What disease was plague? : on the controversy over the microbiological identity of plague epidemics of the past / by Ole J. Benedictow.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Benedictow, Ole Jrgen.

Series:

Brill's series in the history of the environment ; v. 2.

Brill's series in the history of the environment, 1876-6595 ; v. 2

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Plague--Microbiology.

Plague.

Plague--Epidemiology.

Plague--History.

Communicable diseases--History.

Communicable diseases.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (762 p.)

Place of Publication:

Leiden : Brill, 2010.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In recent decades, alternatives to the established bubonic-plague theory have been presented as to the microbiologcal identity and mechanism(s) of spread of historical plague epidemics. In this monograph, the six important alternative theories are intensively discussed in the light of the historical sources, the central primary studies and standard works on bubonic plague and the alternative microbiological agents, insofar as they are testable. These seven theories are incompatible and at least six of them must be untenable. In the author’s opinion, the arguments against the bubonic-plague theory and for all alternative theories are untenable. This monograph therefore also has been written also as a standard work on bubonic plague, giving a broad and in-depth presentation of the medical, epidemiological and historical evidence and the methodological tenets for identification of historical diseases by comparison with modern medical knowledge.

Contents:

The issue and the problems

The ethics of scholarly work

Rats

The spread of bubonic plague over distances

Mortality in india

Was historical plague a viral or bacterial disease? : the question of immunity

Defining feature 1 : latency periods

Defining feature 2 : inverse correlation between mortality rate and population density

Defining feature 3 : buboes as a normal clinical feature in epidemics

Defining feature 4 : DNA of yersinia pestis from plague graves

Defining feature 5 : seasonality of bubonic plague

The beginning : the alternative theories of Shrewsbury and Morris

Gunnar Karlsson's alternative theory : that historical plague was pure epidemics of primary pneumonic plague

Twigg's alternative theory

The alternative theory of Scott and Duncan

Cohn's alternative theory.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

ISBN:

1-283-29232-7

9786613292322

90-04-19391-X

90-04-18002-8

OCLC:

743805291

Publisher Number:

10.1163/ej.9789004180024.i-746 DOI