Re: Black Death timeline

SolomonW <SolomonW@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > wrote:
In article <gfdcuf$4da$2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, gans@xxxxxxxxx says...
SolomonW <SolomonW@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > wrote:
In article <gf9v0r$2rc$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, gans@xxxxxxxxx says...
SolomonW <SolomonW@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In article <gf7uu1$kuh$12@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, gans@xxxxxxxxx says...
SolomonW <SolomonW@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > wrote:
In article <BbOdnZIotbp32YvUnZ2dnUVZ_oWdnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
pj@xxxxxxxxxx says...

"Peter Jason" <pj@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:l_idnf1s5LOs3ovUnZ2dnUVZ_umdnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"SolomonW" <SolomonW@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > wrote in message
news:MPG.2380e715ccadb8e598971f@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
In article <gf4q1k$4ph$13@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
gans@xxxxxxxxx says...
SolomonW <SolomonW@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > wrote:
In article
<wbSdnVV1F8QwTI7UnZ2dnUVZ_u-dnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
pj@xxxxxxxxxx says...
Plague is transmitted from rodent to humans by the
bite of
an infected flea vector.


Several problems with the speed of the spread of black
death might be
explained if birds could be a carrier too. Say if the
plague could be
transmitted from a bird to a flea, human or rodent.

Then as you say by fleas using rodents and humans.

One must be careful here. The disease spread at the
rate
of human travel. No problem there at all.



Birds would simplify some of the mysteries of how quickly
it spread and
some of the locations.


Many fleas can live off many different hosts including
birds
particularly if they are desperate. So I do not see it as
a big ask.

Please do a google search on birds fleas and diseases.

This book maybe interesting too.

http://books.google.com.au/books?id=0gsPc5lk7_UC&pg=PA850&lpg=PA850
&dq=birds+carry+desease++fleas&source=web&ots=mu2czHfSzc&sig=SQa6cbsH7Ap
SFsJYVbKsdROvSw0&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=8&ct=result


What about cats? They're always about.


PS
http://books.google.com.au/books?id=Cl2dLK5S5OgC&pg=PA98&lpg=PA98&dq=fleas+%22cats%22&source=web&ots=_74XbFQyJQ&sig=iSWasp_1y9lHP8CZJBPDQ-_wrkM&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=10&ct=result#PPA97,M1





Interesting. Dogs can also spread plague. A flea can live off many
different animals.

What I find so interesting about birds is they can travel great
distances across the sea fast.

Please stop.

If you tell me I am wrong, I will stop instantly.

The way to do this is to do a bit of reading first.
One could start at the Center for Disease Control
of the US government at:

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvbid/plague/

and then get a library copy (interlibrary loan may be
necessesary) of Ole J. Benedictow's "The Black Death
1346-1353" since he discusses all aspects of the Black
Deaths' transmission, history, probable origins, etc.

I say this because there are always folks around who
simply cannot accept the scientific and academic
consensus on a given issue. And while that consensus
may not always be right, it is the way to bet if you
are just becoming introduced to a subject.

All areas, the carriers, the rate of spread, the possible
alternative ideas, etc., have been studied. But since
the subject is romantically attractive, one still reads
all sorts of assertions about it that are just plain
wrong.

For example: it is said that the disease could not have
been spread by rats because then there would have been
reports of dead rats. Guess what? If one looks at
the original sources (Rosemary Horrox has a collection
of them in her book cleverly named "The Black Death")
one finds that dead rats *are* reported.

If one goes to Amazon and searches for "The Black Death",
the top 10 titles that come up are all worth reading.
(It is only 9 books because Philip Ziegler's book is on
the list twice in two editions). I've read six of them
since this is a topic that interests me.

The Black Death 1346-1353: The Complete History (Paperback)

Please check the The New England Journal of Medicine review, who I
suspect know there medicine.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Historians have realized since the work of Graham Twigg, in 1984, that
the Black Death and the subtropical Y. pestis traveled at vastly
different speeds. Even with the railway and the steamship, the 20th-
century plague, because of its dependence on the homebound rat, spread
overland at about 8 miles per year, whereas the contagious Black Death
almost equaled that speed per day. Nonetheless, Benedictow tries to
bring the two time frames closer together. He speeds up the 20th-century
plague by reporting infection times only for California, where the
disease is carried by the prairie dog, not the homebound rat, and has
been known to move as fast as 15 miles per year. Benedictow devotes
considerably more space to the slowing of the Black Death. For instance,
he makes claims for earlier dates of departure of the plague at a given
place, arguing that chroniclers or wills recorded the disease only after
it had struck the elite members of a population; but then he does not
use the same rules when discussing the plague's arrival at a second
place. More often, however, Benedictow casts aside any rate of disease
spread that was faster than he likes: at these junctures, the Black
Death made "metastatic leaps." But even with his various stratagems, his
results still show the medieval plague traveling 30 times as fast as the
modern one -- a discrepancy he does not explain or even admit to.
Casuistic sleights of hand plague Benedictow's demography almost as much
as they do his epidemiology.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++



I think that this book looks good and I might get it.

The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most
Devastating Plague of All Time (P.S.) (Paperback)







First, there are many different fleas. Each species is rather
particular about its hosts.

My understanding is fleas prefer certain hosts but if they cannot find
such a host they will jump species.

Correct, but they do not do well on "foreign" hosts. And
since infected fleas die and since the foreign host may not
become infected, very little of the disease seems to be spread
in this way.


There are cases where it has spread from birds to humans

Avian influenza H5N1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H5N1#Humans_and_H5N1

West Nile virus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Nile_virus#Transmission_and_susceptibi
lity

You may find this page interesting.
http://web.birdbarrier.com/BirdBarrier/SitePages/Diseases.htm


This is possible explaination for the Spanish flue
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu_research#Origin_of_Virus

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
One theory is that the virus strain originated at Fort Riley, Kansas, by
two genetic mechanisms ? genetic drift and antigenic shift ? in viruses
in poultry and swine which the fort bred for local consumption. Though
initial data from a recent reconstruction of the virus suggested that it
jumped directly from birds to humans, without traveling through swine
[1], this has since been cast into doubt. One researcher argues that the
disease was found in Haskell County, Kansas as early as January 1918.[2]
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


Second, not every flea can actually
*TRANSMIT* the plague bacillus, Yersina pestis.

The biology of disease transmission is not nearly as simple
as "a flea can live off many different animals."

A lot of strange stuff has been written about the Black Death.
It also attracts a lot of strange theories from folks who like
to think that there is a major mystery in where it came from
and how it spread.

In fact a fairly enormous amount of information has survived
about its 1347 appearance in Europe. Correlating it all and
reducing it to consumable proportions is not the sort of thing
that can be done by just letting one's imagination fly.

Brainstorming is often interesting and rewarding.

Yes it is. Shall we brainstorm about where human babies
come from? I'll vote for storks. No, I'm not trying to
be snide. I'm trying to make the point that it is hard
to brainstorm in an area where many of the answers are
already known.


Except that nobody ever claimed that the Black Death
spread by rats carrying it from village to village.

I suspect if someone magically teleported from Italy in 1345 to now,
despite what is your considerable knowledge of what happened there are
many question you could ask him about it.

We know more about what happened during the epidemic(s) than
the locals did at the time.



Indeed, much of what we know though is based on these ignorant peoples
report.

Why do you speak of them as "ignorant". We have more knowlege
than they do, but they knew what they saw. Their descriptions
of the three forms of the disease and their dscriptions of the
symptoms agree entirely with what was seen in recent plague
outbreaks (in the last 100 years or so).

They recognize that the plague was spread by some abnormal
but unseen agent is spot on. To avoid it many fled the
towns for the country side. Indeed, Boccaccio's "Decameron"
is based on 10 people fleeing to the countryside and amusing
each other with varius tales.

--
--- Paul J. Gans
.

Relevant Pages

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