Plague Index

This page is an index of posts on the Plague. Some of these posts are from Heavenfield my other blog on medieval history.

Molecular Biology and Epidemiology

• Epidemiology, Climate Change, and the Justinian Plague
• Identifying the Plague
• More aDNA from the Black Death
• Plague DNA from Late Antique Bavaria
• Detecting pathogens in medieval Venice
• A Plague Crypt from Late Medieval Bavaria
• Trench Fever and Plague in 14th Century France
• DNA of the Black Death at East Smithfield, London
• Black Death Genome Fished Out of East Smithfield
• Plague Detection by Immuno-PCR
• Achtman on Plague Evolution
• Mark Achtman on Plague Genetics
• Insights from the Plague Genome, Part 1: The Chromosome
• Molecular traces of the Black Death (on the Black Death Network)
• Remodeling the Plague Phylogenetic Tree
• Fleshing out Yersinia pestis
• Molecular Confirmation of Yersinia pestis in 6th Century Bavaria
• Molecular Forensics of a Natural Pneumonic Plague Outbreak
• Changing the Plague-Flea Transmission Paradigm
• Keeping Bronze Age Yersinia pestis in Perspective
• Rivers in European Plague Outbreak Patterns, 1347-1760
• The Case for Louse-Transmitted Plague
• Presentations on the Plague from the European Association of Archaeologists, Vilnius, Lithuania, 2016
• Ancient Plague in Kyrgyzstan

Plague and Famine

• Malnutrition and Epidemics Come Hand in Hand

Female Pulex irritans, the human flea, from the Katja ZSM collection (CC3.0)

Prairie dog (credit: Aaron Siirila)

Marmot fighting a wild dog in northern Tibet (Source: China Tibet Online/ Xinhua)

Plague Dynamics and Vectors

• Ignoring the bugs and rats
• Cats, Camels, and the Plague
• Chain of Infection for the plague
• What makes a Super-Spreader?
• Primary Pneumonic Plague Transmission in the USA, 1900-2009
• Tracking a Live Yersinia pestis Infection with Bioluminescence
• Reactivation of Ancient Plague Foci in Libya, 2009
• Enzootic Plague and the Great Gerbil of Central Asia
• Yersinia pestis found in human fleas, Madagascar 2013
• Multi-strain Plague blooms over landscapes
• Changing the Plague-Flea Transmission Paradigm
• Dogs as Plague Sentinals and Vectors
• The Promiscuous Human Flea
• The Case for Louse-Transmitted Plague

Pneumonic Plague Transmission

• Keeping Bronze Age Yersinia pestis in Perspective
• Primary Pneumonic Plague Transmission in the USA, 1900-2009
• The Great Pneumonic Plague of 1910-1911 (Review of William Summers’ The Great Manchurian Plague of 1910-1911: The Geopolitics of an Epidemic Disease)
• A Synopsis of an Unusual Pneumonic Plague Outbreak in Madagascar, 2011
• Troubling Thoughts on Plague in Madagascar (2017)

Immune Response to the Plague

• Generating Immunity to the Plague

Book Reviews

• Japanese Use of Plague during World War II (Review of Sheldon Harris’ Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare, 1932-1945, and the American Cover-up)
• Paul Slack’s Plague: A Very Short Introduction
• Cook & Cook’s The Plague Files: Crisis Management in Sixteenth Century Seville
• The Great Pneumonic Plague of 1910-1911 (Review of William Summers’ The Great Manchurian Plague of 1910-1911: The Geopolitics of an Epidemic Disease)
• Wendy Orent on the Plague (Wendy Orent, Plague: The Mysterious Past and Terrifying Future of the World’s Most Dangerous Disease, 2004 reprinted 2013.)
• Setting Affairs in Order During the Plague, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne 1636 (Keith Wrightson’s Ralph Tailor’s Summer: A Scrivener, his City and the Plague, 2011)
• The Black Death in the Ottoman Empire and the Ragusan Republic
• Environment, Society and the Black Death in Sweden (Environment, Society and the Black Death: An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Late Medieval Crisis in Sweden. Edited by Per Lagerås. Oxbow Books, 2016. 2016)

First Plague Pandemic – the Plague of Justinian, 541-c. 750

Some of these posts are on my early medieval blog, Heavenfield.

• Plague of 664
• 6th Century British Plague
• Plague texts from Late Antique Britain
• Beyond Pelusium
• Plague among the nuts (Ireland, 576)
• Plague DNA from Late Antique Bavaria
• The Plague of Justinian in Constantinople
• The Year of Three Natural Disasters: Ireland, AD 700
• Procopius’ Account of the Plague of Constantinople, 542
• Plague and the Origins of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms
• The Mortality of Children, Ireland 683-685
• The Ancient Silence (Lombardy, 560s)
• The Plague Ship of Marseilles, 588 AD
• St Michael, the Plague, and Castel Sant’Angelo
• Visualizing the Plague of Justinian in the Mediterranean
• Molecular Confirmation of Yersinia pestis in 6th Century Bavaria
• Contagion and Pestilence in Isidore of Seville’s Etymologies
• Procopius indictment of the ‘outlandish theories of natural science’
• Aldhelm on the medical uses of beavers
• Plague in 6th century Aschheim and Altenerding, Bavaria
• Ancient Plague in Kyrgyzstan

Pestilence in the Works of the Venerable Bede (d. 735)

• Bede on the Plague
• Plague in a time of war (Northumbria, 684-685)
• King Oswald and the Sussex Plague
• PW: Cynefrith, Physician of Ely
• Bede on human illness
• Plague comes to Lindisfarne, Christmas c. 683
• Is this St. Cuthbert?

Second Plague Pandemic – ‘the Black Death’, 14th century

Black Death at Tourinai, 1349

• Art of the Black Death
• More aDNA from the Black Death
• Detecting pathogens in medieval Venice
• A Plague Crypt from Late Medieval Bavaria
• Trench Fever and Plague in 14th Century France
• DNA of the Black Death at East Smithfield, London
• Nature Presents Draft Sequence of the Black Death Genome [Video]
• Black Death Genome Fished Out of East Smithfield
• Did India and China Escape the Black Death? 
• Plague at the Siege of Caffa, 1346
• Contours of Black Death at Charterhouse Square, London
• Environment, Society and the Black Death in Sweden 
• Rivers in European Plague Outbreak Patterns, 1347-1760
• Pregnancy, ‘coffin birth’, and the Black Death

Sporadic Waves of Plague, 1400 – 1894

• Shi Daonan’s ‘Death of Rats’
• Plague in 18th century Egypt
• The Vampire in the Plague Pit
• Detecting pathogens in medieval Venice
• Pest Anatomized
• London Plague of 1665 [movie clip]
• Opening the Plague Files (Review of Cook & Cook, The Plague Files: Crisis Management in Sixteenth Century Seville)
• An Anniversary year for Natural Disasters: 1815, 1665, and 1315
• Contracting a Plague Doctor, Ragusa 1526
• The Black Death in the Ottoman Empire and the Ragusan Republic
• Rivers in European Plague Outbreak Patterns, 1347-1760

17th century London

Third Plague Pandemic – 1894 to c. 1950

• Japanese Use of Plague during World War II
  
• Primary Pneumonic Plague Transmission in the USA, 1900-2009
• A forgotten plague outbreak? (Pensacola, FL)
• The Great Pneumonic Plague of 1910-1911 (Manchuria)
• Renaming the Third Pandemic

Plague Today

• Uganda’s 2006 Plague Outbreak
• Plague: New Mexico, May 2011
• Primary Pneumonic Plague Transmission in the USA, 1900-2009
• Reactivation of Ancient Plague Foci in Libya, 2009
• Plague in Surat: 20 years later
• Antibiotic Resistance, Agriculture, and the Plague
• Western Iranian Plague Foci Still Active, 2011-2012
• Molecular Forensics of a Natural Pneumonic Plague Outbreak
• Yersinia pestis found in human fleas, Madagascar 2013
• A Synopsis of an Unusual Pneumonic Plague Outbreak in Madagascar, 2011
• Multi-strain Plague blooms over landscapes
• Pregnancy, ‘coffin birth’, and the Black Death
• Troubling Thoughts on Plague in Madagascar (2017)

Plague Historiography

• Retrospective Diagnosis in the 21st century
  
• Defining pandemic
• Renaming the Third Pandemic
• Academic Plague Identity Wars Continue
• Expanding the Historical Plague Paradigm
• Lazarus does not have the plague!

Miscellaneous

The Black Death (UK 2010, US 2011)

• Boom and Bust
• Yersinia etymology
• Chain of Infection for the plague
• Black Death: the movie (released UK 2010, US 2011)
• A Flock of Plague Doctors
• Presentations on the Plague from the European Association of Archaeologists, Vilnius, Lithuania, 2016
• Black Death (to “Hollaback Girl by Gwen Stefani), History Teachers, Youtube, 2010.