Abstract
Although we do not know for certain what caused the Black Death, its symptoms most closely resemble those of the modern disease known as plague, which scientists attribute to the bacterium Yersinia pestis. Scientists gained a unique opportunity to study the symptoms and transmission of the disease during the third pandemic of 1894 to 1930.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Ann G. Carmichael, Plague and the Poor in Renaissance Florence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 18–26; idem, “Bubonic Plague: The Black Death,” in Plague, Pox and Pestilence, ed. Kenneth F. Kiple (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1997), 60.
Samuel K. Cohn Jr., The Black Death Transformed: Disease and Culture in Early Renaissance Europe (London and Oxford: Arnold and Oxford University Press, 2002), 57–139.
Graham Twigg, The Black Death: A Biological Reappraisal (New York: Schocken Books, 1984), 128. David Arnold, Colonizing the Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in Nineteenth-Century India (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993), 203–5; Cohn, The Black Death Transformed, 28.
Rajnarayan Chandavarkar, “Plague Panic and Epidemic Politics in India, 1896– 1914,” in Epidemics and Ideas: Essays on the Historical Perception of Pestilence, ed. Terence Ranger and Paul Slack (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 222.
Richard E. Lenski, “Evolution of Plague Virulence,” and R. Rosqvist, M. Skurnik and H. Wolf-Watz, “Increased Virulence of Yersinia Pseudotuberculosis,” Nature, 334 (1988): 473–74, 522–25; Michel Drancourt, Gérard Aboudharam, Michel Signoli, Olivier Dutour, and Didier Raoult, “Detection of 400-Year-Old Yersinia pestis DNA in Human Dental Pulp: An Approach to the Diagnosis of Ancient Septicemia,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 95 (1998): 12637–40; idem, “Molecular Identification of ‘Suicide PCR’ of Yersinia pestis as the Agent of the Medieval Black Death,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 97 (2000): 12800–803. The fact that Drancourt’s results have yet to be corroborated does not invalidate them, as Cohn claims. See Cohn, The Black Death Transformed, 248, n. 139.
J-E D. Shrewsbury, A History of Bubonic Plague in the British Isles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 7–53; Twigg, The Black Death, 75–146, 200–22; Gunnar Karlsson, “Plague without Rats: The Case of Fifteenth-Century Iceland,” Journal of Medieval History 22 (1996): 263–84; Cohn, The Black Death Transformed, 41–54, 140–87.
H. H. Lamb, Climate, History and the Modern World, 2nd ed. (London and New York: Routledge, 1995), 195–207. However, there is some debate about whether the Mediterranean was part of this colder weather pattern. See Cohn, The Black Death Transformed, 42.
Ole J. Benedictow, Plague in the Late Medieval Nordic Countries: Epidemiological Studies (Oslo: Middelalderforlaget, 1992), 171–92.
Francine Michaud, “La Peste, la peure et l’espoir: Le pélerinage jubilaire de Ro-meux Marsellais en 1350,” Le Moyen Age, 3–4 (1998): 408.
Norman F. Cantor, In the Wake of the Plague: The Black Death and the World It Made (New York: Free Press, 2001), 11–16.
John Aberth, From the Brink of the Apocalypse: Confronting Famine, War, Plague and Death in the Later Middle Ages (New York: Routledge, 2000), 17–18.
A. Chiapelli, “Gli ordinamenti sanitari del comune de Pistoia contro la pestilenza del 1348,” Archivo storico Italiano, 20 (1887): 12–16.
Copyright information
© 2005 Bedford/St. Martin’s
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Aberth, J. (2005). Symptoms and Transmission. In: The Black Death. The Bedford Series in History and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-10349-9_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-10349-9_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-10349-9
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)