Swine Flu, Bird Flu, Flu-Flu, Spanish Flu, Yellow Fever, Typhoid, Typhus, Consumption and Polio. All famous diseases, and all, in their respective eras, the unseen terrors of mankind. In the 21st Century, it’s swine flu and bird flu. In 1918, it was the dreaded ‘Spanish Flu’. In 1793, it was Yellow Fever and in the 1930s, it was Polio. But these, now largely treatable and preventable diseases, pale in comparison to the Granddaddy of all sicknesses, the very name of which, brave people dared not to speak. They called it ‘the pestilence’, ‘the sickenesse’ (original, 17th century spelling), ‘the plague’ and ‘The Black Death’.

Known to modern, medical science by the name ‘Yersinia Pestis’, Bubonic Plague, often shortened to ‘the plague’ or ‘the Black Death’, was one of the most feared diseases for hundreds and hundreds of years. From as far back as the 14th century, people lived in horror of another, unannounced and unstoppable outbreak of a disease so lethal, it could kill within hours. Such was the Plague’s ferocity and fear-factor that even today, a phrase which has its origins from over 700 years ago, still lingers in the English language today: “To avoid it like the Plague”.

The History of the Black Death.

The Black Death has been known to mankind for centuries. The most famous outbreak of the Black Death started in the 1340s, not ending until 1350. Over the course of three years, the dreaded ‘Plague’ killed as much as two thirds of the people of Europe, in some cases, killing every single person in a given community. But where did it come from?

The pandemic of 1347 is widely believed to have started in Asia, possibly China or Hong Kong. The plague bacterium, living in infected fleas which lived on rats, crossed the seven seas on ships which sailed from Asia to Europe, trading goods such as precious metals, cloth and spices. When the ships docked in Italy and Greece, they were ordered to be quarantined, when it was seen, what terrible health the ship’s crews were in, but it was too late. Rats onboard the plague ships scampered onto European shores, along the mooring-ropes of the ships, tied up in the harbour. Once with a toe-hold in Mediterranian Europe, the plague was unstoppable.

Such was the plague’s ferocity, that until fairly recently, it never fully went away. The worst years were from 1347-1350, but the plague came back again in the mid 1400s and almost every successive generation since. In 1665 it returned again, devastating several major cities in England, especially London, killing up to 100,000 Londoners, roughly 1/3 of the city’s population at the time.

It wasn’t until the 19th century, with improved hygeine, that the plague, in urban areas, at least, started to disappear. Eventually, the link with rats was established, and rat-catchers could make big bucks sweeping through houses and catching rats and killing them. But until modern antibiotics, the plague had a mortality rate in the high ninties for every outbreak that occurred.

What is the Plague?

The plague is a bacterial infection. The bacterium known as ‘Yersinia Pestis’ lives in the fleas on rats. When the rat dies, the flea has to find a new host-body. If it was a human, then the flea would bite the human, vomiting infected blood (previously from the rat), into the human’s bloodstream. There were two forms of the plague, the more famous ‘Bubonic Plague’, and the less well-known ‘Pneumonic Plague’, both of which are lethal. After being bitten by the flea, nfection follows very quickly. If I were to describe the symptoms of the plague in one word, it would be: “Horrific”.

And they were.

The Symptoms.

Once bitten by an infected flea, you could expect to be dizzy, faint, feverish, weak, fatigued and queasy. As the infection grew worse, large lumps filled with blood and pus would start to grow around your pelvis, armpits and neck. These were called ‘buboes’. Filled with blood and pus as they were, they turned the skin a dark red which eventually went black, which gives rise to the two names: ‘Bubonic Plague’ and ‘Black Death’. Other symptoms included uncontrollable vomiting and joint-pains.

The swellings were incredibly painful. When they burst, blood and pus went everywhere. The infection soon got even worse, though, and not long after, you’d be suffering from internal bleeding which resulted in dark bruises all over your body. When the infection reached your lungs, you coughed up pus and blood. If this was the pneumonic strain of the disease, your coughing spread the bacteria through the air, infecting anyone stupid enough to stand near to you. While in some places, it is written that you could last up to a week, in most cases, death came in a matter of hours. Usually, twenty-four hours after being bitten, you were dead. If you were really lucky, you lasted two days, but not much more beyond that.

Controlling the Plague.

In the days before hospitals, before PA announcements, the internet, modern medicine and widespread literacy, controlling the spread of the plague and enforcing the laws regarding its containment was very tricky and the methods used were very extreme. People from the 14th to the 17th centuries had almost no idea how disease was spread. Many believed it was due to ‘bad blood’ and that to cure the patient, you had to ‘bleed’ them (a practice that existed right into the dawn of the 19th century!). Bleeding involved making a cut or an incision in the arm of the patient and bleeding out a measured quantity of blood (say, two quarts), and then bandaging the arm up again. It was believed that bleeding the patient removed the ‘bad blood’ and the ‘pestilence’ from the afflicted sufferer and that this would eventually restore the balance of good blood. Unfortunately, all bleeding did was make the patient even weaker and even less able to survive. Treatments such as bleeding and the various quack medicines that people peddled to desperate plague-victims were about as effective as making a frying-pan out of tissue-paper.

What people did understand, however, was that to stop the plague from spreading, they did have to isolate it. If you isolated the sickness, it had nowhere to go, and it would eventually die out with no fresh victims. As a result, officials of all kinds, from priests to city mayors and kings and noblemen, imposed strict quarantines on their communities. Nobody was allowed to enter and nobody was allowed to leave, at least, not without written permission. The houses where plague-victims lived were invariably locked up. The doors were locked and bolted, windows shuttered and the entire house was sealed up. Everyone inside the house (the dying patient as well as his or her family!) was NOT allowed OUT and nobody apart from ‘authorised personnel’ such as plague-buriers, seekers of the dead, plague-nurses or doctors, were allowed in. Houses having the disease were marked with big, red crosses and had to be sealed up for at least two weeks. When the house was declared safe again, a large, white circle was painted around the cross, to indicate that the ‘pestilence’ had left the house. The words ‘Lord have mercy on us’ were usually written on the door as well, as a prayer for the poor souls under house-arrest.

Burying the Dead

Some of you may remember a scene from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”, with a plague-burier going through a squalid slum in Medieval England, pushing a cart and ringing a bell, calling out the mournful words: “Bring out your dead!”, and then having the corpses of plague-victims dumped onto the cart. This isn’t just fanciful filmmaking. This is what really happened. Plague-buriers and Seekers of the Dead (old women who were paid tuppence for examining dead bodies), went through communities, ringing a bell to signal their approach, and calling out the famous, ever plague-associated catchphrase: ‘Bring out your dead!’.

The dead were usually wrapped in white shrouds (like a body-bag). Once dragged out of the house, they were dumped onto the cart and then wheeled away, often dozens of corpses at a time. Early on in the plague, you could generally get a decent burial, with a priest and a coffin and mourners…but as time went on and the plague got worse and worse, there just wasn’t time for all the pomp and ceremony. Gravediggers who dug massive holes called ‘plague pits’, would help the plague-buriers fling the bodies of the dead into the plague pits. With each layer of bodies, a bucket of crushed lime was thrown over the top, to aid in decomposition, before a layer of soil was thrown over, and then the process was repeated again, with more bodies, until you had this sort of chocolate-and-lime layer-cake of death. There are dozens, hundreds of plague-pits all over Europe and England. The locations of many are lost to history, but occasionally, construction-workers digging the foundations for new buildings or renovating existing buildings, do stumble across the dozens of skeletons of plague-victims, buried on that spot all those centuries ago.

Resistance to the Plague

Despite its incredible mortality rate (which was anywhere from 70-100%), some people actually did survive the plague, despite everyone around them dropping like flies. The most famous case of plague survival is the tiny village of Eyam in Derbyshire, England.

Eyam in Derbyshire, was struck by the Plague in the August of 1665. At the time, the English capital, London, was suffering nearly 1,000 deaths a week from Plague. The Plague came to Eyam in a cart, of all things. A delivery of cloth to the village tailor had plague-infected fleas living in it. When the tailor handled the cloth, he was bitten. Within a week, he was dead. The residents of Eyam, understandably shocked and terrified, at first thought that they should flee. Unsure of what to do, they consulted the village rector, the Reverend William Mompesson. Rev. Mompesson insisted that the best thing to do was to put the entire village on lockdown. A voluntary quarantine to prevent the disease’s spread to nearby communities.

A nearby nobleman, catching wind of the villagers’ determination to contain this most dreaded of diseases at all costs, agreed to send deliveries of food and basic medicines to the village, at great risk to his own life. The supplies were left on the outskirts of the village at nightfall and Eyam residents would go out, under cover of darkness, to retrieve them. The supplies were paid for with coins soaked in vinegar, as it was believed that vinegar (being acidic), would kill off the ‘pestilence’ and sterilise the coins, making them safe to touch by others.

The plague raged through Eyam for months on end, in some cases, killing entire households. Stories told of women such as Elizabeth Hancock, who buried her entire family of six sons and her husband, all within a week, and yet never falling sick herself. Another tale tells of another woman, driven mad by the death of her husband, who ran downstairs one evening and consumed an entire jug (or at least a great quantity) of…bacon fat! Whether or not bacon fat is a cure for the plague, I don’t know, but the story continues that she survived. The village gravedigger, despite handling and burying upwards of 250 plague-corpses, never fell ill himself.

Today, Eyam is still famous as the Plague Village, and descendants of the 1665 plague-survivors, still reside there, over 300 years after their ancestors fought and won a battle against one of the most dangerous diseases ever known to mankind. Genetic research in the village (using DNA samples from residents who can reliably trace their ancestry back to a village resident of 1665), has revealed that these villagers…and their incredibly lucky ancestors…contained a genetic mutation which gave them a natural resistance to the plague, which explains why, despite being literally surrounded by death for well over a year, they never succumbed to the diseaase themselves.

The Plague Today

Believe it or not, but the Black Death still exists today. It never really died out, it just went away, waiting to come back, unannounced, to wreak havoc on mankind yet again. The World Health Organisation still records hundreds of cases of Plague each year, but the legendary outbreaks of 1347 and 1665 are now, thankfully, little more than the texts in our history books, since with modern medicine, plague is now treatable and controllable.

“A Generall Bill for this present year, ending the 19th of December, 1665. Report made to the King’s most Excellent Majesty”.

This is the Bill of Mortality for the middle of December, 1665, in London. Down the bottom you can read the entry:

“Buried:

Males: 48,569.
Females: 48,737.
In All: 97,306.
Of the Plague: 68,596”.

Over two thirds of the burials listed were for the Black Death. The Great Plague of London did not finally end until February of 1666, by which point, 100,000 people had died.