Visualizing the Plague of Justinian in the Mediterranean

Browsing through Academia.edu this morning I came across some graphics from the Topographies of Entanglements project from the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Division of Byzantine Research. Unfortunately there is very little explanation with these graphics.

Comparing these two graphs they are not conveying exactly the same information.  How do we define a wave of plague? Does it have to show directional movement? How far does it have to go?  Given the sparse information from this period, accurately defining waves must be tentative.   The second graph, may be a more realistic representation. The second graph charts individual epidemic outbreak records giving a better representation of scale and that the gaps between the waves are not plague-free. Given the sparse records in the early medieval period, we can not take the lack of reports in 580 and 610 to mean that the plague disappeared completely. Plague was also occurring outside of the Mediterranean in these low years. For example the major wave of plague to devastate Britain and Ireland was from 664-668.

From: Visualising waves of Plague epidemics in the Mediterranean and the Near East, 541-750 AD by Topographies of Entanglements. Graphics by Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, 2013. (Here converted from tiff files to jpg.)

They took their data from Dionysios Stathakopoulos, Famine and Pestilence in the Late Roman and Early Byzantine Empire: A Systematic Survey of Subsistence Crises and Epidemics (Ashgate, 2004).

Demystifying Scientific Authorship

Over the last few months, I’ve been talking quite a bit with historians. Many of them are starting to read more biology papers; some are perplexed by the format and brevity. So, I plan on occasionally writing posts that I hope will help non-science folks and students cope with science literature.

A recent question:  how can a paper have ten or more authors? Who is in charge of the project?

A science paper is not an essay like a history or literature publication. Its is a research report representing the work of a whole team. There are very few soloists in science.   In some ways “authorship” is really not the right term for the names on the report, but it is historical convention.

There are no hard and fast rules for who is named on a paper or their order. However, names can be classified in four groups in relatively this order  on papers with more than four  authors.

• First author: recognition of  the person who has done the most bench work. First authorship is important in the development of a researcher because it shows that they have accomplished new laboratory experiments and can do the daily management of experiments. The first author is usually a grad student or post-doc (post-doctoral fellow). When there are multiple authors (>4), the first author is never the project leader.

• Research contributors: other members of the team including research assistants, post-docs, and other grad students. Research assistants are finally getting recognition for what is often a career long commitment to a project.  Specialists who provide unique services like pathologists or bioinformatics/ computer specialists may also be included here. Ultimately it is the principal investigator who determines which other members of the team are recognized on the paper.

• Materials contributors: providers of unique materials that are vital to the project. Examples of material contributors include physicians who collect patient specimens, archaeologists who provide access to bones or teeth, or molecular biologists who provide a vital clone or research organism (like a specially bred rat etc).

• Principal Investigator, usually called the PI,  is the person responsible for the project on federal grants. They are the project director. Roles of the PI include research direction and administration,  recruiting, funding, and outreach to the scientific community as much as the public. They are always the last author listed on publications and usually designated as the corresponding author. When in doubt, always go with the corresponding author as the project leader.

For large multi-center studies, like some of the recent plague genetics papers, there can be multiple PIs (designated by multiple corresponding authors) and the recognition of more than one ‘first author’ (notation that multiple people contributed equally). Some newer publications will have some indication of who contributed to what. It is fairly unusual for any one person to be designated as the author (writer) of the paper, even though there is usually one primary writer.

With fewer than four authors it is nearly impossible to predict roles unless you know the individuals named. Go with the corresponding author as the project leader.

Hopefully, this has helped demystify scientific authorship. Comments and questions are always welcome!

History Meets Biology at the AHA

I make a habit of writing about the seminars I go to so here is what you missed from the American Historical Association annual meeting. This was my first time at the AHA so I didn’t really know what to expect. The best part was all the fascinating people I met, some of whom I’ve been exchanging emails with for quite a while. I hope I can manage to keep in touch with them.

Four of the six sessions I attended can really be summed up under the title history meets biology. All four of these sessions could be said to be grappling with the “reconceptualization of the depth of human past”, to quote James Webb. In some ways I am puzzled by their difficulty and why they have previously essentially limited themselves to the last 3000 years or less. I assume that most biologists (like myself) and anthropologists think on evolutionary time, so there are no real barriers to historical thinking. The good news in these four sessions is that there are quite a few historians trying to embrace the real longue durée and are looking to biology as a new tool.

A few thoughts on the sessions in the order that I saw them.

Session 75: Evolutionary History: How Biology Can Help Us Understand History

This session was organized by Edmund Russell who appears to be leading this movement first outlined in his book Evolutionary History: Uniting History and Biology to Understand Life on Earth. (I picked up his book and will eventually review it here.) One of the themes of the session was the human role in altering evolution of other organisms.

Feral Animals in the American South: The Science and Culture of Broken Symbiosis by Abraham Gibson

Horses and swine in the southeastern states are the feral animals in question. I have to say that I didn’t know there are as many feral horses in the eastern US as there apparently are. Gibson talked about the biological distinctiveness of the feral horse and swine in the eastern US, no longer either part of the domestic or wild populations. I would have like a little more on the biological distinctiveness but even as much has he had challenged some of the historians in the audience who didn’t think it was necessary. These feral populations were not founded or sustained by escaped animals but intentional human release going back to British colonial times. It is important to bring biology into this discussion because it can unravel some of the folklore and faulty assumptions that have built up around feral animal issues. I enjoyed his talk and its a very important issue today for both the rural economy and ecology. This is a project that shows the importance of fusing history and science.  I hope we all hear more about in the coming years.

Canine Evolution and the “Improvement” of Nature in British America, c. 1600-1800 by Joshua Kercsmar

This was a very interesting paper on attitudes in colonial America on breeds of dogs raised by both colonists and Native Americans. Dogs became a proxy for views of the “other”, so colonists saw Native American dogs as savage or semi-wild. On the other hand, Native Americans saw the various European breeds brought to America as both reflecting their owners personalities and as signs of European power over nature. He talked about the common evolutionary origins of dogs and that Native American breeds go back to the same common ancestor(s). Yet Native American dogs were always viewed as more wild and savage, more wolf-like. Can you name a Native American dog breed other than a Husky? He talked about the fates of native breeds and how humans have shaped canine evolution, differently in Europe and N. America. (And yes, artificial selection is still a type of evolution.)

A Taste of Combat: How the Coevolution of Grapes and Yeast with Bacteria, Fungi, Insects and Mammals Shaped the Traits of Wine by Edmund Russell

This paper was more of a straight up discussion of coevolution with relatively little history. My notes are not as good on this talk. He focused on some of the characteristics of wine  — alcohol, sweetness, bitterness, and aroma(?) and how they are the product of coevolution. I’m not sure that the audience knew what to do with it and I think he needed more of the human element at least for that audience.

The whole concept of evolutionary history interests me a great deal. These talks show the promise of the technique but also its difficulties. Getting the balance correct between history and biology is tough. Convincing historians (or history buffs) that the biology is necessary to tell the story is a challenge at least for a biologist. This brings up the question of audience. Who is the target audience? I do believe there is an audience. A lot of science folks like history enough to be that audience, but can the humanities be convinced of this middle ground?

Session 97: Science and the Human Past: A New Initiative at Harvard University

Obviously this session was  a showcase for some new collaborations and projects at Harvard. As someone in the audience mentioned to me, only at Harvard could these kinds of projects be put together with in-house faculty (and institutional support).

Climate Change and the Fall of the Roman Empire by Michael McCormick

He presented too much detailed information for useful notes. One of his main points was that the Roman empire existed in a brief period of optimal climate that begins to degrade in the sixth century, including multiple sources of support for 18 months of extreme cold beginning in 536. He also talked about his current project the Digital Atlas of Roman and Medieval Civilization which will eventually include climate data.

How Genetics Can Inform History by Nick Patterson

I don’t have notes on this one. He talked about genetic admixture in deep time. This was more a talk about the possibilities of historical genetics than about a specific story or study.

Daniel Snail didn’t give the paper in the program. He talked about human behavior science and once again stressing that learning deep history is possible. History doesn’t begin with written documents.

Scientific Approaches to Ancient Disease: The Case of the Columbian Contact by Noreen Tuross

Tuross questioned the role of ‘virgin soil’ epidemics and its after effects. Is the concept of ‘virgin soil’ really as significant as it has been claimed? She stressed the importance of using aDNA in pre-contact cemeteries to determine what pathogens like Helicobacter pylori were already here. I didn’t take as many notes as I should have on this one. I do think it is right to question the importance of the ‘virgin soil’ concept. All it means is a lack of herd immunity and this was probably more common than we normally think for diseases that came around once a lifetime or less. Differences in immunity are surely important and does account for some of the differential mortality rates between communities, but there may be other additional causes for the drastic mortality rates of Native Americans (like the synergy of being challenged with more than one ‘virgin soil’ pathogen at a time). I do think that its important to look for pre-contact Native American pathogens in part for what it can tell us about the age and evolution of those pathogens.

Session 143: The Power of Cartography: Remapping the Black Death in the Age of Genomics and GIS.

I participated in this session and my resource post is already up here. I have to admit that I never take notes in sessions I participate in so I’m not going to try to review it. I think these talks will appear in some written form eventually. If they all appear together, I’ll be sure to mention it here on Contagions. Here is a link to all of our abstracts. I do want to thank Monica Green for organizing this session and for helping me meet so many great people in New Orleans. Hopefully this session will be a beginning of a new synergistic period in plague studies.

Session 192: A Prospectus for a Global Health History (Roundtable)

This session collected experts on a variety of history of medicine topics to discuss how develop the field taking into account new information on the depth of human history. The participants and their primary areas were: Mariola Espinosa, Yellow Fever and Caribbean diseases; Monica Green, deep history of TB and leprosy; Angela Ki Che Leung, Beriberi in SE Asia; Nukhet Varlik, plague in the Ottoman empire; and James Webb, Global Malaria. Each gave a short talk about recent developments in their area, particularly developments that challenge the standard story. For example Nukhet Varlik talked about there being no separation between the second and third plague pandemic in the Ottoman empire. The standard story of the plague is that it dies out by the early 18th century but that is not true outside of western Europe.  I think we can all agree that plague studies have been far too Eurocentric.  Their was some discussion on their areas but also on how to teach this material. James Webb reminded the panel and audience that public health and science folks in general are often more interested in the depth and history of global health than others in the humanities. Like evolutionary history in the first session, they need to conceptualize who their audience is and how to cope or adjust if they want to widen their audience.

I found all four sessions to be very stimulating. Honestly, more stimulating that I thought the AHA would be for me when I first looked at the program (outside of the last two sessions organized by Monica Green). Maybe its the sessions I chose, but a sessions seemed to be oriented toward what can be done in the future rather than conveying information. When I got back someone asked me what was the most interesting thing I learned and I had a hard time answering. In part because these sessions were more about field development than conveying specific information. There was lots of good info. These sessions are also short, so there is only so much story that can be conveyed in a maximum of 15 minutes. Conferences are about learning what people are working on and being stimulated in your own work. On those grounds the AHA was a very pleasant surprise.

For the other two sessions I indulged by inner medieval geek. I may write about one of them on my medieval history blog (and even that session was about what new technology can bring to history).

Plague doctor Mardi Gras mask

What else would I bring home to remember a plague session in New Orleans but a plague doctor Mardi Gras mask? I need to find a better way to display it. The crystals just don’t sparkle enough there.

Now back to blogging about all the new plague papers that came out in just the last couple weeks!

Toward a Molecular History of Yersinia pestis (AHA)

This post a resource for the presentation I gave at the AHA meeting in New Orleans on January 5, 2013. A color handout of the slides can be downloaded here.

This map will be continually updated as new finds are published. Some of the balloons mark sites with multiple studies. Click on the balloons for citations.

View Larger Map

References:

Achtman, M. (2012). Insights from genomic comparisons of genetically monomorphic bacterial pathogens. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 367(1590), 860–867. doi:10.1098/rstb.2011.0303

Bos, K. I., Schuenemann, V. J., Golding, G. B., Burbano, H. A., Waglechner, N., Coombes, B. K., et al. (2011). A draft genome of Yersinia pestis from victims of the Black Death. Nature, 1–5. doi:10.1038/nature10549

Bos, K. I., Stevens, P., Nieselt, K., Hendrik N Poinar, DeWitte, S. N., & Krause, J. (2012). Yersinia pestis: New Evidence for an Old Infection. PLoS ONE, 7(11), e49803.

Drancourt, M., & Raoult, D. (2005). Palaeomicrobiology: current issues and perspectives. Nature Reviews Microbiology, 3(1), 23–35. doi:10.1038/nrmicro1063

Drancourt, M., Houhamdi, L., & Raoult, D. (2006). Yersinia pestis as a telluric, human ectoparasite-borne organism. The Lancet Infectious Diseases, 6(4), 234–241. doi:10.1016/S1473-3099(06)70438-8

Haensch, S., Bianucci, R., Signoli, M., Rajerison, M., Schultz, M., Kacki, S., et al. (2010). Distinct Clones of Yersinia pestis Caused the Black Death. (N. J. Besansky, Ed.)PLoS Pathogens, 6(10), e1001134. doi:10.1371/journal.ppat.1001134.t001

Houhamdi, L., Lepidi, H., Drancourt, M., & Raoult, D. (2006). Experimental model to evaluate the human body louse as a vector of plague. The Journal of Infectious Diseases, 194(11), 1589–1596. doi:10.1086/508995

Little, L. K. (2011). Plague Historians in Lab Coats*. Past & Present, 213(1), 267–290. doi:10.1093/pastj/gtr014

Malou, N., Tran, T.-N.-N., Nappez, C., Signoli, M., Le Forestier, C., Castex, D., et al. (2012). Immuno-PCR – A New Tool for Paleomicrobiology: The Plague Paradigm. (S. Bereswill, Ed.)PLoS ONE, 7(2), e31744. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0031744.g006

Morelli, G., Song, Y., Mazzoni, C. J., Eppinger, M., Roumagnac, P., Wagner, D. M., et al. (2010). Yersinia pestis genome sequencing identifies patterns of global phylogenetic diversity. Nature Genetics. doi:10.1038/ng.705

Nguyen-Hieu, T., Aboudharam, G., Signoli, M., Rigeade, C., Drancourt, M., & Raoult, D. (2010). Evidence of a Louse-Borne Outbreak Involving Typhus in Douai, 1710-1712 during the War of Spanish Succession. PLoS ONE, 5(10), e15405. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0015405

Parkhill, J., Wren, B. W., Thomson, N. R., Titball, R. W., Holden, M. T., Prentice, M. B., et al. (2001). Genome sequence of Yersinia pestis, the causative agent of plague. Nature, 413(6855), 523–527. doi:10.1038/35097083

Pusch, C. M., Rahalison, L., Blin, N., Nicholson, G. J., & Czarnetzki, A. (2004). Yersinial F1 antigen and the cause of Black Death. The Lancet Infectious Diseases, 4(8), 484–485. doi:10.1016/S1473-3099(04)01099-0

Raoult, D., Dutour, O., Houhamdi, L., Jankauskas, R., Fournier, P.-E., Ardagna, Y., et al. (2006). Evidence for louse-transmitted diseases in soldiers of Napoleon’s Grand Army in Vilnius. The Journal of Infectious Diseases, 193(1), 112–120. doi:10.1086/498534

Schuenemann, V. J., Bos, K., Dewitte, S., Schmedes, S., Jamieson, J., Mittnik, A., et al. (2011). PNAS Plus: Targeted enrichment of ancient pathogens yielding the pPCP1 plasmid of Yersinia pestis from victims of the Black Death. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 1–22. doi:10.1073/pnas.1105107108

Tran, T., Forestier, C., & Drancourt, M. (n.d.). Brief communication: Co‐detection of Bartonella quintana and Yersinia pestis in an 11th–15th burial site in Bondy, France. American Journal of ….

Tran, T.-N.-N., Signoli, M., Fozzati, L., Aboudharam, G., Raoult, D., & Drancourt, M. (2011). High throughput, multiplexed pathogen detection authenticates plague waves in medieval venice, Italy. PLoS ONE, 6(3), e16735. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0016735

Wiechmann, I., & Grupe, G. (2004). Detection ofYersinia pestis DNA in two early medieval skeletal finds from Aschheim (Upper Bavaria, 6th century A.D.). American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 126(1), 48–55. doi:10.1002/ajpa.10276

Wiechmann, I., Harbeck, M., & Grupe, G. (2010). Yersinia pestis DNA Sequences in Late Medieval Skeletal Finds, Bavaria. Emerging Infectious Diseases, 16(11), 1806–1807.

On Giants Shoulders #54: A Sleigh Load of History

Welcome to On Giant’s Shoulders #54, the history of science blog carnival! Here, we celebrate the history of science with all its oddities, and modern science delves into the past. I can’t think of a better way to spend my third blogoversary (of regular blogging) here at Contagions. Just a few days away from the winter solstice, I managed to fill my sleigh with a load of science history links. Cuddle up with a warm mug of hot chocolate (or whatever warms you) and settle in for some good reading.

Festive Science and the Holiday Season

Since the culture war between science and religion heated up, there has been friction between science and religious holidays like Christmas. Rupert Cole of Notes & Theories reminds us that this was not always so. In Victorian England, the popularity of science and Christmas festivities peaked with the public at the same time and reveled in each other. Victorian Christmas plays and pageants were followed by science lectures to explain the featured science and technology! Public Christmas trees were decorated with scientific instruments that were given to children. Those were the days. Though some science folks still know how to mix up the traditions. In a throw back to at least the sixteenth century, Diane Mcllmoyle of Esmeralda’s Cumbrian History and Folklore writes about the holiday tradition of mummer’s plays with its requisite quack doctor.

History of Pseudoscience

Let’s kick this carnival off with a stimulating discussion on, of all things, the omnipresence and worth of (what we call today) pseudoscience. Rebekah Higgitt of The H Word addresses claims that pseudoscience is on the rise with a history lesson, and ThonyC of Renaissance Mathematicus goes one step further asserting that pseudoscience has sometimes been helpful to the development of science. Faye Flam of Lightning Rod writes on Michael Gordin’s recent research on pseudoscience. Continuing with the supernatural, Lindsey Fitzharris of The Chirurgeon’s Apprentice discusses Abraham Lincoln’s conversations with the dead.

Darwin and Evolution

As always posts on Charles Darwin must be featured in On Giant’s Shoulders. Suvrat Kher of Rapid Uplift writes about Darwin’s slow, deep-thinking methods. Michael Barton of The Dispersal of Darwin calls out more quote mining of Darwin by anti-Darwinists. James Randerson writes of the private life of Charles Darwin. The Alfred Russel Wallace Correspondence Project also launched this month to coincide with the centenary anniversary of his death in 2013. Tim Jones of Zoonomian celebrated the birthday of the other famous Darwin, the polymath Erasmus Darwin (d. 12.12.1731). He also visits Annie Darwin’s grave and reviews Dr Gully’s water cures.

Joachim D of Mousetrap posted on Herbert Spencer’s synthetic philosophy and the centrality of evolution in his thinking.

Archaeology

Kristina Killgrove of Powered by Osteons summarized Nutrition and Well-Being in the Roman World: The Evidence of Human Bones, a conference this fall in Rome. Katy Myers of Bones Don’t Lie discusses how isotope data from bones informs on the social structure of an Anglo-Saxon settlement. In another post she discusses skeletal weapon trauma in medieval Ireland confirming the violence in Irish medieval records. In her most recent post she discusses the discovery and analysis of the graves of victims of the attempted mutiny of The Batavia off the coast of Australia in 1628.

Epidemiology

Katy Meyers of Bones Don’t Lie discusses a new study examining osteological and molecular evidence of TB at three neolithic sites in Germany at the transition to farming. I have a post on the Black Death Network reviewing the molecular evidence of the Black Death. If you have any interest in the 14th century crises — plague, famine, cattle murrain etc. — check out the Black Death Network. Spirochetes Unwound discusses the latest theory on the mysterious epidemic of 1616-1619 that decimated native Americans along the New England coast. Here on Contagions, I posted on the isolation of smallpox DNA from 17th century Siberia. The History of Vaccines blog posted a sketch of smallpox vaccine production in a cow, along with a discussion of vaccine production in 1872. Bringing us up to the 20th century, Rebecca Kreston of Body Horrors brings us the story of the first case of HIV in a 1961 Norwegian teenager who brought an unusual strain of HIV (group O) to his family and seeded it across in Europe.

Genomics

Genomics can help unravel the history of peoples who have left little documentary record. History of the Ancient World Blog has a post on a new study examining Scythian genetic admixture. Katherine Harmon of Observations covers a new study showing Gypsy or Roma origins in India about 500 CE/AD. This places the movement of the Roma out of India into Central Asia during the Great Migrations period that occurred when the Western Roman Empire fell in the fifth century. Interesting to think of the Roma as the last of the 1500 year old Great Migration peoples. Also covered on Past Horizons.

Mike Drout and his team at Wheaton have been applying DNA analysis and statistics software to Old English texts to determine authorship. They call it Lexomics — check them out.

Medical Practice and Public Health

Early modern medical practice was in the spotlight this month. Mike Rendell, The Georgian Gentleman puts a spotlight on contemporary views of 18th century medical practice. Home remedies were not any more successful, as ThonyC of Renaissance Mathematicus writes about in George Boole’s death from his wife’s homeopathy. Jai Virdi of From the Hands of Quacks explores the motivations of Dr Curtis‘ founding of the Royal Dispensary for Diseases of the Ear. The Secret Histories Project brings us a biography of the unconventional Dr. James Barry, child genius, military surgeon, and annoyance of Florence Nightingale. Venessa Heggie of The H Word, writes on the 70th anniversary of the Beveridge Report, that founds the modern British welfare state, about earlier attempts to build a social safety net in Britain with Elizabethan Poor Laws and the infamous Victorian workhouses. New blogger Jennifer Evans of Early Modern Medicine writes about the rhetoric of men pushing through the pain. Lisa Smith’s of the Sloane Letter project, she looks at the problem of bed wetting in the 18th century. Lindsey Fitzharris of The Chirurgeon’s Apprentice got ready for the holiday season by picking 12 (medical) instruments of Deathmas; most are sure to make you squirm. Caro of The Quack Doctor writes about the fun and games at Illinois Pharmacological Association meetings for traveling salesmen near the turn of the 20th century. Lynsey Shaw of the History of Military Aviation Hospitals writes on The Oxford Military Hospital, 1939-45.

Efforts to figure out the brain were popular this month. Michael Finn of Asylum Science wrote about the use of ophthalmoscope to view the living brain in asylums. The Public Domain Review reprinted “The Brain of Charles Babbage” (1909), the ‘father of the computer’. Darin Hayden wrote about a phrenological examination of Andrew White (who played a role in igniting the friction between science and religion).

On chemicals we are better off without, Marieke Hendriksen of the Medicine Chest writes about how mercury was viewed by early medical practitioners. Deborah Blum of Elemental writes about how early the US FDA knew about radiation dangers in cigarette smoke.

Pharmacy and Diagnostic Texts

Christina Agapakis of the Oscillator writes about the medieval Urine Wheel to diagnose metabolic diseases.

Michelle DiMeo of the Recipe Project writes about Dr Crawford Long’s exploration of the uses of ether for insect bites. Lisa Smith at the Recipe Project writes about a treatise claiming coffee cures the plague. In the area of hard to find reagents, Chelsea Clark of The Recipe Project shines light on the wonders of unicorn horns, bezoars and bones of a stag’s heart for poisoning. Alas, black markets for animal products like Rhino’s horn (a unicorn substitute) and bear gal bladder is still very active and taking its toll on increasingly rare animals. A little easier to resource, Jonathan Cey of the Recipe Project, shows us that feces-containing remedies were common in the early modern pharmacopoeia. So patients were more right than they knew when they said their medicine tasted like crap! Pamela Dangle also of The Recipe Project writes about some really “fishy” remedies for Melancholy (that seem rather unlikely to help, to me). Thinking of odd remedy names, Tim Jones of Zoonomian writes about medical misnomers of the past.

Physics, Astronomy, and Earth Sciences

ThonyC of Renaissance Mathematicus writes about the astronomical and medical roots of the first pocket diary (calendars). I’ll never look at those moon symbols on my calendar the same way again. Sorry Dad, the phases of the moon are not on the calendar to tell you when the fish are biting. Along similar lines of finding practical solutions to scientific dilemmas, Rebekah Higgit of The H Word writes about the catching and keeping of spiders to spin eyepiece filaments for astronomical observations. On the Royal Society blog, Rupert Baker writes about Thomas Hardy’s historical fiction on early astronomers and the royal society.

Let’s get a little textual with our astronomy, starting with Jenny Weston of Medieval Fragments who writes about medieval star-gazing. Astrolabes and Stuff discusses how to construct a medieval equitorium of Mercury and also for the Moon. Katy Barret of the Longitude blog writes about use of Cook’s journals and her longitude book collection. Sarah Werner of The Collation writes about volvelles (movable wheels) on folios of science and pseudoscience books.

Harald Sack at Yovisto writes about the golden-nosed astronomer Tycho Bahre and on Werner Heisenberg and the uncertainty principle. Alberto Vanzo of Early Modern Experimental Philosophy writes about the contributions Geminiano Montanari and the Italian academy. Matt Wisnioski guest posted on American Science about the motto “Change or Die!”

David Bressan of History of Geology writes about how philosophies of the nature of the world effected the study of the history of the Earth, and early efforts to measure its age. BibliOdyssey posts some of the original sketches and paintings of the discovery of Australia and its wildlife and then on Plant atlas from 1878-1783.

Dr SkySkull of Skulls in the Stars sets the record straight on Benjamin Franklin’s kite electricity experiments, outlines Priestly’s 1767 account of Franklin’s experiments and writes of the dangers of experimental ballooning in 19th century. Moving on from riding aloft to the winds on the plains, Carol Clark of Wonders & Marvels writes about the role of wind power in settling the arid American west.

Christian Hansen of Hummus and Magnets writes about the analytical programming of Babbage’s early calculating machines.

Lisa Smith will be hosting the next On Giant’s Shoulders carnival on the Sloane Letter Project in January. So watch for Lisa’s posts on twitter (@historybeagle) for more information.

I hope you found something enlightening and entertaining for a long winter’s night. Watch out for sleighs this holiday season, reindeer get spooked with all the holiday traffic!

Pest Anatomized

Lindsey’s post on plague doctors spurred me to go look through the Wellcome library for plague graphics. Here is a neat one I found:

The Wellcome library lists the title as: Loimotomia, or, The pest anatomized : an historical account of the dissection of a pestilential body by the author. Together with the author’s apology against the calumnies of the Galenists, and a word to Mr. Nath. Hodges, concerning his late Vindiciae medicinae …

They did believe in long descriptive titles in the 17th century. It was written by George Thomson, MD (1629-1677) and published in 1666 during the Great London Plague. Something tells me I need to learn more about Dr Thomson!

Gothic Epidemiology? or Gothic Historiography?

I was reading David Mengel’s recent article on plague in Bohemia and he kept referring to this apparently well-known concept, gothic epidemiology. Being the early medieval geek that I am, my first thought was Ostrogoth or Visigoth, and what do they have to do with epidemiology, especially in Bohemia? Feeling that I was clearing missing out on an important concept in plague studies, I looked up the original paper by Faye Marie Getz in 1991.

It turns out that Getz was referring to the genre of Gothic literature that began in the 18th century when Gothic came to mean anything that “offended Enlightenment sensibilities”, anything anti-modern to the new men of the age of reason. ‘Gothic’ architecture gave way to neo-classical architecture, and Roman and Greek revival artistic motifs were everywhere. Yet, Gothic literature typified by Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, and the works of Lord Byron and Edgar Allen Poe also developed during this time.  Getz characterized the essential elements of Gothic literary sensibility as

“an interest in distant and exotic places and times, especially in the Middle Ages and the Orient; the celebration of the power of nature and the ineffability of nature’s essence; the unity of disparate elements – of good and evil, the hideous and the beautiful, the dead and the living; the seduction of the primitive and wild in nature, of the bizarre; the insignificance of human beings against nature; the existence of geniuses; the importance of individual experience; and finally the emphasis on suffering, death, and redemption.” (p. 279)

Getz and others have found that from the mid-eighteenth century historians wrote of the plague as typifying and glorifying this Gothic sensibility. It was these early historians who made the plague a symbol of all that is dark, deadly and medieval.

The most influential gothic epidemiologist was Justin Hecker whose influential book Der schwarze Tod im vierzehten Jahrhunder  (The Black Death in the Fourteenth Century) in 1832 began modern plague studies. Getz characterizes Hecker’s book as seeing the plague as an inescapable force of nature that swept away the old, bringing historical change and most importantly progress.

“The miasma of plague was in Hecker both literally and figuratively atmospheric. It rolled like a fog out of the mysterious East, a crawling miasma exhaled by earthquakes and volcanoes, by the rotting dead in graveyards and battlefields, by decaying matter in marshes and swamps. Plague leveled all those who stood before it and spared no person. It seeped into churches, castles, and cottages. There was no escape. Nature herself spoke of the coming disaster. Comets, earthquakes, and volcanoes shattered man’s complacency. A pillar of fire appeared over the papal palace at Avignon. Plants and animals behaved in a bizarre manner. The very heavens rained disaster.” (Getz 1991: 276-277)

The plague itself was as heroic as disastrous.   Nature becomes God’s avenging army that sweeps away a whole civilization that has gone astray. Getz believes that Hecker set the foundation for most 19th and 20th century plague scholarship on four basic pillars: 1) the Black Death marked the end of an era and the start of a reinvigorated, more industrious society; 2) the plague was a natural phenomenon that was beyond human understanding,  awesome in its power, and unlike anything before or since;  3) the Black Death was a double-edged sword that was both terrible  in its destruction but also culturally transformative, begetting the Renaissance, and 4) a focus on the bizarre and morbid facts and behaviors. Getz notes that Hecker was the first person to focus on Flagellants or the massacre of Jews during the Black Death, two aspects of the pandemic that still draw an extraordinary amount of attention.  These four elements compromise what Getz calls Gothic epidemiology.

Many plague historians followed in Hecker’s footsteps (and occasionally still do). The morbid and bizarre feature more in plague history than in any other area of the history of medicine. The plague doctor has become an icon of  the Middle Ages.  Claims that the plague is the root cause behind vampires, werewolves and revenants/zombies are still made. The awesomeness of the plague as a natural phenomenon is still with us and can almost border on nature worship. Nearly 150 years after Hecker’s paradigm emerged, Robert Gottfried’s The Black Death: Natural and Human Disaster in Medieval Europe (1983) opens with a Chaucer  quotation, “Nature, the vicaire of the almyghty lorde” (The Parliament of Fowls, c. 1380). So two of Hecker’s four pillars are still with us in varying degrees. Given how popular Gothic culture still is, these elements are likely to remain.

The dilemma for plague historians and scientists comes in attracting interdisciplinary and public attention for their work without distorting the history and/or science. The easiest way to attract attention is by focusing on either the bizarre and morbid, or on nature’s power and plague’s uniqueness. This is the same compromise documentary films must make.  To avoid this fate some will be happy writing only for other academics of their ilk, but for all except the most specialized topics this is short-sighted. First, as one of the most interdisciplinary topics available today it is necessary to write so that other disciplines can understand and follow the argument, and to highlight aspects that are interesting to other disciplines. It not fair to complain about the misuse of our work if we don’t write at an interdisciplinary level. Given the wide range of disciplines involved in plague studies this is essentially a college-level general public audience. Second, the plague’s attraction for those who like elements of  Gothic culture means that there are educational opportunities for history and science. The CDC received a fair amount of attention for its Zombie apocalypse  preparedness educational program and the Zombie Research Society has a real epidemiologist on their advisory board. Of course, zombies being entirely fictional gives them a lot of latitude. However, if done carefully the plague can still be used to teach history and science without over focusing on only the most bizarre aspects or distorting its history.

The other two of Hecker’s pillars are the creation of academics rather than appealing to the public. Did the plague end an era and create a positive cultural transformation? Most plague historians can dispatch the idea that the Black Death was a great boundary in time after which everything changed. This is not to say that the plague didn’t have a cultural impact but it did not beget the Renaissance or the Reformation. It is just as likely that in periods of cultural transformation and upheaval, humans are more vulnerable to the plague and its transmission patterns. Meaning the plague gathered momentum because of cultural changes rather than being the cause of cultural change.

This also makes me think of the questions that surround the Plague of Justinian that began in 541. Did it end antiquity? Did it prevent the Western Roman Empire from recovering and reasserting itself? No. How odd that we place a plague pandemic at the beginning and end of the Medieval period.  Who determined when ‘classical antiquity‘ was as a period? Those same 17-18th century elites who developed Gothic literature. As modern historians show more continuity across time periods, there is a tendency to chip away at the length of the medieval period. The new designation of Late Antiquity is chipping the period of c. 500-750 away from early medieval, taking the Plague of Justianian with it. Fitting for a plague named for a Roman emperor?

In the Gothic epidemiology paradigm, the plague of Justianian must have been minimized to the point that it was forgotten for a long time. Afterall, it didn’t create a reinvigorated society; it marked the beginning of the medieval period, the ‘dark ages‘. The term ‘dark ages’ being contrasted with the supposed light of Rome. Perhaps we should refer to Gothic historiography rather than epidemiology since the paradigm clearly goes beyond just the Black Death.

References

Getz FM (1991). Black death and the silver lining: meaning, continuity, and revolutionary change in histories of medieval plague. Journal of the history of biology, 24 (2), 265-89 PMID: 11612554

Mengel DC (2011). A plague on Bohemia? Mapping the Black Death. Past & present, 211 (1), 3-34 PMID: 21961188

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