Speaker 1: Towards the beginning of spring, the doleful effects of the
Speaker 1: pestilence began to be horribly apparent by symptoms. An issue
Speaker 1: of blood from the nose was a manifest sign of
Speaker 1: inevitable death. But in men and women alike it first
Speaker 1: betrayed itself by the emergence of certain tumors in the
Speaker 1: groin or armpits, some of which grew as large as
Speaker 1: a common apple. From the two said parts of the body,
Speaker 1: it soon began to propagate and spread itself in all directions,
Speaker 1: after which the form changed, black spots making their appearance
Speaker 1: in many cases on the arm, or thigh or elsewhere,
Speaker 1: now few and large, then minute and numerous, Almost.
Speaker 2: All within three days from the.
Speaker 1: Appearance of said symptoms, sooner or later died. Many dropped
Speaker 1: at in the open streets by day and night, whilst
Speaker 1: a great many others, though dying in their own homes,
Speaker 1: drew their neighbour's attention to the fact, more by the
Speaker 1: smell of their rotting corpses than by any other means.
Speaker 1: And what with these and the others who were dying
Speaker 1: all over the city, bodies were here, there and everywhere.
Speaker 1: It was not merely a question of one citizen avoiding another.
Speaker 1: This scourge had implanted such a great terror in the
Speaker 1: hearts of men and women that brothers abandoned brothers, uncles
Speaker 1: their nephews, sisters their brothers, and in many cases, wives
Speaker 1: deserted husbands. But even worse and almost incredible, was the
Speaker 1: fact that fathers and mothers refused to nurse and assist
Speaker 1: their own children, as though they did not belong to them.
Speaker 3: Oh, yeah, that was so hard for me to remain
Speaker 3: quiet while you recorded that.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So that is from everyone's favorite plague chronicler, which everyone
Speaker 1: has a favorite play of course, right, yeah, Giovanni Boccaccio,
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 2: That's how you say.
Speaker 3: It sounds right, who.
Speaker 1: Was living in Florence during the time of the Black Death? Wow,
Speaker 1: And so he wrote a book called The Decameron based
Speaker 1: on what he saw, and that was just one of
Speaker 1: the little bits in there, according to other contemporary accounts.
Speaker 2: Quite accurate.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, So hi everybody, Hi, welcome to episode five.
Speaker 1: Yes, oh, this podcast will kill you. Yeah, it really
Speaker 1: will today. Yeah, and you know what we haven't done yet,
Speaker 1: I realized tell me said our last names? Oh my god,
Speaker 1: you're right, Yeah, we're always like.
Speaker 3: I'm Erin and I'm also Aaron.
Speaker 2: Well it turns out I'm Aaron Welsh.
Speaker 3: And I'm also Aaron Alman Updyke.
Speaker 2: So yeah, we wanted to.
Speaker 3: I mean, we should have introduced ourselves earlier.
Speaker 2: Maybe.
Speaker 3: Well, if you've made it this far, it's nice to
Speaker 3: meet you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks for listening.
Speaker 1: Can I just tell you how excited I am to
Speaker 1: talk about.
Speaker 3: I know how excited you are.
Speaker 2: This is the one, this is the disease.
Speaker 1: They got me into epidemiology, into disease, ecology, into history.
Speaker 2: I'm thrilled.
Speaker 3: I just am so excited based on how excited you are, like,
Speaker 3: regardless of how much you know, Like, your excitement is
Speaker 3: through the roof, and that thrills me. Ya.
Speaker 1: And so this week we're going to do something a
Speaker 1: little bit different and next week also so because plague
Speaker 1: is such a beast of a topic and has been
Speaker 1: all over the news lately, yeh, we're going to be
Speaker 1: splitting this up into two episodes to give at the
Speaker 1: time that it deserves.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, plague is deserving of multiple episodes.
Speaker 1: And this week we'll be focusing on the biology of
Speaker 1: plague and then tracing its history up into the twentieth century. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then next week we'll talk about the impact of
Speaker 1: plague in the last one hundred and twenty years or so,
Speaker 1: and then fill you in on what's been.
Speaker 2: Going on in Madagascar.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 2: And don't worry.
Speaker 1: Each week we'll be drinking quarantinies. Oh yeah, slightly different ones.
Speaker 1: Speaking of which, what are we drinking this week?
Speaker 3: Quarantiny time, Quarantini time, yay. This week we're drinking the
Speaker 3: Boobo baby right, Boobo babyda?
Speaker 2: Yeah? And what is in the Bubo Babyda.
Speaker 3: It's essentially an extra dry martini. Okay, it's pretty thrilling.
Speaker 3: This is a gin martini. So if you'd like to
Speaker 3: drink along at home, go ahead and mix one and
Speaker 3: three quarters ounces of your favorite gin. My favorite is Hendrix,
Speaker 3: and you mix that with a quarter ounce of Driver
Speaker 3: Mooth and then a hefty splash of the juice from
Speaker 3: cocktail onions.
Speaker 1: And we're doing cocktail onions because.
Speaker 3: They look the most like boobos, which you'll learn all
Speaker 3: about and it's disgusting.
Speaker 2: But hey, okay, so speaking of boobos, yes.
Speaker 1: I want to know about the biology and the symptomology
Speaker 1: and all that good stuff about plague.
Speaker 3: I can't wait to tell you. I'm really excited to
Speaker 3: talk about plague today because this is our first real
Speaker 3: zoonotic disease and vector born and offers vector born disease.
Speaker 3: So that's really exciting for me, and I would guess
Speaker 3: for you too, since weird disease ecologists and so this
Speaker 3: type of disease is what's really exciting to us.
Speaker 2: And we also both study vector born.
Speaker 3: Diseases exactly right. If you are not aware, A zoonotic
Speaker 3: disease is essentially a disease that generally circulates in animal
Speaker 3: populations and often spills over into human populations, and a
Speaker 3: vector born disease is a disease such as, for example, malaria,
Speaker 3: that is transmitted by an insect, vector in the case
Speaker 3: of plague, is transmitted by the humble flea Ugh, I'm
Speaker 3: gonna say some things that actually might make you have
Speaker 3: some sympathy for the fleas. No, Lie, I didn't think
Speaker 3: it was possible, but as I was reading, I kind
Speaker 3: of felt bad for fleas.
Speaker 1: I'm going to keep an open mind, keep an open mind,
Speaker 1: and wait to be convinced.
Speaker 3: So let's go through the life cycle of plague. So
Speaker 3: plague is caused by a bacterium called Yourcinia pestis, which
Speaker 3: likely evolved to be a blood borne pathogen quite a
Speaker 3: long time ago. And I'm assuming you'll talk a bit
Speaker 3: more about the evolutionary history of this disease. Yeah, cool,
Speaker 3: So we won't get into that now. But what's really
Speaker 3: interesting is the life cycle of plague. Here's how it happens.
Speaker 3: A flea takes a blood meal from an infected let's
Speaker 3: call it a rat because those are really common, yeah,
Speaker 3: And the amount of bacteria that is in the rat's
Speaker 3: blood directly correlates with the percentage of fleas that get infected.
Speaker 3: Not all fleas are going to get infected, but usually
Speaker 3: at least around thirty percent of fleas that are feeding
Speaker 3: on a rat will get infected. And if you think
Speaker 3: of a common rat, it's got more than a few
Speaker 3: fleas on.
Speaker 2: It, right, Yeah, lots and lots and lots.
Speaker 3: Exactly, so a good proportion of those fleas end up
Speaker 3: getting infected. What happens is your Cinea pestis travels to
Speaker 3: the flea's stomach, where it starts multiplying and multiplying and multiplying,
Speaker 3: and within three to nine days after taking that infected
Speaker 3: blood meal. The bacteria have multiplied so much that they
Speaker 3: entirely block the esophagus of the flea. Oh my gosh,
Speaker 3: isn't that the craziest thing.
Speaker 2: That's disgusting.
Speaker 3: So then this poor flea is so hungry it tries
Speaker 3: to take another blood meal from another rat, but it
Speaker 3: can't because its esophagus is completely blocked, and so gobs
Speaker 3: and gobs of bacteria are blocking the entrance into the stomach.
Speaker 3: As it tries and fails to take a blood meal,
Speaker 3: it ends up regurgitating a mixture of blood and bacteria
Speaker 3: back into the rat. It's amazing, it's so cool. And
Speaker 3: what's sad, and this is why you should have a
Speaker 3: little bit of empathy for the flea, is that that
Speaker 3: block flea will end up dying of starvation and dehydration.
Speaker 2: Only after bringing the world to its knees.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, it's just one humble flea. But it's
Speaker 3: suggested that it has barfed eleven thousand to twenty four
Speaker 3: thousand individual basillie into its new host.
Speaker 1: Which is insane considering that in some like the infective dose,
Speaker 1: the number of bacteria needed to cause it infection is one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, incas exactly one it's crazy.
Speaker 2: So just one little vomitorious.
Speaker 3: You could infect twenty four thousand rats. In theory, I
Speaker 3: guess in the mammalian host, your Sinnia pestis will spread
Speaker 3: from the bite wound into the lymph system, the lymphatics
Speaker 3: underneath the skin, and then it will travel to the
Speaker 3: lymph nodes where it will replicate and replicate and replicate.
Speaker 3: Eventually that infection can then spread to the bloodstream, it
Speaker 3: can spread to your liver, your spleen, and other organs.
Speaker 3: And so that is sort of the general life cycle
Speaker 3: until another flea bites you and the cycle begins again.
Speaker 3: Isn't that cool?
Speaker 2: That's super cool.
Speaker 3: It's really fun. So that's generally how the disease circulates
Speaker 3: in its enzootic hosts, which means the host that it
Speaker 3: generally circulates in in the natural environment.
Speaker 2: Okay, so that's basically rodents for the most part.
Speaker 3: For the most part, rodents, and different species of rodents
Speaker 3: have different susceptibility to it. But if you think of
Speaker 3: I believe its name is Rattus ratus. The common it
Speaker 3: is sewer rat, right, black rat, black rat, city rat.
Speaker 1: There are some other species of rat that are common
Speaker 1: in North America.
Speaker 2: Right, it's the Norway rat for instance. Yeah, bigger and browner.
Speaker 3: Oh cool. Yeah, But so most species of rodent have
Speaker 3: at least some susceptibility to it. But whether or not
Speaker 3: they're gonna have extreme symptoms and end up dying, like
Speaker 3: for example, prairie dogs, or they'll be able to sustain
Speaker 3: a mild infection, such as sewer rats. It varies. But
Speaker 3: what's really interesting is that over two hundred mammalian species
Speaker 3: are known to be naturally infected with plague, naturally infected,
Speaker 3: naturally infected, So rodents are the most important hosts, but
Speaker 3: they're by no means the only host. Rodents are likely
Speaker 3: the most important in part because they have a very
Speaker 3: short life span a high replacement rate, so they're reproducing
Speaker 3: very rapidly, and they have a generally long breeding season.
Speaker 3: And additionally, it's likely that this bacterium evolved with these rodents,
Speaker 3: and so there is only mild resistance in the majority
Speaker 3: of these rodent species, if that makes sense, I think so.
Speaker 3: So these rodents serve to be really good hosts to
Speaker 3: maintain infection in a given area, and then other hosts
Speaker 3: like for example, cats, can amplify the disease and allow
Speaker 3: for it to spread to other victims.
Speaker 1: Is that because the proximity of cats to crazy humans
Speaker 1: who have cats, that is certainly no offense to all
Speaker 1: of our cat owning.
Speaker 3: Listeners like me, for example, That is certainly possible. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so that's sort of the life cycle of the plague.
Speaker 3: But that's all in animals.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I want to hear about it in humans. I
Speaker 2: do to the good stuff.
Speaker 3: I want to get to the good stuff. I mean,
Speaker 3: that was good stuff.
Speaker 2: No, I know, I really liked it.
Speaker 3: So the plague in humans, there's three different forms of plague.
Speaker 3: The first is the boobonic, the famous, the most famous,
Speaker 3: most likely that you've heard of it. It's what we
Speaker 3: named our drink after Boobo, the boobonic plague. This plague
Speaker 3: is caused when a human is infected via the bite
Speaker 3: of an infected flea. So it's not dissimilar from what
Speaker 3: we discussed in the animal cycle. A flea bites you,
Speaker 3: barfs a whole bunch of bacteria into your blood, and
Speaker 3: that's how you get infected. Those bacteria travel through your
Speaker 3: lymph system to your lymph nodes, most commonly the ones
Speaker 3: in your armpit or your groin and then the bacteria
Speaker 3: multiply a whole bunch of times there and it forms
Speaker 3: what's called a boobo, which is essentially a giant infected
Speaker 3: lymph node full of bacteria.
Speaker 2: Oh did you know that?
Speaker 1: In And I'm going to talk a lot about the
Speaker 1: Black Death in a bit, but did you know that?
Speaker 1: During the Black Death? One of the things that people
Speaker 1: wrote about in regards to boobos was that they made
Speaker 1: gurgling noises.
Speaker 2: Oh like like yeah, like the bubos were speaking.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, that's disgusting.
Speaker 2: I need to hear it.
Speaker 3: I would love to hear that. Actually, I wonder if
Speaker 3: there's recordings on YouTube or something.
Speaker 1: So I'm not sure if this has ever been replicated
Speaker 1: in modern events, but I want to know.
Speaker 3: I know it would be really cool.
Speaker 2: Gurgling booby might just be.
Speaker 3: Those medieval exaggerators hyperbolizers.
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, what did they think the world was
Speaker 2: ending or something?
Speaker 3: So the incubation period for the bubonic plague is generally
Speaker 3: around one to seven days. It has a pretty large variation,
Speaker 3: and in addition to those characteristic boobos, you also have
Speaker 3: some general signs like fever, chills, head and body aches,
Speaker 3: vomiting and nausea is very common with the bubonic plague.
Speaker 2: So pretty generalized at the beginning.
Speaker 3: Generalized except for that very characteristic bubo. Right. However, not
Speaker 3: everyone who gets infected with the plague is going to
Speaker 3: end up with bubos. There are two other forms of
Speaker 3: the disease.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah.
Speaker 3: The first that I'll talk about briefly is septacemic. Okay,
Speaker 3: So sepsis is a disease that can actually happen with
Speaker 3: any infection. It's essentially just an overload of bacteria in
Speaker 3: your blood stream, specifically and with bubonic plague. Bubonic plague
Speaker 3: can spread to the blood stream from the lymphatics and
Speaker 3: then become septocemic plague. However, it's also possible to get
Speaker 3: primary septiscemic plague, which means that you have an overload
Speaker 3: of bacteria, a very high bacterial load in your bloodstream
Speaker 3: without any characteristic boobos.
Speaker 1: Could a person get septiscemic plague, for instance, somehow, either
Speaker 1: via a flea or via contact with an infected individual,
Speaker 1: get bacteria deposited directly into their bloodstream through like an
Speaker 1: open wound.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's certainly possible, okay, And there may be differences
Speaker 3: in that different species of flea feed differently. There's not
Speaker 3: a lot of information on the various species of flea
Speaker 3: and how they transmit, but it is certainly possible that
Speaker 3: you can get infected directly through your bloodstream from the
Speaker 3: bite of a flea. It is also possible to get
Speaker 3: infected from so the advanced stages of bubonic plague can
Speaker 3: end with open sores. Your boobos open up and they're
Speaker 3: just whoo like oozing seeping bacteria. But human to human
Speaker 3: transmission of bubonic plague is very, very limited. You'd have
Speaker 3: to have a ton of contact with that bubo to
Speaker 3: really get infected. That wabonic plague exactly. Bubonic Okay. That
Speaker 3: is in contrast to pneumonic Oh yeah, which I know
Speaker 3: is your favorite.
Speaker 2: Well favorite is favorite is a tricky word, too strong
Speaker 2: of a word. Maybe it's the most terrifying to me.
Speaker 3: It is the most virulent form of the disease. Mneumonic plague,
Speaker 3: which means that it has infected your lungs is transmitted
Speaker 3: via respiratory droplets. It is quite high. So for bubonic
Speaker 3: plague the mortality rate is between thirty to sixty percent,
Speaker 3: and for septiscemic untreated yes, and for septocemic plague, it's
Speaker 3: on the high end, maybe eighty or ninety percent, but
Speaker 3: pneumonic plague, if untreated, is almost one hundred percent fatal.
Speaker 3: It's really sad. Yeah, So mneumonic plague again means that
Speaker 3: it was transmitted via respiratory droplets. So bubonic plague, if
Speaker 3: it spreads to your lungs, can become mnemonic plague. But
Speaker 3: what's scary about pneumonic plague is that it can also
Speaker 3: be transmitted directly human to human via respiratory droplets. Uh
Speaker 3: oh yeah, like the flu, like the flu, like smallpox,
Speaker 3: like so many other diseases that we've seen. So with
Speaker 3: pneumonic plague, the incubation period here in some cases can
Speaker 3: be as short as twenty four hours. And again the
Speaker 3: untreated fatality rate is almost one hundred percent.
Speaker 2: And remind our listeners, incubation period is.
Speaker 3: Incubation period is the time from when you become infected
Speaker 3: to when you show symptoms.
Speaker 2: Okay, and so with pneumonic plague.
Speaker 3: It can be as little as twenty four hours, very soon,
Speaker 3: very short. And what's really sad is that you can
Speaker 3: also die within that amount of time, so it takes
Speaker 3: over your body very rapidly. It encompasses very severe respiratory symptoms,
Speaker 3: including shortness of breath and costing. Initially the cough will
Speaker 3: be dry, but over time, oh no, it will become
Speaker 3: very productive. That's what we call it productive cough, meaning
Speaker 3: you're coughing up gunk from your lungs bhlm, phlem, but
Speaker 3: mostly blood and bacteria. Whoa. So the one good thing
Speaker 3: about the mnemonic plague, there's a good thing about it, surprisingly, yes,
Speaker 3: is that it is most infectious at the end stage
Speaker 3: of the disease.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: And so if you're treating someone or caring for someone
Speaker 1: who has pneumonic plague and they've just come down with symptoms,
Speaker 1: you may still be okay, yes.
Speaker 2: As long as you just abandon them right before they die.
Speaker 3: Abandon them before they die, just kidding. Wear a mask.
Speaker 2: Oh that that's an alternative.
Speaker 3: That's an alternative. Abandon them or wear a mask. But yeah,
Speaker 3: you're most infectious during the last few hours, especially of
Speaker 3: your disease. However, what's scary is that you also remain
Speaker 3: infectious after you die. What so, people who are preparing
Speaker 3: bodies for burial, for example, can become infected by close
Speaker 3: contact with the body because their body is still full
Speaker 3: of bacteria, and that bacteria is still alive.
Speaker 2: And all it takes is just a couple bacteria exactly.
Speaker 3: Ooh yeah, So that's a little bit scary.
Speaker 2: That's rough.
Speaker 3: The other good news is that all of the plague
Speaker 3: is treatable with antibiotics as long as you catch it
Speaker 3: early enough.
Speaker 2: Caveat.
Speaker 3: That's the big caveat, And we'll talk a lot about
Speaker 3: that when we talk about what's going on with plague today.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Are you ready to learn about the history? I literally
Speaker 2: can't wait. There's a lot of ground to cover here.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, So just jump in all right.
Speaker 1: The plague Bacterium likely evolved as a human pathogen during
Speaker 1: the time when agriculture and large stationary human settlements became widespread,
Speaker 1: which was about five ten thousand years ago. That's for
Speaker 1: the plague jumping into humans.
Speaker 3: Awesome.
Speaker 2: Are you noticing a pattern yet?
Speaker 3: By the way, every disease is from the agriculture revolution.
Speaker 1: All of the diseases that we've discussed so far, and
Speaker 1: probably many in the future, have emerged as a result
Speaker 1: of farming and human crowding. The invention of agriculture was
Speaker 1: great for humans in many ways. It allowed us to
Speaker 1: have some degree of food security, which could support larger populations,
Speaker 1: and then we could have division of labor, governments, more
Speaker 1: time for creative output, art trade, basically the things that.
Speaker 2: We think of being human.
Speaker 1: Right. Humans weren't the only ones that were positively impacted
Speaker 1: by this new way of life.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, who else?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah?
Speaker 1: The domestication of livestock and long term storage of grains
Speaker 1: and other food meant that humans were living in close
Speaker 1: proximity to animals and a pathogens.
Speaker 2: Do you know who else.
Speaker 1: Loves piles and piles of grains?
Speaker 3: I can guess.
Speaker 1: Well, your husband should know, aaron, he were temporary.
Speaker 3: He does, So what is it? It's rats and mice
Speaker 3: and rodents?
Speaker 2: Ye, rodent.
Speaker 3: They just got a cat, so they no longer have
Speaker 3: that problem.
Speaker 1: That's great, but cats can still give you mnemonic plagus.
Speaker 3: Well you know, but whatever.
Speaker 2: Do you know who loves rodents? They're fleas?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah.
Speaker 1: When humans domesticated livestock and began growing crops, some rodents
Speaker 1: were basically domesticated alongside livestock, though less intentionally. Rats and
Speaker 1: mice started living alongside humans, adapting to live in the nooks.
Speaker 1: And crannies of houses and food storage built, and they
Speaker 1: became a constant fixture. They were everywhere all the time
Speaker 1: wherever humans went, so did the rats and their fleas
Speaker 1: and their fleas bacteria. Yeah, and the more humans, the
Speaker 1: more rats, and.
Speaker 3: The more rats, the more fleas, and the more fleas,
Speaker 3: the more plague. You got it, I understand this cycle.
Speaker 2: But what about the plague bacterium.
Speaker 1: Well, the plague bacterium jumped from harmless little beet pop
Speaker 1: to destroyer of worlds in Central Asia right as farming
Speaker 1: was taking off. The plague bacterium doesn't just reside in
Speaker 1: so called domestic rodents, as you learn from.
Speaker 2: The biology just a little bit ago.
Speaker 1: It also thrives in many, many species of wild rodent.
Speaker 1: And it's thought that wild rodents were where the plague
Speaker 1: bacterium turned pathogen.
Speaker 3: Oh wow. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The favorable climate and newly adopting farming practices of humans
Speaker 1: led to.
Speaker 2: Huge population growth.
Speaker 1: For the first time, cities could sustain themselves, and wide
Speaker 1: scale travel for trade in crease. As human populations grew,
Speaker 1: they expanded into natural areas, which made them and domestic
Speaker 1: rats basically neighbors with these wild plague bearing rodents and
Speaker 1: fleas were happy to jump from wild to domestic rat
Speaker 1: and vice versa. Oh yeah, taking with them their pathogens,
Speaker 1: and this is how humans were likely first exposed to
Speaker 1: the plague bacterium. As a side note, an increase in
Speaker 1: disease following human encroachment on natural areas has been seen
Speaker 1: time and time again. Yeah, spikes in disease or emergence
Speaker 1: of zoonotic disease following deforestation or ecological upheaval are super common,
Speaker 1: and we're definitely going to be addressing them in future episodes.
Speaker 3: Definitely, especially when we talk about things like ebola for example.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a big one. Yeah. Back to plague.
Speaker 1: All right, so we've established how the plague got into
Speaker 1: humans in the first place, but what did it do
Speaker 1: once it was there?
Speaker 3: Kill them all?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Spoilers.
Speaker 1: Well, the answer is that it probably in the beginning
Speaker 1: caused local small epidemics. It bided its time, waiting until
Speaker 1: the black rat, who was the main reservoir for the
Speaker 1: plague bacteria and plague's flea host, had reached a near
Speaker 1: global distribution.
Speaker 2: Wow, and then it struck.
Speaker 1: The first time we see plague, where it's ugly little
Speaker 1: head is in five hundred and forty one to five
Speaker 1: hundred and forty two a d wow a while ago
Speaker 1: in what is called the Plague of Justinian, named after
Speaker 1: the guy who was Roman emperor at the time in
Speaker 1: the East Roman Empire.
Speaker 3: You know what's crazy. If this thing jumped and was
Speaker 3: able to infect mammals ten thousand years ago, that means
Speaker 3: it spent eight thousand years just hanging out, not really
Speaker 3: killing people all that much.
Speaker 1: Well, it might just be that there are gaps in
Speaker 1: the historical record.
Speaker 3: I would I bet that's probably true.
Speaker 1: So similar to colera, this doesn't leave any mark on
Speaker 1: bone or skeleton, and so the evidence would be harder
Speaker 1: to detect.
Speaker 3: Cool, So it's only one we have sort of written
Speaker 3: records that say this is totally plague.
Speaker 4: Guys.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's when we know for sure that this was
Speaker 3: happening to people.
Speaker 1: Well, and even then it's disputed sometimes whether the disease
Speaker 1: is plague or another pathogens.
Speaker 3: Well, I guess those are kind of you can see
Speaker 3: the symptoms are very different, but this is a lot
Speaker 3: of this is generalized symptoms.
Speaker 1: So right, and so in the Plague of Justinian, the
Speaker 1: reason that they think that it was actually bubonic plague
Speaker 1: is because they're described the bubos.
Speaker 3: Oh I can't wait. Okay, tell me all about it.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, the Plague of Justinian. This one is a
Speaker 2: doozy ooh good.
Speaker 1: About twenty five to fifty million people died during this pandemic.
Speaker 2: Yep in five hundred AD.
Speaker 3: I literally didn't know there were that many humans at
Speaker 3: that point.
Speaker 1: It was remarkable, the devastation. Remember the nineteen eighteen influenza. Everyone,
Speaker 1: I do fifty to one hundred million people die then,
Speaker 1: which is a lot of people, about an estimated three
Speaker 1: to six percent of the global population. In the Plague
Speaker 1: of Justinian, at least thirteen percent of the global population died.
Speaker 1: And that's without the disease reaching global distribution. What if
Speaker 1: it had, that number would be a lot higher.
Speaker 3: So where was it limited to?
Speaker 1: Mostly the region of like Constantinople and like the so
Speaker 1: the Eastern Roman Empire at the time, and it spread
Speaker 1: a little bit into like North Africa, and a little
Speaker 1: bit further into like Eastern Asia. But oh my god,
Speaker 1: in the infected areas, the death toll was really high.
Speaker 3: Oh god.
Speaker 1: In Constantinople during the peak of the epidemic, five thousand people.
Speaker 2: Died every day.
Speaker 1: I mean that happening in a modern city today would
Speaker 1: be unbelievable, Like I can't.
Speaker 3: There are no words, No, there really are no there
Speaker 3: are no words. Five thousand people a day just dead.
Speaker 1: There are a roughly forty four thousand students at this university,
Speaker 1: yeah total, So how many days would it take for
Speaker 1: everyone to die? If five thousand people die.
Speaker 3: To day, that's too depressing.
Speaker 1: Also its math nine days, Oh my god, just nine days.
Speaker 1: The population loss and resulting chaos caused by the plague
Speaker 1: of Justinian may have, and probably did, contribute to the
Speaker 1: downfall of the Roman Empire.
Speaker 3: Those Like every disease we talked about so far.
Speaker 1: This yeah, and this pandemic, oddly enough, seems to be
Speaker 1: more of a side note in history, attracting much less
Speaker 1: interest in the Black Death of the Middle Ages, despite
Speaker 1: having similar mortalities and far reaching impacts. But this is probably,
Speaker 1: or at least could be, due to the fact that
Speaker 1: there are fewer sources first.
Speaker 2: Hand accounts for this time period.
Speaker 1: All the same, this particular plague probably deserves an episode
Speaker 1: of its own.
Speaker 3: But we just don't have the time, y'all.
Speaker 2: Maybe someday, but not today.
Speaker 1: No, today is reserved for one of the most, if
Speaker 1: not the most devastating pandemics of all time. I'm so excited,
Speaker 1: finally the moment we've all been waiting for, introducing the
Speaker 1: Black Death, a pandemic so devastating that to simply say
Speaker 1: it changed the course of history does not do it justice.
Speaker 3: That was not planned.
Speaker 2: I left that. Let's own it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Black Death, which swept the Asian and European
Speaker 1: continents from thirteen forty seven to thirteen fifty and killed
Speaker 1: up to two hundred million people. Estimates range from around
Speaker 1: like seventy five to two hundred million people. That's what
Speaker 1: that's close to, like thirty percent of the global population
Speaker 1: at the time.
Speaker 3: Thirty percent of the global population.
Speaker 2: I mean estimates very Why but are you doing.
Speaker 3: Some math right, I'm gonna try and figure out what
Speaker 3: is thirty percent of seven point five billion?
Speaker 1: Oh god, yeah, let that sink in for a moment.
Speaker 3: That's two point twenty five billion people today. Honestly, I
Speaker 3: can't even there's no way to wrap your head around
Speaker 3: that number. No, it's almost too much to even comprehend.
Speaker 2: We can't articulate how we're feeling right now.
Speaker 3: No, we don't have the words. This is my therapist's told.
Speaker 1: Me, and so yeah, the effect of such annihilation is
Speaker 1: really the only word for it reverberated for centuries and
Speaker 1: is reflected in art, literature, language, and even.
Speaker 2: The economic structure following the Black DEA.
Speaker 3: That is so cool, I mean, like cool, maybe, isn't it.
Speaker 3: I get in trouble for using the word cool talking
Speaker 3: about things like this. That is so it's so fascinating, fascinating.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll just yeah, we'll.
Speaker 3: Stick with that one.
Speaker 1: Before I get into all the nitty gritty of the
Speaker 1: Black Death, Let's get.
Speaker 2: A sense of time and place.
Speaker 1: When I read that a certain event took place in
Speaker 1: the Middle Ages or the Victorian Error or something, I
Speaker 1: have a hard time seeing what that time period looks like.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about it. What was the first half
Speaker 1: of the fourteenth century like in Europe?
Speaker 3: I'm gonna guess dirty, mm hmm and not very pleasant.
Speaker 2: I don't know that seems to be the case.
Speaker 3: It is just my guess.
Speaker 2: Let me just fill in some of those extra details. Well.
Speaker 1: Steady population growth during the first couple of centuries before
Speaker 1: thirteen hundred led to a population of about seventy five
Speaker 1: million people in Europe. Wow, which is a lot fewer
Speaker 1: people than today, which is around four hundred million. Oh okay,
Speaker 1: but growth had stalled as resources became much more limited,
Speaker 1: and actually the population was hanging by a thread.
Speaker 2: Really.
Speaker 1: Yeah, starvation was a problem. Resources were tapped. Wow, the
Speaker 1: carrying capacity had been met.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 1: Just twenty or so years before the Black Death, periods
Speaker 1: of cooling climatological cooling had led to a lot of rain,
Speaker 1: very poor harvests, and famine was a result. Outbreaks of
Speaker 1: cattle disease such as anthrax and renderpest also contributed to famine.
Speaker 1: About ten to fifteen percent of the population died of starvation,
Speaker 1: and the rest of them were severely malnourished during this
Speaker 1: time prior to the Black Death.
Speaker 3: I'm just really excited.
Speaker 2: It was just one bad thing after another. Oh. Also,
Speaker 2: war and conflict was a near constant.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you remember last week's episode about cholera and
Speaker 1: the description of filth ridden London in the eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 3: That's what I'm guessing. It's like worse. Obviously no different.
Speaker 1: In Paris, for example, several streets were named after after
Speaker 1: the French word for poop.
Speaker 2: Mad you got it.
Speaker 1: Butchers everywhere did their jobs an open view on the
Speaker 1: street and let the blood and guts of animals run freely.
Speaker 3: One time I went to an event where they butchered
Speaker 3: a pig on stage. It was I don't know why
Speaker 3: I was at that event.
Speaker 2: How have we never talked about this?
Speaker 3: Very weird? We should talk about it off microphone.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, we'll get back to that. Also, bathing was
Speaker 1: not a thing that people did.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: No, when one person was I had to do some
Speaker 1: quotes here when one person was stripped down after being assassinated.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just because that happened.
Speaker 1: It explains why I guess his body was being written
Speaker 1: about or whatever.
Speaker 2: It was said that.
Speaker 1: Vermin quote boiled over like water in a simmering cauldron
Speaker 1: from his body.
Speaker 3: We need to have like a not Safe or Breakfast
Speaker 3: on all of our future episodes.
Speaker 2: Maybe we should release it like noon maybe not gonna happen.
Speaker 3: Sorry, y'all, fair warning halfway through.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and living in the country didn't keep you much safer.
Speaker 1: In fact, the rat to person ratio was much higher
Speaker 1: in rural areas.
Speaker 3: The rat to person ratio. That's such a great Why
Speaker 3: don't we do anything in that ratio anything I think
Speaker 3: we do at Yeah, oh my god.
Speaker 1: Rats were everywhere, living in every nook and cranny, every
Speaker 1: thatched roof, every barn. Keep in mind that a rat,
Speaker 1: a black rat or Norway rat can fit through a
Speaker 1: hole with the circumference of a human pointer finger.
Speaker 2: Are you serious?
Speaker 3: I read there's skulls and ribs are that tiny? Apparently,
Speaker 3: but I imagine are the limiting factors? What?
Speaker 2: That's what I read.
Speaker 3: They're so moldible because they're so chubby, like a rat
Speaker 3: is kind of like chubby and cute.
Speaker 2: They can come up through your toilet.
Speaker 3: Let's stop talking, yep.
Speaker 2: Ooh god, So yeah, they were everywhere.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: Also, medieval medicine is not something I'd wish even on.
Speaker 2: My worst enemy.
Speaker 3: That's saying something.
Speaker 1: Largely driven by superstition and religion. Doctors during this time
Speaker 1: were as clueless as their patients as to healthcare, but
Speaker 1: more dangerous since they held the illusion of knowledge and
Speaker 1: the power to wield it.
Speaker 2: Did you like that?
Speaker 3: That was so good? I love that? Beautifully written?
Speaker 2: Thank you all.
Speaker 1: In all, the setting for The Black Death was gray
Speaker 1: and dismal, with a population half starved and surrounded by
Speaker 1: rats and filth. In other words, it was perfect for
Speaker 1: a pandemic. Let's head to the European ground zero of
Speaker 1: this plague. Yes, the port city of Kafa, which is
Speaker 1: in modern Crimea. This is where I tell you to
Speaker 1: pull up a map unless you're driving. If you're driving,
Speaker 1: I'll try to help you out. Okay, everyone knows what
Speaker 1: Italy looks like. Find Italy, put your finger about halfway
Speaker 1: through Italy, and then head east. Jump that first body
Speaker 1: of water to the land mass. Then you'll see a
Speaker 1: second body of water to the east.
Speaker 2: Again. This slightly bigger.
Speaker 1: Body of water is called the Black Sea. At the
Speaker 1: northeast corner of the Black Sea, there's some land that
Speaker 1: juts out. This is around where Kafa was located.
Speaker 3: Ah, that was so useful. I am so bad at geography.
Speaker 2: I mean we were educated in the United States.
Speaker 3: Yeah, one time I did know all of the countries
Speaker 3: of the world, though, and where they were on a
Speaker 3: map in seventh grade. And then and then it made
Speaker 3: room for I know all the Backstreet Boys lyrics to
Speaker 3: every song worth it.
Speaker 2: Dear. Okay.
Speaker 1: Anyway. By thirteen forty seven, rumors of plague depopulating cities
Speaker 1: in China, India and Syria had been circulating.
Speaker 2: Well, they weren't rumors.
Speaker 1: Plague was actually on their doorstep. Outside of the city
Speaker 1: walls were Mongol ships leading laying siege to the city.
Speaker 1: Frustrated with their lack of success and probably sick of
Speaker 1: the smell, some of the Mongol army tossed plague ridden
Speaker 1: dead bodies over the walls in what may have been
Speaker 1: the first recorded act of bioterrorism.
Speaker 3: That is awesome, Like, it's not awesome that it happened,
Speaker 3: but that is amazing that there are eight records of that,
Speaker 3: and be that we can trace like an actual plague
Speaker 3: outbreak to something like that. That is so incredible.
Speaker 1: Well, it was probably too late for the residents of
Speaker 1: Kafa anyway. Oh, rats bearing plague infected fleas had already
Speaker 1: traveled down the ropes tying the ships to the harbor.
Speaker 2: So they had already brought plague into the.
Speaker 3: Their sneaky little rats.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean, and they probably went under the
Speaker 1: the disguise of dark Oh. People began dropping like flies.
Speaker 1: The sight of so many dead and dying struck terror
Speaker 1: into many, including a group of traders from Genoa in
Speaker 1: Italy who hopped right onto a boat headed west. Unfortunately
Speaker 1: for the rest of Europe, they brought with them the plague.
Speaker 1: Over the course of the next three years, the plague
Speaker 1: would touch nearly every corner of the continent, convincing many
Speaker 1: that the end of days had truly come. In Florence,
Speaker 1: where the author of our first hand account from earlier
Speaker 1: witnessed the plague, fifty percent of the population died, not
Speaker 1: just fifty percent of those infected, fifty of the entire population.
Speaker 3: Holy God, mackerel wiped out. Oh my goes good Jesus, h.
Speaker 2: You've seen Monty Python on the Holy Grail.
Speaker 3: Right, bring out you dead, Yeah, bring out you dead.
Speaker 2: That's waiting to say that that happened. That was real.
Speaker 3: Oh my god. Yep.
Speaker 1: People were actually punished for keeping dead bodies inside.
Speaker 3: Okay, but also we learned that dead bodies can transmit plague,
Speaker 3: so maybe they should have been punished. Sure, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean.
Speaker 2: Sure, I mean not.
Speaker 3: Like the people who were taking them were probably protecting
Speaker 3: themselves as well as they should have been. But still,
Speaker 3: you can't harbor a plague ridden body.
Speaker 2: There were laws to not keep dead bodies inside.
Speaker 3: Lots of laws enacted from diseases as we've learned in
Speaker 3: this podcast so far.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was no time for rituals, no time for
Speaker 1: coffin building, no time for funerals, and even if there
Speaker 1: was time, there was no one to perform them.
Speaker 2: The dead were laid out, quote.
Speaker 1: Layer upon layer, just like one puts layers of cheese
Speaker 1: on lasagna.
Speaker 2: Sorry, it was according to one chronicler from Florence.
Speaker 3: Obviously they're from Italy first of all, and second of all,
Speaker 3: who puts layers of cheese on their lasagna? That's absurd?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean I would expect that the recipe for
Speaker 1: lasagna may have changed over the last six hundred years
Speaker 1: or so, seven hundred.
Speaker 3: That's a hilariously disgusting layers of bodies layered like lasagna.
Speaker 2: Great, keep that image in your mind.
Speaker 3: I've got it front the center.
Speaker 1: Dirt was barely sprinkled over the bodies, and the stench
Speaker 1: of rotting flesh was in every molecule of air you breathed.
Speaker 3: Crody.
Speaker 2: The devastation spread from Italy west.
Speaker 1: Of France, Spain, Germany, and then on to Great Britain,
Speaker 1: north to scan Avia and so on, killing anywhere from
Speaker 1: forty to eighty percent of the cities and villages.
Speaker 3: It struck not just forty to eighty percent of those infected,
Speaker 3: forty to eighty percent of the entire village. Yeah, good gracious.
Speaker 1: There were some villages that were entirely wiped out or
Speaker 1: at least knocked down to the point where people abandon
Speaker 1: the villages. And only recently have these old villages been
Speaker 1: found via like drone technology and looking at.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, aurial aerial views.
Speaker 3: Wow, that's amazing.
Speaker 1: People seem to be struck down instantly by this disease.
Speaker 1: Healthy one minute, well, I mean healthy by medieval standards,
Speaker 1: and then dead twenty four hours later, coughing up blood
Speaker 1: and writhing in pain.
Speaker 3: So I'm gonna guess they had pneumonic plague at that point,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 1: Well, many cases of the Black death were bubonic plague. Okay,
Speaker 1: but the horrifying descriptions of symptoms and the short interval
Speaker 1: between initial.
Speaker 2: Infection and death suggests.
Speaker 1: A high rate of pneumonic plague with a dash of
Speaker 1: septiscemic plague thrown in.
Speaker 3: Of course, there's always a dash, a little bit here
Speaker 3: and there.
Speaker 1: In fact, it has been suggested that the name black
Speaker 1: death refers to one of the symptoms of septiscemic plague,
Speaker 1: in which the extremities turn very black and hard. But actually,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna be a little corrective here.
Speaker 3: Let's push up our glasses a little bit and get
Speaker 3: your nerd on.
Speaker 2: Here we go.
Speaker 1: Actually, that name was used to describe the pandemic a
Speaker 1: couple of centuries after it happened. Oh.
Speaker 3: Interesting, So it wasn't what it wasn't people who were
Speaker 3: seeing the symptoms who described it that way.
Speaker 1: No, while it was happening, it was usually referred to
Speaker 1: in translation the Great Mortality or colloquially the Big Death.
Speaker 3: So just everyone's dying guys.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which we really speaks to the impact that it had.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you think about World War One was
Speaker 1: only called World War one after World War II started.
Speaker 1: Before it was just called the Great War, War to
Speaker 1: end all wars, that kind of thing.
Speaker 2: So I think it's similar to that.
Speaker 3: Well, of course, hopefully not during a war you're gonna
Speaker 3: call it. Here's the first of.
Speaker 1: The many gosh, I mean nowadays, who knows anyway? In
Speaker 1: any case, the great numbers of dead struck fear and
Speaker 1: panic into all. No one knew what was the cause
Speaker 1: of the pestilence. While some thought they knew there was
Speaker 1: the usual one of God is smiting us for our
Speaker 1: wicked ways.
Speaker 3: Gotta be God, gotta be gone.
Speaker 2: Well, astrology was another contender. Cats were also blamed.
Speaker 3: Maybe they had something to do with it, but it
Speaker 3: wasn't their fault.
Speaker 1: Well, in many cities they were killed by the hundreds
Speaker 1: or thousands, which would have actually increased the rat population
Speaker 1: and thus plague incidents.
Speaker 3: So it's like double sad because they were trying to
Speaker 3: help out, but then they all got infected by eating
Speaker 3: infected rats and then they all died, so then they
Speaker 3: couldn't do their job, and then the humans died. So
Speaker 3: the solution is we need more cats.
Speaker 2: Never the solution, I'm gonna get roasted for that.
Speaker 1: It wouldn't be for another five hundred years, actually half
Speaker 1: a millennium that the transmission cycle of plague from rat
Speaker 1: to flee to human.
Speaker 2: Would be described.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So, as you can guess, there were many popular
Speaker 1: hypotheses as to what was causing the plague. The most
Speaker 1: damaging and widespread was that it was Jews.
Speaker 3: Are you serious? Oh yeah, I did not know that.
Speaker 1: At all, And sometimes Jews teaming up with leprosy victims.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, humans are the worst.
Speaker 1: The rumor was that there was a conspiracy in which
Speaker 1: Jewish people were poisoning the water supplies. Way to be
Speaker 1: a nasty cliche. Medieval European Christians, seriously gross extermination of
Speaker 1: entire Jewish populations in France, Spain, Germany, Switzerland.
Speaker 3: The list goes on, literally, how have I ever heard
Speaker 3: about this? It's yeah, listeners, it's a big part.
Speaker 2: Have you heard about this?
Speaker 3: Because what the actual.
Speaker 1: F never mind that the Jewish people were dying at
Speaker 1: the same rate as Christians. Oh, never mind that the
Speaker 1: confessions quote unquote of well poisoning by Jews were drawn
Speaker 1: out of people only after days of endless torture. The
Speaker 1: Christians wanted a scapegoat, and so they turned to their
Speaker 1: old favorite, claiming a widespread anti Christian conspiracy to mask
Speaker 1: their age old racist hatred. Any excuse would do. Thousands
Speaker 1: of Jews were tortured or burned alive, mostly burned alive
Speaker 1: to stop the plague or, in some areas, prevent it
Speaker 1: from even appearing. Oh my god, so some were killed
Speaker 1: in advanceage.
Speaker 3: That's disgusting.
Speaker 1: Obviously the plague came for them anyway, and some felt
Speaker 1: despair rather than fear. An Irish monk wrote that he
Speaker 1: was quote waiting among the dead for death to come,
Speaker 1: and that sentence was to be the second to last
Speaker 1: in his manuscript. The final one was written by another monk.
Speaker 1: Quote and here it seems the author died.
Speaker 2: It's a bummer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's gonna be my dissertation.
Speaker 3: And here it seems the author died.
Speaker 1: Despair also came in the form of Flagelence fletch flatch
Speaker 1: which sounds are saying flatulence. You're talking about they were
Speaker 1: so sad because they were farting. No, I'm talking about flagelence.
Speaker 1: F l A g E l l A n t
Speaker 1: snce flatulence.
Speaker 3: She just said flatulence, is what she just said. She
Speaker 3: did not say flagilence. She said flatulence.
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, okay. Getting back to the despair part.
Speaker 1: Flagelence were an radical a radical anti Semitic Christian group
Speaker 1: who believed that the only way to halt the plague
Speaker 1: was to atone with blood for their sins. Groups of
Speaker 1: fifty to five hundred would travel from village to village
Speaker 1: dressed in white cloaks with red crosses on them. Sound familiar, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it does. Whipping themselves with a stick which had at
Speaker 1: the end of it tales of knotted rope with bits
Speaker 1: of iron in the knots to draw out the blood.
Speaker 3: So this is just like DaVinci code.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, Flagelens were not unique to the plague
Speaker 1: itself for the Black Death itself, but this was like
Speaker 1: a widespread movement, and part of it was that they
Speaker 1: didn't want or need priests or official leaders for this,
Speaker 1: and in many ways, the Black Death actually led to
Speaker 1: a shift in a more personal form of religion in
Speaker 1: which you did not have to go through a priest
Speaker 1: to commune with God. Interesting, and also because a lot
Speaker 1: of the priests and monks died.
Speaker 3: So there's no more God communicators, so you just got
Speaker 3: to do it yourself.
Speaker 2: You gotta do it yourself.
Speaker 1: The Black Death impacted more than just religious practices, though.
Speaker 1: By the time it ended in thirteen fifty, around thirty
Speaker 1: to sixty percent of Europe's population had been wiped from
Speaker 1: the face of the earth.
Speaker 3: Holy, oh, my God.
Speaker 1: The Middle East lost about a third of their population
Speaker 1: as well.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: I could list shocking mortality rates for cities and countries,
Speaker 1: but the numbers would lose their impact because they're all
Speaker 1: so high.
Speaker 3: That's the thing. It's too much for our brainens to even.
Speaker 2: We can't absorb it.
Speaker 1: No, the death toll was so huge, partially because of
Speaker 1: the high incidence of pneumonic plague, but also because the
Speaker 1: preceding famine had weakened the population substantially. There were also
Speaker 1: many who may have recovered if they received treatment, but
Speaker 1: there was no one to nurse them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and there was also no real treatment back then.
Speaker 3: It's not like the head antibiotics.
Speaker 1: Well, even just bringing someone water, water, food, cleaning them, yeah,
Speaker 1: although they probably wouldn't have wanted to be cleaned. I
Speaker 1: The world that the great mortality left behind was fragmented, hopeless,
Speaker 1: baffled as to why they were spared when so many
Speaker 1: were not, and this was reflected in a popular art
Speaker 1: theme that arose after the pandemic called the Dance macabre.
Speaker 2: Or a Dance of the dead.
Speaker 1: In this allegory, death with a capital D goes to
Speaker 1: a ball and chooses his dance partners randomly without regard
Speaker 1: to age or class, just as the plague spared no group.
Speaker 1: In general, art became very realistic, if not fatalistic, with
Speaker 1: depressing depictions of death and suffering and did you know
Speaker 1: tapestries probably arose from Black death? No, why airflow should
Speaker 1: not be permitted, And so these giant tapestries covering windows
Speaker 1: and walls were made to ward off plague and.
Speaker 3: Passion things get in. That's so interesting. Wow.
Speaker 1: The plague also inspired many works of literature, including the
Speaker 1: De Cameron, which we've already talked about. Have you ever
Speaker 1: read The Mask of the Red Death by Poe.
Speaker 3: No, but I feel like I need to.
Speaker 2: Oh, you definitely need to.
Speaker 1: It's a great short story and it may have been
Speaker 1: inspired by the De Cameron and the Black Death.
Speaker 2: Also cool.
Speaker 1: On the medicine front, there became a push towards more
Speaker 1: anatomical analysis of the stages of disease, more observational medicine,
Speaker 1: which was a good thing. Unfortunately, though, the failure of
Speaker 1: physicians to combat the plague in any way, and in
Speaker 1: some areas, physicians actually died at higher rates than their patients.
Speaker 3: Oh that's not surprising because they were probably the ones
Speaker 3: in there getting all up in there and then getting
Speaker 3: pneumonic plague from patients.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so that that led to a complete lack
Speaker 1: of confidence in the field of medicine. It is often
Speaker 1: purported that English became the predominant language in England as
Speaker 1: a result of the Black Death. Really mm hmm, this
Speaker 1: is so cool. Before the plague, the French language dominated
Speaker 1: the cities in England among the educated and nobility, while
Speaker 1: the clergy mostly spoke Latin.
Speaker 2: Huh.
Speaker 1: The only people who spoke English were the country folk
Speaker 1: and the very poor in the city.
Speaker 3: Interesting.
Speaker 1: Both clergy and city dwellers experienced overall higher rates of
Speaker 1: death than their rural counterparts, and as a result, English
Speaker 1: took over.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, so we could always speaking French. Yeah,
Speaker 3: potentially we could.
Speaker 1: Plague also gave us the word quarantine, which comes from
Speaker 1: the Italian phrase for forty days. Ships and people arriving
Speaker 1: in the city of Ragusa, which is modern day Dubrovnik, Croatia.
Speaker 2: I've been there.
Speaker 1: Oh cool, were forced to undergo isolation for forty days
Speaker 1: in an attempt to halt plague. Unfortunately, rats were not quarantined,
Speaker 1: and plague spread anyway.
Speaker 2: Ha ha, Okay, what else?
Speaker 1: How about the logistics side of a sharp population decline?
Speaker 1: Before the plague, Europe was pretty much on the edge.
Speaker 1: The population had grown beyond what the land could support.
Speaker 1: The Black Death solved this, to put it frankly, ooh,
Speaker 1: and Europe didn't recover to its pre plague population levels
Speaker 1: for another one hundred and fifty years.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: Also after the plague, it was a laborer's market. The
Speaker 1: cost of goods and services skyrocketed, so much so that
Speaker 1: governments imposed wage limits so as to not let those
Speaker 1: pesky peasants reach the income level of the nobility.
Speaker 2: Oh seriously, thank god, oh dear.
Speaker 1: Still, though, this caused a shift in economic structure and
Speaker 1: an end to feudalism, where basically all of the classes
Speaker 1: lower than a lord were forced to work and live
Speaker 1: on a particular piece of land. Kind of like slavery hmm,
Speaker 1: just with.
Speaker 3: More freedom, just a different name, essentially.
Speaker 1: Some researchers suggest that the population drop led to a
Speaker 1: massive reforestation in Europe with so few people to work
Speaker 1: the land, and that could have contributed to the little
Speaker 1: ice age that the world was undergoing.
Speaker 3: What. Yeah, so you're telling me that so many people
Speaker 3: died that the entire ecology of the environment shifted, which
Speaker 3: literally caused climatological change.
Speaker 2: That's reported in some literature.
Speaker 3: That has got to be like the first evidence of
Speaker 3: anthropological climate change. Yeah, And there you go.
Speaker 2: Death.
Speaker 3: Wow, that is so crazy.
Speaker 1: I could go Honestly, I could go on and on
Speaker 1: about the impact of plague. Yeah, and I kind of
Speaker 1: have already, But I do want to cover a couple
Speaker 1: more things. The first is to briefly discuss the so
Speaker 1: called quote plague deniers, which are many, well maybe many
Speaker 1: is stretching it at this point. Several historians and biologists
Speaker 1: who believe that the Black Death was caused by something
Speaker 1: other than your cidea pestis, which is the agent that
Speaker 1: we recognize today as causing bubonic, mneumonic, and scept a
Speaker 1: semic plague. Some have suggested a hypervrulent form of anthrax,
Speaker 1: a hemorrhagic virus, or a completely unknown disease that is
Speaker 1: now extinct.
Speaker 3: Oh God.
Speaker 1: They point to a few things to support their claim.
Speaker 1: One is the extreme speed with which the plague traveled
Speaker 1: across Europe and Asia. Modern outbreaks of plague took much
Speaker 1: longer to travel a similar distance. Another piece of evidence
Speaker 1: is the reported symptoms, high death toll, and quick onset
Speaker 1: of death, none of which were exactly replicated in modern
Speaker 1: epidemics or in the Third pandemic. However, DNA steps in
Speaker 1: and saves the day.
Speaker 3: Love it when science rules.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, there's I would say fairly legit scientific
Speaker 1: claims Before before researchers went out and collected tooth pulp
Speaker 1: from plague victims buried in mass graves during the Black Death.
Speaker 1: They then tested this pulp for your sineopastus DNA, which
Speaker 1: they found.
Speaker 3: That's so cool.
Speaker 1: The Black Death and subsequent outbreaks were caused by the
Speaker 1: plague bacterium, the same one that causes plague today, well
Speaker 1: slightly different, it has evolved. The high mortality rate was
Speaker 1: probably due to its tendency to turn mnemonic, and also
Speaker 1: the poor, very poor health of victims.
Speaker 2: To begin with.
Speaker 1: Yeah, The next and final thing I want to do
Speaker 1: is dispel the notion that the pandemic we call the
Speaker 1: Black Death was the last one.
Speaker 2: Not in the slightest.
Speaker 1: The plague continued to simmer throughout Eurasia in the centuries
Speaker 1: following the fourteenth century pandemic, causing local epidemics here and there,
Speaker 1: which is not to suggest that they weren't devastating. The
Speaker 1: sixteen sixty five Great Plague of London killed seventy thousand
Speaker 1: residents out of a population of four hundred and fifty thousand.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, about crazy.
Speaker 2: Sixteen point six percent. That's a lot.
Speaker 3: Of a lot of people.
Speaker 1: And during that particular outbreak, many of the wealthy nobility
Speaker 1: fled the city since they had the means to do so,
Speaker 1: often bringing their doctors with them, and so no one
Speaker 1: was left to help the poor as they became infected
Speaker 1: and died by the thousands.
Speaker 3: That's so sad.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until the eighteen hundreds that the third pandemic began,
Speaker 1: and that is where our episode next week will pick up.
Speaker 3: Yep, because we are so out of time.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's a lot of history right there.
Speaker 3: It really was.
Speaker 2: It had to be done, though.
Speaker 1: Yes, the Black Death left such a monumental impact on
Speaker 1: the world in so many ways. Reading about it is
Speaker 1: slightly terrifying and ill.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I always get chills when I try to imagine that
Speaker 1: kind of devastation that a fifty or sixty or seventy
Speaker 1: percent mortality rate had on a city or the world.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's really not a good way to put it
Speaker 3: into words. Really, I mean, sixty percent mortality. That's of
Speaker 3: your one hundred friends, sixty of them dead. You've only
Speaker 3: got forty friends left.
Speaker 1: It's really I mean even still, it's really hard to visualize.
Speaker 3: It really is. It's too devastating.
Speaker 2: Well, I hope you enjoyed learning about that.
Speaker 3: I loved it.
Speaker 2: I loved telling it.
Speaker 3: It was really enjoyable, despite the fact that it's some
Speaker 3: of the most depressing things I've ever heard.
Speaker 1: Well, if you want to read more, I have some
Speaker 1: suggestions for you.
Speaker 2: Great, Okay.
Speaker 1: The Great Mortality by John Kelly is a fantastic, exciting
Speaker 1: read all about the Black Death slash Great Mortality of
Speaker 1: the fourteenth century.
Speaker 2: It is really well done.
Speaker 1: It'll give you a really great view of what it
Speaker 1: was like, better than I could do, for sure. Justinian's
Speaker 1: Flee by William Rosen I didn't actually read, but it
Speaker 1: does cover the plague of Justinian cool in the Five Hundreds.
Speaker 1: Plagues and Peoples by William McNeil takes a nice broad
Speaker 1: view of the Black Death. Twelve Diseases That Changed Our
Speaker 1: World by Irwin Sherman I do not recommend. In the
Speaker 1: Wake of the Plague by Norman Canter.
Speaker 2: It's terrible.
Speaker 1: It's vaguely misogynistic, it's not well done, it doesn't give
Speaker 1: you a good overview. The title is extremely misleading with
Speaker 1: out the.
Speaker 3: Side more than vaguely misogynistic based on your description of
Speaker 3: it to me.
Speaker 1: The final one that I'll actually recommend is called Plague
Speaker 1: An Ancient Disease in the Twentieth Century by Charles greg
Speaker 1: and a couple of fiction books, I mean, there are
Speaker 1: many more out there, but a couple of them that
Speaker 1: tackle plague outbreaks. One is called Year of Wonders by
Speaker 1: Geraldine Brooks, and this is a good one.
Speaker 2: It's really interesting. So it's based on the true.
Speaker 1: Story of a town in a village in England that
Speaker 1: willingly quarantined itself when it had an outbreak of plague
Speaker 1: within the village, interesting to prevent it from spreading to
Speaker 1: other populations in like the sixteen hundreds.
Speaker 3: Huh, that sounds interesting.
Speaker 1: And then a Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel
Speaker 1: Dafoe who also wrote Robinson Crusoe. He was a kid
Speaker 1: during the sixteen sixty five London plague, but he wrote
Speaker 1: a book based off of it.
Speaker 3: Cool, awesome. I don't have as many books to recommend,
Speaker 3: but I did read the longest paper of all time
Speaker 3: that might as well be a book. It was called
Speaker 3: Rcinia pestis idiologic agent of Plague by Perry and Featherston,
Speaker 3: published in Clinical Microbiology Reviews in nineteen ninety seven. It's
Speaker 3: kind of an old paper, but it's a really interesting
Speaker 3: overview of plague. So I don't know how many of
Speaker 3: you are that into reading deep microbiology papers, but it
Speaker 3: was cool. But also, in case you didn't know, dear listeners,
Speaker 3: we have a good Reads list called These Books Will
Speaker 3: Kill You, right, Yes, that's right, so you should definitely
Speaker 3: if you're on good Reads check it out. If you're
Speaker 3: not on good Reads, I don't know, get on Goodreads.
Speaker 3: It's great, Aaron converted me.
Speaker 2: You can still access it.
Speaker 3: Right, You can still see the list regardless, but that'll
Speaker 3: have all the books that we've ever recommended on that list,
Speaker 3: so you don't have to like frantically scribble them down
Speaker 3: as we're reading them. And as always, thanks for listening.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 1: Thank you to Bloodmobile for the music. And I feel
Speaker 1: the need to point out today since today is a
Speaker 1: day of self identification.
Speaker 2: Bloodmobile is my younger brother Daniel. Thanks Dan, Thanks Dan.
Speaker 2: We love the music, we really do.
Speaker 1: And also some of the tracks were done by Dan
Speaker 1: and his friend Ian.
Speaker 3: Thanks Ian. As always, don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe,
Speaker 3: check us out on all of the social medias, and
Speaker 3: thanks for listening. Yeah, thanks so much, and tune in
Speaker 3: next week when we talk all about what is happening
Speaker 3: with plague today. Wash your hands, yes, filthy animals,