, trans. A. Harrak (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1999), 104; and Pseudo-Dionysius of Tel-Mahre,
Chronicle, Part III
, trans. Witold Witakowski, Translated Texts for Historians 22 (Liverpool, UK: Liverpool University Press, 1996), 87. This was by no means the first occurrence of
boubon
as a term for bubonic swellings; the symptom was discussed centuries earlier in the Hippocratic
Epidemics
, which record Greek doctors’ case histories from the end of the fifth and first half of the fourth centuries B.C.E.

12. Medieval testimony comes from the fifteenth-century German treatise of a “Master Berthold,” printed in Karl Sudhoff, “Pestschriften aus den ersten 150 Jahren nach der Epidemie des ‘schwarzen Todes’ 1348,”
Archiv für Geschichte der Medizin
16 (1925): 93. For modern diagnosis, see Condon,
The Bombay Plague
, 73; Pollitzer,
Plague
, 421–23. Marker also noted this same phenomenon in her bout with bubonic plague in November 2002.

13. Gatacre,
Report on the Bubonic Plague
, 141, 223; Condon,
The Bombay Plague
, 73–74; Pollitzer,
Plague
, 423.

14. Condon,
The Bombay Plague
, 77; Lien-Teh,
Treatise on Pneumonic Plague
, 241–59; Pollitzer,
Plague
, 441–42; Ole J. Benedictow,
The Black Death, 1346–1353: The Complete History
(Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2004), 28.

15. Gatacre,
Report on the Bubonic Plague
, 138, 223; Condon,
The Bombay Plague
, 76–77; Pollitzer,
Plague
, 439–40.

16. Conrad, “Plague,” 73–76; Sallares, “Ecology,” 251.

17. Robert Sallares,
The Ecology of the Ancient Greek World
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991), 252–53; Sallares, “Ecology,” 245–54.

18. Most recently, a collection of essays on the First Pandemic was published as Little,
Plague and the End of Antiquity
, but other general works that should be consulted include Conrad’s “Plague” and Dionysios Stathakopoulos,
Famine and Pestilence in the Late Roman and Early Byzantine Empire: A Systematic Survey of Subsistence Crises and Epidemics
(Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2004).

19. For an overview of the debate as to the origins of the First Pandemic in Africa, see Peter Sarris, “Bubonic Plague in Byzantium: The Evidence of Non-Literary Sources,”

in
Plague and the End of Antiquity: The Pandemic of 541–750
, ed. L. K. Little, 119–34

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 120–23.

Notes to Pages 24–26 y 191

20. For more detailed chronologies, see Dionysios Stathakopoulos, “Crime and Punishment: The Plague in the Byzantine Empire, 541–749,” in
Plague and the End of Antiquity: The Pandemic of 541–750
, ed. L. K. Little, 99–118 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 99–105; Stathakopoulos,
Famine and Pestilence
, 113–24, 278–386; Conrad, “Plague,” 91–311; Jean-Noël Biraben,
Les Hommes et la Peste en France et dans les Pays Européens et Méditerranéens
, 2 vols. (Paris: Mouton, 1975–1976), 1:27–32; Jean-Noël Biraben and Jacques Le Goff, “The Plague in the Early Middle Ages,” in
Biology of Man in History: Selections from the Annales: Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations
, ed. and trans. E. Forster, R. Forster, O. Ranum, and P. M. Ranum, 48–80 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975), 58–60.

21. Procopius,
History of the Wars
, II:22.17; Pseudo-Dionysius of Tel-Mahre,
Chronicle of Zuqnīn
, 104; Pseudo-Dionysius of Tel-Mahre,
Chronicle
, 87–88. Bubonic symptoms are also mentioned in contemporary saints’ lives, cited in Stathakopoulos,
Famine and Pestilence
, 136n119.

22. Evagrius Scholasticus,
Ecclesiastical History
, IV:29, translated as
A History of the Church
(London: S. Bagster and Sons, 1846).

23. Michael G. Morony, “‘For Whom Does the Writer Write?’: The First Bubonic Plague Pandemic According to Syriac Sources,” in
Plague and the End of Antiquity: The Pandemic of 541–750
, ed. L. K. Little, 59–86 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 60–61; Lawrence I. Conrad, “
Tā‘ūn
and
Wabā
: Conceptions of Plague and Pestilence in Early Islam,”
Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient
25 (1982): 291–301; Michael W. Dols,
The Black Death in the Middle East
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1977), 315–19.

24. John Maddicott, “Plague in Seventh-Century England,” in
Plague and the End of Antiquity: The Pandemic of 541–750
, ed. L. K. Little, 171–214 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 183.

25. Procopius,
History of the Wars
, II:22.10–14.

26. Pseudo-Dionysius of Tel-Mahre,
Chronicle of Zuqnīn
, 95–97; Pseudo-Dionysius of Tel-Mahre,
Chronicle
, 76–77; Morony, “‘For Whom Does the Writer Write?’” 82.

27. Pseudo-Dionysius of Tel-Mahre,
Chronicle of Zuqnīn
, esp. 95–96, 100–103, 107; Pseudo-Dionysius of Tel-Mahre,
Chronicle
, 75–76, 81–85, 90.

28. Compare Procopius,
History of the Wars
, II:23.14–16 with Thucydides,
The History of the Peloponnesian War
, trans. R. Crawley (London: Longmans, Green, 1874), II:53.

29. Procopius,
History of the Wars
, II:22.27, 33–34; Thucydides,
History of the Peloponnesian War
, II:51.

30. Pseudo-Dionysius of Tel-Mahre,
Chronicle of Zuqnīn
, 97–98; 109–10; Pseudo-Dionysius of Tel-Mahre,
Chronicle
, 77–78, 93–94.

31. Thucydides,
History of the Peloponnesian War
, II:52.

32. For instance, many readers may bring to mind the U.S. government’s shameful handling of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005.

33. Procopius,
History of the Wars
, II:23.6–13; Pseudo-Dionysius of Tel-Mahre Chronicle of Zuqnīn
, 107–8, 110; Pseudo-Dionysius of Tel-Mahre,
Chronicle
, 91–92, 94.

192 y Notes to Pages 26–29

34. Pseudo-Dionysius of Tel-Mahre,
Chronicle of Zuqnīn
, 108, 111; Pseudo-Dionysius of Tel-Mahre,
Chronicle
, 91, 95–96.

35. Pseudo-Dionysius of Tel-Mahre,
Chronicle of Zuqnīn
, 106–8; Pseudo-Dionysius of Tel-Mahre,
Chronicle
, 89–92.

36. Pseudo-Dionysius of Tel-Mahre,
Chronicle of Zuqnīn
, 106–7; Pseudo-Dionysius of Tel-Mahre,
Chronicle
, 90.

37. Pseudo-Dionysius of Tel-Mahre,
Chronicle of Zuqnīn
, 109; Pseudo-Dionysius of Tel-Mahre,
Chronicle
, 93. See also Procopius,
History of the Wars
, II:23.12.

38. Pseudo-Dionysius of Tel-Mahre,
Chronicle of Zuqnīn
, 99–100, 105, 109; Pseudo-Dionysius of Tel-Mahre,
Chronicle
, 81, 88, 93; Procopius,
History of the Wars
, II:23.17–19.

39. Procopius,
History of the Wars
, II:22.29, 32–34.

40. Pseudo-Dionysius of Tel-Mahre,
Chronicle of Zuqnīn
, 112–13; Pseudo-Dionysius of Tel-Mahre,
Chronicle
, 97–98.

41. Pseudo-Dionysius of Tel-Mahre,
Chronicle of Zuqnīn
, 98–99; Pseudo-Dionysius of Tel-Mahre,
Chronicle
, 79; Scholasticus,
Ecclesiastical History
, VI:23.

42. Stathakopoulos, “Crime and Punishment,” 113–14.

43. See especially the text of Justinian’s Novella 141 against homosexuals, issued in 559, a year after a second outbreak of plague had struck the capital. The text is available in English through the online publication of Fred H. Blume and Timothy Kearley,
Annotated Justinian Code
, 2nd ed. (Laramie: University of Wyoming College of Law, 2009), at http://uwacadweb.uwyo.edu/blume&justinian (accessed August 3, 2010).