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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of

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Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow

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Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.

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Speaker 1: And today Hey, it's the Diseases and the Heavens. Because

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Speaker 1: rob you recently said, Hey, would you be interested in

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Speaker 1: doing an episode or two on the interactions between plague

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Speaker 1: pandemics of the past and God and religious interpretations. And

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Speaker 1: I was like, wow, yeah, that sounds really interesting. But Robert,

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Speaker 1: I gotta admit, this is one of those topics where

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Speaker 1: something sounds really interesting with then as soon as you

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Speaker 1: start getting into it, you realize, oh, no, it's one

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Speaker 1: of those word the more I read, the less I know. Um.

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Speaker 1: That is definitely the case with the historical scholarship on

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Speaker 1: religious responses to to the plague this it seems like

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Speaker 1: this is a really complicated area of research. Yes, i'd

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Speaker 1: say a complicated area of research and also a robust

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Speaker 1: and thriving area of research. And I think that's something

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Speaker 1: that I might surprise some listeners out there to know

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Speaker 1: that like the Black Death and the study of the

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Speaker 1: Black Death and our attempt to understand uh, you know,

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Speaker 1: things like mortality rates and how it's spread, and and

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Speaker 1: then how people responded to it, and it's and its

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Speaker 1: effects short term and long term. You might think that

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Speaker 1: this is this is a matter of the history books.

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Speaker 1: This is something that has been settled for decades, if

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Speaker 1: not centuries, and there's perhaps very little, like just some

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Speaker 1: fine tuning of the research these days. But it's not

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Speaker 1: the case. There's a lot of work that goes on

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Speaker 1: in this area of study, and there's still exciting stuff

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Speaker 1: coming out. I mean, you go back a couple of

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Speaker 1: decades and it seems like a lot of what people

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Speaker 1: were arguing about was whether or not plague was caused

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Speaker 1: by plague. Yeah, and I remember this. Uh. I don't

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Speaker 1: think I ever wrote anything specifically for how Stuff Works

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Speaker 1: dot com about the Black Death. Maybe I had to

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Speaker 1: cover it like briefly in some sort of you know,

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Speaker 1: like a top ten pandemics type of an article or something.

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Speaker 1: But I remember at the time this being the case

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Speaker 1: where there were these different different theories about what it

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Speaker 1: might have been. Was it perhaps this particular ailment or disease,

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Speaker 1: was it this one, or was it actually what we

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Speaker 1: think of as bubonic plague? Yeah, and so at least

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Speaker 1: I think that question is mostly settled. We can give

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Speaker 1: a fairly firm answer on that one today. But I

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Speaker 1: was just surprised how much about the plague pandemics is

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Speaker 1: still up in the air or has been questioned or

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Speaker 1: is still controversial. Uh, And and how often a fact

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Speaker 1: you thought you knew about it might not actually be correct.

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Speaker 1: But anyway, so I was also wondering, like, how did

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Speaker 1: you get interested in this? What what made you want

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Speaker 1: to talk about the Black Death and and the powers

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Speaker 1: of God? Oh? Well, I think part of it was

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Speaker 1: I was I picked up and burcos the Name of

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Speaker 1: the Rose again when I was reading through through that,

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Speaker 1: and I was reminded about how it's it's mentioned that

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Speaker 1: brother William eventually dies in the plague or is lost

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Speaker 1: in the plague, and like knowing that the egg is

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Speaker 1: the thing that comes the Black Death specifically, uh, is

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Speaker 1: the thing that comes after the events of the novel

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Speaker 1: and um, And so sometimes that, you know, makes me

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Speaker 1: think about the world that is described in that book

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Speaker 1: and and how how it's going to fare against a

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Speaker 1: threat like this. And then of course it goes without saying, uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, we're we're recording this, researching this during uh

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Speaker 1: an ongoing global pandemic, and so I think it's it's

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Speaker 1: something that has been on a lot of people's minds.

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Speaker 1: A lot of people have turned their minds back to

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Speaker 1: historical plagues. Um Now, of course, in fighting this pandemic

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Speaker 1: COVID nineteen, we we have a number of tools not

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Speaker 1: available to humanity during the late Middle Ages. We know

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Speaker 1: what actually causes the illness we're facing, we're able to

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Speaker 1: figure out how it works, and we have both treatments

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Speaker 1: and most marvelous of all vaccines that we can use.

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Speaker 1: And speaking of vaccines, go get vaccinated against COVID nineteen

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Speaker 1: if you have the ability to do so, and if

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Speaker 1: you're not sure, talk to a medical doctor and find

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Speaker 1: out what you need to know from them. So obviously

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Speaker 1: there were no vaccines in the time of the of

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Speaker 1: the Black Death in the fourteenth century outbreak of of

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Speaker 1: the plague. But also there really weren't any treatments. I mean,

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Speaker 1: if you get plague today, we know today that it

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Speaker 1: is a bacterial infection and if caught early, it can

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Speaker 1: be treated pretty effectively with antibiotics. I mean back at

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Speaker 1: the time of the Black Death there there there really

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Speaker 1: were not effective interventions at all. Yeah, it's it's really

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Speaker 1: kind of staggering to to think about it, to think

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Speaker 1: about to imagine a time right before the Black Death,

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Speaker 1: and just think about what a mismatch this was medieval

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Speaker 1: societies versus a deadly contagious disease caused by UH an

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Speaker 1: invisible bacterium. The disease, on one hand, you might say,

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Speaker 1: you know, understands its human adversaries to a certain extent,

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Speaker 1: you know, UH, and not that it has a will

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Speaker 1: or an intelligence, but it gets in there and it

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Speaker 1: does its thing. The humans on the other hand, I mean,

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Speaker 1: they have the gift of reason, certainly, they have technology

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Speaker 1: and society, but they lack a germ theory of disease.

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Speaker 1: They don't really know how the enemy in this case,

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Speaker 1: the Black Death, how it functions, or even truly what

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Speaker 1: it is. So they're blind in many ways. And on

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Speaker 1: top of that, they have leaned into a supernatural understanding

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Speaker 1: of the world. They believe in gods and saints and

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Speaker 1: demons and miracles, and they trust in religious organizations and

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Speaker 1: religious authorities or in many cases powers that are ordained

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Speaker 1: by religious authorities. Another way of looking at things in

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Speaker 1: this scenario is that in some ways, you have humanity

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Speaker 1: stranded between two unseen worlds, be at least partially invisible

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Speaker 1: world of disease and then the invisible world of religion.

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Speaker 1: Uh So, you know, it's like, this is the matchup.

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Speaker 1: How will these religious organizations and authorities respond to the

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Speaker 1: Black Death? What chance do they have? And so in

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Speaker 1: this episode, in the whatever episode or episodes follow it. Well,

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Speaker 1: I thought we might get into that a little bit

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Speaker 1: and talk about how imperfect societies respond to what is

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Speaker 1: in many ways, you know, a perfect pathogen with a

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Speaker 1: focus on on religion. But before we get into the

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Speaker 1: religious stuff, we will have to talk about just like

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Speaker 1: what was the Black Death? Uh as far as we

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Speaker 1: understand it? Okay, Well, I guess we should start with

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Speaker 1: that question. What do we think we know today about

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Speaker 1: the nature of this disease? So first of all, let's

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Speaker 1: just talk about like what do we mean we mean

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Speaker 1: the Black Death versus like other plagues? Right, So, historians

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Speaker 1: generally consider the Black Death to have lasted from around

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Speaker 1: thirteen forty six uh ce obviously to thirteen fifty three

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Speaker 1: throughout Afro Eurasia, more or less on the heels of

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Speaker 1: the Great Famine of thirteen fifteen through thirteen seventeen. And

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Speaker 1: this this will become important in a bit. But now

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Speaker 1: one thing that's important to consider, and this is true

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Speaker 1: of of multiple cases of plague pandemic in the world

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Speaker 1: that we'll talk about in just a set can The

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Speaker 1: black Death is a term is sometimes applied to this

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Speaker 1: sort of initial outbreak that has been widely studied as

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Speaker 1: having happened and say like uh, Europe in the Middle East,

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Speaker 1: around the Mediterranean beginning around thirty six or forty seven,

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Speaker 1: and then continuing for some years after that. But each

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Speaker 1: of these pandemics is not contained to just a few years.

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Speaker 1: There are these recurrent waves. So there will be an

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Speaker 1: initial wave of infection and then it just and then

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Speaker 1: it sort of goes away for a while within a

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Speaker 1: certain region, but then there will be subsequent outbreaks throughout

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Speaker 1: different regions over the following uh centuries really in the

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Speaker 1: case of the one that begins in the fourteenth century

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Speaker 1: and uh and one of the papers I was looking

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Speaker 1: at was was calling these recurrent waves. Yeah, yeah, So

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Speaker 1: it's important to realize that the Black Death of the

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Speaker 1: fourteenth century, it's not thought to be the first great

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Speaker 1: outbreak of playing in the Old world. The Plague of

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Speaker 1: Justine In occurred between UH five forty one and five

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Speaker 1: forty nine see. And it was also not the last

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Speaker 1: pandemic of plague, as major outbreaks would occur throughout the

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Speaker 1: fourteenth and seventeen centuries, including the Great Plague of London

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Speaker 1: in sixteen sixty five and sixteen sixty six. But the

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Speaker 1: fourteenth century outbreak is what is generally referred to when

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Speaker 1: we talk about the Black Death, a pandemic that claimed

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Speaker 1: the lives of between seventy five and two hundred million

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Speaker 1: people and reshaped society for the survivors. I've seen drastically

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Speaker 1: different estimates of what percentage of people within certain regions

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Speaker 1: the Black Death killed. So I think this is not

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Speaker 1: a settled question. It's something that has to be you know,

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Speaker 1: it's not like there were just like there was a

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Speaker 1: census of people and you can chart everyone who died.

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Speaker 1: Has this is a number that has to be established

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Speaker 1: through estimates. But like in on cases, you have good

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Speaker 1: data to go on. You know, you can look at

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Speaker 1: essentially death rolls from certain certain regions and certain time periods,

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Speaker 1: and then some work has been done in me in

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Speaker 1: in examining cemeteries and the like. Yeah, exactly, as a

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Speaker 1: one figure I looked at for the Black Death said

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Speaker 1: that the Black Death and its recurrent waves may have

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Speaker 1: wiped up somewhere between one third to two thirds of

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Speaker 1: the population of Europe. Anyway you shake it, a lot

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Speaker 1: of people died. I mean, you know, in any variants

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Speaker 1: in the numbers doesn't really take away from just how

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Speaker 1: how brutal this was. Now, one source I was looking

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Speaker 1: at and all of this was the The Anthropology of

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Speaker 1: Plague by Sharon in de Witt, published in Pandemic Disease

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Speaker 1: in the Medieval World, And this was from One of

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Speaker 1: the things that DeWitt talks about is the idea that again,

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Speaker 1: this this particular outbreak of plague, the Black Death, is

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Speaker 1: following a period of rapid population growth and plenty due

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Speaker 1: to warm climates and advancements in agriculture. When the warm

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Speaker 1: period ended, however, there were ripples throughout Europe. There was

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Speaker 1: less food. Uh, there was famine, There was a you know,

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Speaker 1: there's an abundance of labor under a feudal system. So

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Speaker 1: most people during this time experienced a decline in their

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Speaker 1: standard of living. Non plague illness and malnutrition. Uh was

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Speaker 1: was running rampant, and so there's this this strong argument

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Speaker 1: to me, may the do it writes about it length

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Speaker 1: that this put made them even more susceptible to this

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Speaker 1: new disease or this new outbreak of a disease that

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Speaker 1: had previously ravaged parts of the region. Yeah. And and

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Speaker 1: this has been another major trend in writing over say

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Speaker 1: the past hundred years about the about the Black Death

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Speaker 1: of the fourteenth century and its recurrent waves. What what,

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Speaker 1: how exactly does that get situated within the broader social, economic,

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Speaker 1: and cultural context of the time which had occurred, What

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Speaker 1: what led to it, what exacerbated it, and what changes

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Speaker 1: did it bring about? Because it's widely believed that I

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Speaker 1: guess we're not going to get super deep into these

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Speaker 1: particular historical theories, but there have been a lot of

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Speaker 1: theories about what rolled the Black Death may have played

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Speaker 1: and say, revolutionizing the economic history of Europe, and uh,

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Speaker 1: did it in some way trigger changes that might lead

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Speaker 1: to things you associate with the Late Middle Ages or

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Speaker 1: the Renaissance exactly? Yeah, And you know, I think it's

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Speaker 1: it's also one of these things where you look at

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Speaker 1: some of the older scholarship, or if you just look

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Speaker 1: at sort of generalized um, you know, summaries of the

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Speaker 1: Black Death, you know, and it's often pointed out, well,

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Speaker 1: this affected everybody. It didn't matter what level of society

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Speaker 1: you were you were at, and to to a to

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Speaker 1: a large extent, that is true. I mean, people died

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Speaker 1: at every every level of society. And there's this kind

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Speaker 1: of idea that you know, the Black Death is it's

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Speaker 1: it's you know, you get into these religious ideas of

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Speaker 1: the judgment of humanity and it seems like it's just

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Speaker 1: everybody is is suffering equally. But uh, does that hold

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Speaker 1: up if we start looking at different populations, be at

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Speaker 1: things like population density or dealing with you know, large

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Speaker 1: portions of the population that are malnourished and so forth. Anyway,

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Speaker 1: here's a is a quote from de Witt in that

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Speaker 1: article I mentioned quote. The very high levels of Black

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Speaker 1: death mortality and the results from hazard analysis, which indicate

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Speaker 1: that this mortality was selective and targeted frail people of

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Speaker 1: all ages, means that the epidemic might have exerted a

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Speaker 1: strong selective force on the northern population, removing the frail

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Speaker 1: list unhealthiest individuals on a very large scale. You have

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Speaker 1: the post Black death population included individuals who were exposed

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Speaker 1: to and survived the Black Death. This episode of selection

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Speaker 1: might at least in part, explain the very rapid apparent

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Speaker 1: changes in medieval plague epidemiology. These changes include the apparent

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Speaker 1: decline and plague mortality as described in contemporaneous historical documents. Okay,

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Speaker 1: so what's she getting at their um, So she's getting

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Speaker 1: into this, you know this idea that Okay, so that

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Speaker 1: the plague hits, it wipes out a lot of people,

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Speaker 1: a lot of people that at at at all levels

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Speaker 1: of society and all ages that may have been extra

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Speaker 1: susceptible to the ravages of the disease. But then afterwards

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Speaker 1: you perhaps have have a certain resistance in the survivors.

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Speaker 1: But then she also points out that, on the other hand,

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Speaker 1: patterns of human plague deaths might reflect the disease dynamics

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Speaker 1: of nearby animal host populations, which can influence exposure of

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Speaker 1: humans to plague. And we'll get we'll get into more

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Speaker 1: of like what that means later about about about the

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Speaker 1: disease dynamics and animal hosts. But but you know, it

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Speaker 1: also might mean that survivors were in better shape to

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Speaker 1: survive the plague and or had better access to nutrition

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Speaker 1: or standard of living in the years after the Black

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Speaker 1: Death had had really ravaged the population. Because after the

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Speaker 1: Black Death, there's this idea that you ultimately end up

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Speaker 1: with potentially more sustainable population, potentially and improved gene pool

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Speaker 1: with possible resistance to the plague. The feudal system was

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Speaker 1: was weakened by all of this, potentially paving the way

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Speaker 1: for further changes. Um This is a direction a lot

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Speaker 1: of the scholarship goes in. Yet, what what does it

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Speaker 1: due to the world that allows a certain amount of

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Speaker 1: a rapid change to take place? Um or introduces new

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Speaker 1: changes that could occur at the you know, the socioeconomic level, etcetera. UM.

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Speaker 1: Of course, on the other hand, I think we have

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Speaker 1: to be careful about getting into that, you know, that

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Speaker 1: sort of uh, what doesn't kill you makes your stronger

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Speaker 1: idea that like, you know, the plague was good. It

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Speaker 1: just it strengthened everybody has and made a better world because, uh,

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Speaker 1: in the words of Conan O'Brien, what doesn't kill you

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Speaker 1: almost kills you. So it was still a period of

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Speaker 1: great suffering and death. I meant to an extent that

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Speaker 1: it's it's it's difficult to imagine. And of course that

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Speaker 1: is going to have, um have an effect on the

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Speaker 1: survivors that goes beyond just you know as any kind

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Speaker 1: of like fitness that results any kind of resistance to

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Speaker 1: to illness, or an improvement in your access to UM,

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Speaker 1: you know, to to a higher standard of living. Right,

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Speaker 1: So you shouldn't be lured into thinking like, oh, well,

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Speaker 1: if after the plague the people who were of tended

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Speaker 1: to have a hired resistance to disease and may have

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Speaker 1: there may have been some economic benefits for them, that

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Speaker 1: that doesn't mean like the plague was a good thing, right, right,

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Speaker 1: And I mean, plus, there's a lot of a lot

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Speaker 1: of great data on just how events of this nature.

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Speaker 1: I mean there's a lasting effect of say malnutrition on

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Speaker 1: on one's descendants that sort of thing. So to be clear,

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Speaker 1: plague bad, plague, plague very bad. I think I think

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Speaker 1: that is one of the firm facts we can we

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Speaker 1: can say consensus on that. Now, what was the plague? Well, uh,

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Speaker 1: as we mentioned earlier, there were various alternative theories and hypotheses.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I guess they're still technically are alternative theories

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Speaker 1: and hypotheses, but none of them have enough support to rival.

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Speaker 1: They now commonly agreed upon understanding that the plague in

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Speaker 1: question was bubonic plague caused by the plague bacterium your

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Speaker 1: Cinea pestis. Yeah, so it seems like in the late

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Speaker 1: twe aeth in early twenty first century, there was some

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Speaker 1: of this academic debate about the infectious agent driving the

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Speaker 1: black death. But yeah, I agree, it does seem like

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Speaker 1: it is a pretty firm matter of consensus now that

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Speaker 1: that the black death beginning in the fourteenth century was

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Speaker 1: caused by your Cinea pestis, and that bacterium that that

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Speaker 1: bacillus was is something that we've known about since the

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Speaker 1: year eighteen ninety four, when it was discovered I think

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Speaker 1: by two different researchers pretty much simultaneously. One was Kitasato

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Speaker 1: Shibasaburo of Japan and the other was Alexander Yeerson of France.

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Speaker 1: So I think from his name Yrson, you get your Cinea,

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Speaker 1: the genus name of the bacterium that causes the plague. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And so this was around the year eighteen ninety four,

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Speaker 1: which was also the time of the eighteen ninety four

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Speaker 1: Hong Kong outbreak of plague, which was a major part

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Speaker 1: of the Third plague pandemic. You mentioned that there there

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Speaker 1: have been three major plague pandemics in history that we

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Speaker 1: know about, the Plague of Justinian beginning in the sixth century,

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Speaker 1: then the Black Death began in the fourteenth century, and

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Speaker 1: then this more recent one from the from the nineteenth

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Speaker 1: and twentieth century, right, and they've been There's been been

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Speaker 1: some other stuff sprinkled around in there as well, but

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Speaker 1: those are the big ones. Now. You're cine epestis, As

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Speaker 1: the CDC points out, it has a place in nature,

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Speaker 1: even in the modern world, even in North America. Uh,

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Speaker 1: your seny epestis is transmitted by fleas to a variety

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Speaker 1: of rodents. Uh that certainly in these rodents certainly include

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Speaker 1: the rat, but they also include squirrels, chipmunks, vols, and rabbits.

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Speaker 1: This situation is is relatively stable, it's thought, with the

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Speaker 1: bacteria circulating at low rates and without excessive mortality again

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Speaker 1: in these rodent populations. Yeah, so as with the number

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Speaker 1: of zoonotic diseases, humans are not not the natural host

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Speaker 1: of this bacterium. You're sinning epestis, your cine Epestis lives

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Speaker 1: in this natural cycle, I think it's sometimes called the

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Speaker 1: Sylvan cycle, traveling between the bodies of fleas and small

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Speaker 1: mammals generally rodents like rats, like you say, And then

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Speaker 1: the bacteria multiply within the gut of the flea, and

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Speaker 1: then when the flea bites a rat host to suck

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Speaker 1: its blood, it sort of spits up some of the

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Speaker 1: infectious bacteria in its gut into the rat and can

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Speaker 1: infect a new rat host. But of course sometimes infectious

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Speaker 1: microbes can jump from their natural host species to another,

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Speaker 1: like humans, and and this is where you get zoonotic

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Speaker 1: diseases like plague. I was actually reading an article in

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Speaker 1: Scientific American. I think it wasn't originally in SIME. It

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Speaker 1: was a reprint from Quanta, but it was by an

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Speaker 1: author named Carrie Arnold from that was covering a study

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Speaker 1: published in Nature Communications in about the evolution of this

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Speaker 1: bacterium of your Cineopestis, which causes the plague uh. And

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Speaker 1: the paper was by Zimbler at All called early emergence

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Speaker 1: of your cine Epestis as a severe respiratory pathogen. And

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Speaker 1: so the authors were looking into the question of where

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Speaker 1: did your Cinea Pestis come from and how did it

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Speaker 1: become so virulent? And so they write in their abstract

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Speaker 1: as follows. We showed that the acquisition of a single

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Speaker 1: gene encoding the protease p l A. I think I'm

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Speaker 1: not sure if that's pronounced play or plot, but it's

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Speaker 1: p l A. P l A was sufficient for the

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Speaker 1: most ancestral, deeply rooted strains of why Pestis to cause

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Speaker 1: neumonic plague. And we'll get more into the different varieties

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Speaker 1: in a moment, indicating that why Pestus was primed to

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Speaker 1: infect the lungs at a very early stage in its evolution.

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Speaker 1: As why Pestists further evolved, modern strains acquired a single

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Speaker 1: amino acid modification within p l A that optimizes protease activity.

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Speaker 1: While this modification is unnecessary to cause neumonic plague, the

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Speaker 1: substitution is instead needed to efficiently induce the invasive infection

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Speaker 1: associated with the bubonic plague. These findings indicate that why

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Speaker 1: Pestis was capable of causing new monic plague before it

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Speaker 1: evolved to optimally cause invasive infections in mammals soneumonic plague.

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Speaker 1: The version in the lungs is is, as we'll explain

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Speaker 1: it a bit, the most deadly form of your cineopestis infection.

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Speaker 1: But but it has probably existed longer than the bubonic

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Speaker 1: form of infection. But once the bacteria evolved the ability

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Speaker 1: to cause the bubonic plague, the main version of the

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Speaker 1: disease associated with the black death, the disease function of

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Speaker 1: this bacterium was in a sense probably optimized for maximum

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Speaker 1: infectious potential. And then this this article by Carry Arnold

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Speaker 1: quotes a microbiologist from Northern Arizona University at Flagstaff named

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Speaker 1: Paul Kim who mentions that with your cine apestis quote,

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Speaker 1: a single bacterium can cause disease in mice. It's hard

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Speaker 1: to get much more virulent than that. Uh, and so

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Speaker 1: that that's an incredibly infectious agent. That's if you're trying

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Speaker 1: to set up like a thunder dome of bacteria, it

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Speaker 1: seems like you're sine epestis could be a sort of

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Speaker 1: infecting champion. If a single bacterium can can cause this disease. Well, yeah, so,

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Speaker 1: as like we said that the idea is in in

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Speaker 1: the natural model, it's just um, your cine epestis and

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Speaker 1: these rotents but then these complications occur, so for starters,

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Speaker 1: sometimes for different reasons, the death rate in the desired

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Speaker 1: rodent hosts population goes up and the fleas have to

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Speaker 1: go somewhere else. UM. And other times you have you know,

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Speaker 1: people coming into close contact with these animals, with these fleas,

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Speaker 1: and we see these these these spreading events occur, and

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Speaker 1: the flea still has to feed, so it might move

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Speaker 1: on to other animals, including domestic animals and ultimately human

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Speaker 1: beings as well. Now humans can acquire it from handle

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Speaker 1: handling the bodies and pelts of infected animals. UM. Dogs

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Speaker 1: are apparently less likely to become ill, but can still

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Speaker 1: bring the fleas into close proximity with human beings. Interestingly enough,

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Speaker 1: cats typically become very ill with it, and they can

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Speaker 1: also directly infect humans through their cough if they if

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Speaker 1: they have the plague. Did you see anything? I feel

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Speaker 1: like I saw a headline somewhere recently about about an

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Speaker 1: outbreak of plague among mountain lions in North America. Do

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Speaker 1: you know what I'm talking about? I did not see

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Speaker 1: that article, but I mean, based on this information about cats,

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Speaker 1: it sounds like it could be very destructive. Okay, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I just checked that I was remembering this right. This

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Speaker 1: was from a couple of articles from April of last

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Speaker 1: year in that found that in Yellowstone and Yellowstone National

401
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Speaker 1: Park in the United States, Uh, there has been an

402
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Speaker 1: outbreak of plague that has been killing cougars in the park. Strangely,

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Speaker 1: this does kind of connect to, uh, some stuff I've

404
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Speaker 1: read about. So it's pretty rare for people to get

405
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Speaker 1: to get plague in the United States today, but it

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Speaker 1: does happen, and sometimes some of the cases I've read

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Speaker 1: about it happening were from contact people had with animals

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Speaker 1: in parks in like wildlife refugees. Yeah. Yeah, close proximity

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Speaker 1: to these animals definitely is is one of the driving

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Speaker 1: driving forces in those those spreads. Now we should we

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Speaker 1: should stress that with these these modern outbreaks generally they

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Speaker 1: don't do not spread as fast, uh, and then ultimately

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Speaker 1: we're better able to treat these infections today. But yes,

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Speaker 1: to be clear, the way plague tends to spread to

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Speaker 1: human beings and includes flea bites, contact with contaminated fluids

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Speaker 1: and tissues, and infectious droplets, and this sort of goes

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Speaker 1: along with that. There are three main different versions of

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Speaker 1: the disease. So they're all caused by the same bacterium.

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Speaker 1: They're all your cine epestis. But depending on how you

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Speaker 1: get infected, you can have different manifestations of disease within

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Speaker 1: your body. And the most most common version is the

422
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Speaker 1: one you probably read about in school. It's the bubonic plague,

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Speaker 1: the one that begins with probably some kind of bite

424
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Speaker 1: from a from a parasite like a flea in the skin,

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Speaker 1: and then can eventually infect the lymph nodes. It causes

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Speaker 1: swelling of the lymph nodes. You get these these bulbs

427
00:24:06,119 --> 00:24:08,720
Speaker 1: known as bo bos, and this also comes with like

428
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Speaker 1: very severe flu like symptoms. But then there are these

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Speaker 1: other less common versions of the plague disease that have

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Speaker 1: their own characteristics, such as septicemic plague which derived which

431
00:24:19,119 --> 00:24:22,240
Speaker 1: comes from an infection of the blood, and neumonic plague,

432
00:24:22,240 --> 00:24:25,400
Speaker 1: which is an infection of the lungs. And that one is, uh,

433
00:24:25,480 --> 00:24:28,280
Speaker 1: from everything I read, pneumonic plague is the worst one

434
00:24:28,320 --> 00:24:32,960
Speaker 1: of all. Yeah, I mean they are varying um infection stats.

435
00:24:33,040 --> 00:24:35,159
Speaker 1: I was looking at on the three and you know,

436
00:24:35,160 --> 00:24:36,880
Speaker 1: it kind of depends. I think I know who you're

437
00:24:36,880 --> 00:24:42,080
Speaker 1: looking at. But but certainly, yes, certainly the pneumonic plague

438
00:24:42,119 --> 00:24:44,680
Speaker 1: is is pretty bad. But I guess one question this

439
00:24:44,800 --> 00:24:47,119
Speaker 1: gets us to is the question of what are the

440
00:24:47,240 --> 00:24:51,840
Speaker 1: mechanisms of transmission? How was the plague actually spread in

441
00:24:52,200 --> 00:24:58,119
Speaker 1: especially in these giant outbreaks and pandemics from long ago. Yeah,

442
00:24:58,200 --> 00:25:03,360
Speaker 1: so the way it's spreading, you're gonna have different speeds involved, right, So, um,

443
00:25:04,119 --> 00:25:06,160
Speaker 1: the speed at which it tends to spread when it's

444
00:25:06,160 --> 00:25:08,600
Speaker 1: based on flea transference is going to be different than

445
00:25:08,640 --> 00:25:11,080
Speaker 1: the way it seems to spread if it's based on

446
00:25:11,240 --> 00:25:14,280
Speaker 1: droplets in the air of people coughing and close proximity

447
00:25:14,359 --> 00:25:16,800
Speaker 1: to one another. So you read you read some of these, uh,

448
00:25:16,920 --> 00:25:19,480
Speaker 1: these various ideas about what was happening with the with

449
00:25:19,520 --> 00:25:22,439
Speaker 1: the Black Death, how was plague spreading? And one idea

450
00:25:22,520 --> 00:25:26,399
Speaker 1: that you you see is that well, perhaps it was

451
00:25:26,440 --> 00:25:32,040
Speaker 1: spreading rapidly because it was primarily due to these droplets

452
00:25:32,280 --> 00:25:34,960
Speaker 1: and it was a largely pneumatic plague that was really

453
00:25:35,000 --> 00:25:39,040
Speaker 1: wiping people out. Um. And if if that were true,

454
00:25:39,240 --> 00:25:40,880
Speaker 1: it would it would kind of be ironic, I guess,

455
00:25:40,920 --> 00:25:43,600
Speaker 1: because what do we think of when we think of plague. Uh,

456
00:25:43,680 --> 00:25:46,359
Speaker 1: we often think of plague doctors, right, we think of

457
00:25:46,400 --> 00:25:49,359
Speaker 1: those uh, those outfits with the the you know, the

458
00:25:49,760 --> 00:25:53,119
Speaker 1: big robe and the long bird like beak and the

459
00:25:53,160 --> 00:25:57,560
Speaker 1: big hat and the staff. Um uh. And then when

460
00:25:57,600 --> 00:25:59,359
Speaker 1: the staff of the idea being that it's you know,

461
00:25:59,480 --> 00:26:04,320
Speaker 1: to garments, but also perhaps to distance yourself from someone else. However,

462
00:26:04,720 --> 00:26:07,880
Speaker 1: always worth remembering that the plague doctor outfits and mask

463
00:26:08,560 --> 00:26:11,600
Speaker 1: I do not believe we're introduced until later in the

464
00:26:11,640 --> 00:26:14,800
Speaker 1: seventeenth century, and wouldn't so even if this was a

465
00:26:14,800 --> 00:26:18,480
Speaker 1: design that was out there, you know this, and there's

466
00:26:18,520 --> 00:26:21,960
Speaker 1: some disagreeance on how much it was actually used, but

467
00:26:22,040 --> 00:26:24,760
Speaker 1: it certainly would not have been used during the Black

468
00:26:24,800 --> 00:26:27,760
Speaker 1: Death itself. It would have been subsequent plagues. Well, yeah,

469
00:26:27,760 --> 00:26:29,960
Speaker 1: it would be some of the recurrent waves from that

470
00:26:30,080 --> 00:26:33,480
Speaker 1: ongoing pin to make that begin in the fourteenth century, right,

471
00:26:33,640 --> 00:26:35,439
Speaker 1: And and then of course the other question would be

472
00:26:35,440 --> 00:26:39,080
Speaker 1: what would it have worked you know, um, well, ultimately

473
00:26:39,080 --> 00:26:42,080
Speaker 1: the design of those later plague doctor masks, it was

474
00:26:42,080 --> 00:26:45,640
Speaker 1: more about purifying bad air and keeping bad air from

475
00:26:45,640 --> 00:26:49,240
Speaker 1: touching your skin. So uh, you know, you could make

476
00:26:49,240 --> 00:26:52,000
Speaker 1: a case for it might have helped in some ways,

477
00:26:52,280 --> 00:26:56,400
Speaker 1: but not for the reasons president in the design. You know. Yeah,

478
00:26:56,680 --> 00:26:59,399
Speaker 1: one thing that's kind of difficult to understand. I've been

479
00:26:59,400 --> 00:27:02,360
Speaker 1: reading about the for example, in one paper looking at

480
00:27:02,520 --> 00:27:10,080
Speaker 1: um recent scholarship comparing the responses of religious communities of Christians, Muslims,

481
00:27:10,119 --> 00:27:14,560
Speaker 1: and Jews around the Mediterranean at the time. Uh, and

482
00:27:14,800 --> 00:27:17,080
Speaker 1: what what For example, the question of like, what they

483
00:27:17,119 --> 00:27:20,879
Speaker 1: thought about the idea of contagion, you know, was it

484
00:27:21,000 --> 00:27:26,520
Speaker 1: was contagion within the epidemiological vocabulary of people at the time.

485
00:27:26,640 --> 00:27:29,600
Speaker 1: And it seems like too, even though they didn't have

486
00:27:30,000 --> 00:27:34,280
Speaker 1: a germ theory of disease, like they didn't understand fully

487
00:27:34,359 --> 00:27:38,040
Speaker 1: that diseases were being caused by tiny, you know, life

488
00:27:38,040 --> 00:27:41,600
Speaker 1: forms that were replicating within their bodies. There were some

489
00:27:41,640 --> 00:27:45,800
Speaker 1: people who had some form of an idea of contagion. Uh,

490
00:27:45,800 --> 00:27:49,480
Speaker 1: though the the transmission mechanism itself might have been obscure

491
00:27:49,520 --> 00:27:51,960
Speaker 1: to them. There were people who thought like, well, you

492
00:27:52,000 --> 00:27:55,600
Speaker 1: can observe that plague tends to proliferate within a building,

493
00:27:56,440 --> 00:27:59,359
Speaker 1: so people within a house, then everybody else in the

494
00:27:59,400 --> 00:28:01,679
Speaker 1: house starts to get plague. And then if you go

495
00:28:01,800 --> 00:28:03,920
Speaker 1: to a place where there's a lot of plague, you're

496
00:28:03,960 --> 00:28:05,919
Speaker 1: more likely to get plague. And so that might have

497
00:28:05,960 --> 00:28:08,680
Speaker 1: been explained in terms of something like miasthma theory, where

498
00:28:08,680 --> 00:28:11,240
Speaker 1: you might think, well, they're just bad vapors around there,

499
00:28:11,720 --> 00:28:13,679
Speaker 1: and if they get into you, maybe if you breathe

500
00:28:13,680 --> 00:28:16,399
Speaker 1: them or they get on your skin, those will harm you.

501
00:28:16,720 --> 00:28:18,679
Speaker 1: But I think there was also an idea that maybe

502
00:28:18,760 --> 00:28:21,920
Speaker 1: sometimes sick people have some kind of particles coming off

503
00:28:21,960 --> 00:28:24,760
Speaker 1: of them, and you want to prevent those particles from

504
00:28:24,760 --> 00:28:27,159
Speaker 1: touching you, And so this might have inspired some of

505
00:28:27,200 --> 00:28:29,919
Speaker 1: these full body coverings. You see what the plague doctor

506
00:28:29,960 --> 00:28:32,960
Speaker 1: outfits that, you know, you would have big coverings that

507
00:28:33,040 --> 00:28:35,800
Speaker 1: might have been covered in some kind of waxy substance

508
00:28:35,880 --> 00:28:37,800
Speaker 1: or something to try to really keep stuff out, and

509
00:28:37,800 --> 00:28:39,600
Speaker 1: then you tuck it all in, like you tuck your

510
00:28:39,600 --> 00:28:41,840
Speaker 1: shirt in, and you tuck your gloves in and everything

511
00:28:41,880 --> 00:28:45,240
Speaker 1: to kind of just prevent stuff from getting on you.

512
00:28:45,520 --> 00:28:48,120
Speaker 1: And even if they didn't have a germ theory of disease,

513
00:28:48,320 --> 00:28:51,600
Speaker 1: that in itself might have been quite useful in um

514
00:28:51,680 --> 00:28:55,520
Speaker 1: in keeping out various vectories of infection that we can

515
00:28:55,560 --> 00:28:58,760
Speaker 1: talk about in a second. Yeah, but then again it

516
00:28:58,880 --> 00:29:00,880
Speaker 1: can you can also use this of the same logic

517
00:29:00,920 --> 00:29:05,000
Speaker 1: to then to make judgments like, well, plague is here,

518
00:29:05,160 --> 00:29:07,720
Speaker 1: I don't want plague. We should all go over here

519
00:29:07,960 --> 00:29:11,680
Speaker 1: and then we'll be safe. Yeah. Yeah. So so ultimately

520
00:29:11,960 --> 00:29:14,920
Speaker 1: without really knowing your enemy in this case, really knowing

521
00:29:14,960 --> 00:29:16,480
Speaker 1: what it is you're up against and sort of the

522
00:29:17,000 --> 00:29:20,600
Speaker 1: rules that it adheres to, you know, there's also there's

523
00:29:20,600 --> 00:29:23,280
Speaker 1: still a lot of guesswork involved, and sometimes you're kind

524
00:29:23,320 --> 00:29:26,680
Speaker 1: of accidentally or maybe not quite accidentally, I mean, making

525
00:29:26,720 --> 00:29:30,000
Speaker 1: some leaps based on logic, getting to some level of

526
00:29:30,080 --> 00:29:33,440
Speaker 1: understanding about what you're dealing with and how disease works,

527
00:29:33,720 --> 00:29:36,320
Speaker 1: but in another case is missing it. Yeah, that's right,

528
00:29:36,360 --> 00:29:38,160
Speaker 1: And it's still like it still seems like there is

529
00:29:38,200 --> 00:29:42,080
Speaker 1: actually still a good bit of scientific controversy over what

530
00:29:42,200 --> 00:29:46,760
Speaker 1: are the primary routes of transmission for plague at various

531
00:29:46,800 --> 00:29:50,120
Speaker 1: times in places um the sources I've been looking at.

532
00:29:50,160 --> 00:29:53,800
Speaker 1: So it seems like the more classical understanding was that

533
00:29:54,360 --> 00:29:58,840
Speaker 1: people were mostly infected with plague by proximity to what

534
00:29:58,920 --> 00:30:03,400
Speaker 1: are called commenced old rodents. Uh. Commencel comes from I

535
00:30:03,440 --> 00:30:06,200
Speaker 1: think the term term four sharing a table together, sharing

536
00:30:06,200 --> 00:30:10,000
Speaker 1: meals together. That commence al rodents would be like rats

537
00:30:10,120 --> 00:30:13,760
Speaker 1: living in or near your house, and that those rats

538
00:30:13,880 --> 00:30:17,440
Speaker 1: would get in a plague infected fleas on them and

539
00:30:17,520 --> 00:30:20,520
Speaker 1: then from the rats, the fleas would jump to humans

540
00:30:20,560 --> 00:30:24,440
Speaker 1: and bite them, and those bites would develop into bubonic plague.

541
00:30:24,880 --> 00:30:29,200
Speaker 1: And then, of course sometimes bubonic plague can turn into

542
00:30:30,040 --> 00:30:32,520
Speaker 1: pneumonic plague, so you can have so this is a

543
00:30:32,560 --> 00:30:37,120
Speaker 1: little confusing, but you can have primary pneumonic plague where

544
00:30:37,120 --> 00:30:40,920
Speaker 1: the infection route is inhaled droplets that infect the lungs.

545
00:30:40,920 --> 00:30:43,520
Speaker 1: So if somebody like coughs neumonic plague and then you

546
00:30:43,600 --> 00:30:46,480
Speaker 1: inhale it, that you can get primary pneumonic plague, or

547
00:30:46,560 --> 00:30:51,440
Speaker 1: you can have secondary pneumonic plague where you're first infected

548
00:30:51,560 --> 00:30:54,400
Speaker 1: with the common form of the disease, the bubonic plague,

549
00:30:54,840 --> 00:30:58,000
Speaker 1: and then that progresses in the body and develops into

550
00:30:58,080 --> 00:31:00,960
Speaker 1: the lung infection into pneumonic plague, and then you can

551
00:31:01,000 --> 00:31:03,959
Speaker 1: spread it to others through droplets, through coughing or whatever,

552
00:31:04,600 --> 00:31:05,960
Speaker 1: and of course the people who got it that way

553
00:31:05,960 --> 00:31:09,000
Speaker 1: would have primary pneumonic plague. And again pneumonic plague is

554
00:31:09,200 --> 00:31:13,480
Speaker 1: uh extremely deadly and in fact, to introduce a study

555
00:31:13,480 --> 00:31:16,320
Speaker 1: I was going to mention next. So there was a

556
00:31:16,320 --> 00:31:20,560
Speaker 1: study published in p N A. S by Katherine ar

557
00:31:20,680 --> 00:31:24,360
Speaker 1: Deane at All called human ectoparasites and the spread of

558
00:31:24,360 --> 00:31:27,640
Speaker 1: plague in Europe during the second pandemic, and the authors

559
00:31:27,680 --> 00:31:30,280
Speaker 1: they're writing about the different forms of plague, they write

560
00:31:30,320 --> 00:31:34,680
Speaker 1: that quote, secondary neumonic plague develops in an estimated twenty

561
00:31:34,960 --> 00:31:38,960
Speaker 1: cent of bubonic cases. Uh, and this creates potential for

562
00:31:39,040 --> 00:31:42,160
Speaker 1: primary pneumonic spread, even if it is not the dominant

563
00:31:42,160 --> 00:31:45,760
Speaker 1: transmission route. So they're not saying that the plague was

564
00:31:45,840 --> 00:31:50,200
Speaker 1: primarily spread via droplets coughed by people who had pneumonic plague,

565
00:31:50,280 --> 00:31:53,280
Speaker 1: but that can be one way that the plague spreads.

566
00:31:53,680 --> 00:31:56,240
Speaker 1: So maybe like twenty of the people who get bubonic

567
00:31:56,240 --> 00:31:58,800
Speaker 1: plague eventually end up with pneumonic plague and then when

568
00:31:58,800 --> 00:32:01,800
Speaker 1: they're coughing, it's going all over the place. But anyway,

569
00:32:01,960 --> 00:32:04,280
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about this study itself by by

570
00:32:04,360 --> 00:32:10,000
Speaker 1: Dean at All from because this offered some evidence, some

571
00:32:10,120 --> 00:32:14,440
Speaker 1: evidence based on epidemiological modeling to try to solve the

572
00:32:14,520 --> 00:32:17,440
Speaker 1: question of what was the primary route of transmission for

573
00:32:17,480 --> 00:32:21,040
Speaker 1: plague in various places and times. So there's this consensus

574
00:32:21,080 --> 00:32:23,880
Speaker 1: that yes, the Black Death was caused by your cinea

575
00:32:23,920 --> 00:32:29,040
Speaker 1: pestis primarily manifesting in the bubonic plague form, and this

576
00:32:29,160 --> 00:32:31,920
Speaker 1: is backed up by multiple lines of evidence including DNA

577
00:32:32,000 --> 00:32:37,000
Speaker 1: analysis of remains from places like plague cemeteries. But there

578
00:32:37,000 --> 00:32:41,040
Speaker 1: are still these remaining questions about which route of transmission

579
00:32:41,080 --> 00:32:43,720
Speaker 1: was the most responsible for the horrible outbreaks we see

580
00:32:43,760 --> 00:32:47,160
Speaker 1: chronicled in Europe, Africa and Asia. Now just once again,

581
00:32:47,360 --> 00:32:49,920
Speaker 1: some of the previously known major ways that a person

582
00:32:50,000 --> 00:32:53,400
Speaker 1: could become infected with with plague would be first of all,

583
00:32:53,440 --> 00:32:57,480
Speaker 1: being bitten directly by a flee from a disease carrying rat,

584
00:32:58,320 --> 00:33:00,920
Speaker 1: and then the second would be inhaling droplets from a

585
00:33:00,960 --> 00:33:04,560
Speaker 1: person infected with the pneumonic version of the disease. But

586
00:33:04,840 --> 00:33:08,560
Speaker 1: there are some reasons for doubting either of these methods

587
00:33:08,640 --> 00:33:12,080
Speaker 1: was the primary route of transmission for most plague infection

588
00:33:12,120 --> 00:33:14,640
Speaker 1: in the second pandemic. And I think some of these

589
00:33:14,680 --> 00:33:18,000
Speaker 1: doubts come in the form of a lack of direct

590
00:33:18,080 --> 00:33:21,719
Speaker 1: evidence for examples, as the authors here say that, you know,

591
00:33:21,960 --> 00:33:24,280
Speaker 1: if you were to have a lot of plague coming

592
00:33:24,320 --> 00:33:28,280
Speaker 1: directly from rats to humans, you would probably expect to

593
00:33:28,320 --> 00:33:32,560
Speaker 1: see physical remains indicating huge rat die offs, what they

594
00:33:32,600 --> 00:33:35,600
Speaker 1: called rat falls, and they say that that we don't

595
00:33:35,600 --> 00:33:38,720
Speaker 1: actually have that. And then the other thing is circumstantial

596
00:33:38,760 --> 00:33:42,360
Speaker 1: analysis like the spread of plague was often very rapid

597
00:33:42,440 --> 00:33:44,840
Speaker 1: in a way that the authors argue can be difficult

598
00:33:44,880 --> 00:33:49,160
Speaker 1: to explain given given either one of the preceding vectors,

599
00:33:49,200 --> 00:33:53,800
Speaker 1: so say, from directly from rats to humans or droplets

600
00:33:53,800 --> 00:33:57,000
Speaker 1: from the pneumonic plague. And one problem with spread via

601
00:33:57,000 --> 00:34:01,360
Speaker 1: the pneumonic plague is actually that with pneumonic plague tend

602
00:34:01,440 --> 00:34:04,920
Speaker 1: to get very sick and die extremely fast, and this

603
00:34:05,000 --> 00:34:10,040
Speaker 1: sexually limits its transmission disease. A disease that kills its

604
00:34:10,080 --> 00:34:13,600
Speaker 1: host very very quickly can actually be less likely to

605
00:34:13,640 --> 00:34:16,640
Speaker 1: spread because it's so deadly, right, And this is something

606
00:34:16,640 --> 00:34:19,240
Speaker 1: that's been driven home about it and the current pandemic

607
00:34:19,280 --> 00:34:22,520
Speaker 1: with with COVID nineteen is that it it's it doesn't

608
00:34:22,560 --> 00:34:24,719
Speaker 1: kill people off immediately, it allows for this kind of

609
00:34:24,719 --> 00:34:27,240
Speaker 1: spread and can and then that's one of the reasons

610
00:34:27,280 --> 00:34:30,200
Speaker 1: we're in the place we are now. But in this paper,

611
00:34:30,239 --> 00:34:34,200
Speaker 1: the authors here explore a third alternative which they didn't invent.

612
00:34:34,360 --> 00:34:37,799
Speaker 1: This is something that has been hypothesized and debated in

613
00:34:37,800 --> 00:34:41,440
Speaker 1: in previous research, but they're exploring and trying to model

614
00:34:41,520 --> 00:34:46,520
Speaker 1: this third alternative, which is human to human transmission through

615
00:34:46,600 --> 00:34:52,520
Speaker 1: the intercession of human ectoparasites. These would be things like

616
00:34:52,680 --> 00:34:56,040
Speaker 1: fleas and lice, but not jumping off of an infected

617
00:34:56,160 --> 00:34:59,920
Speaker 1: rat and biting a human and then infecting them. Instead

618
00:35:00,000 --> 00:35:05,799
Speaker 1: had specific human ectoparasites like human fleas or pulex irritants

619
00:35:06,000 --> 00:35:10,840
Speaker 1: or human body lice or known as peddiculous humanis humanis,

620
00:35:11,440 --> 00:35:14,200
Speaker 1: And so the idea here would be that there might

621
00:35:14,239 --> 00:35:16,960
Speaker 1: be some initial infection case that would come from a

622
00:35:17,000 --> 00:35:20,680
Speaker 1: wild animal reservoir, but then once it is in humans,

623
00:35:21,160 --> 00:35:24,440
Speaker 1: human ectoparasites like the fleas and lice living on human

624
00:35:24,520 --> 00:35:28,960
Speaker 1: bodies would bite the infected human and then carry the

625
00:35:29,000 --> 00:35:32,479
Speaker 1: infection and then go bite another human and infect them.

626
00:35:32,960 --> 00:35:36,200
Speaker 1: So the primary responsibility would would look more like a

627
00:35:36,320 --> 00:35:40,440
Speaker 1: human to human direct spread versus something that is that

628
00:35:40,600 --> 00:35:44,360
Speaker 1: is mediated by by a rat reservoir. So we're basically

629
00:35:44,360 --> 00:35:47,640
Speaker 1: talking about an all new loop that develops like not

630
00:35:47,640 --> 00:35:50,960
Speaker 1: not the the rat and rat parasite loop, but a

631
00:35:51,080 --> 00:35:54,120
Speaker 1: human and human parasite loop. Right. And I want to

632
00:35:54,120 --> 00:35:56,839
Speaker 1: be very clear that this this one study here does

633
00:35:56,880 --> 00:35:59,120
Speaker 1: not mean like the question is settled and it was

634
00:35:59,239 --> 00:36:02,040
Speaker 1: definitely the human ectoparasites. I think there's still a lot

635
00:36:02,040 --> 00:36:04,640
Speaker 1: of open questions and plenty of room for debate about

636
00:36:05,160 --> 00:36:08,440
Speaker 1: what were the main transmission vectors in these different places

637
00:36:08,440 --> 00:36:11,920
Speaker 1: in times during the Second Plague pandemic. But UH, the

638
00:36:11,960 --> 00:36:14,440
Speaker 1: authors here at least found is one line of evidence

639
00:36:14,480 --> 00:36:19,440
Speaker 1: in favor of the human ectoparasites hypothesis. UH that this

640
00:36:19,560 --> 00:36:22,960
Speaker 1: evidence was they ran simulations of epidemics based on the

641
00:36:23,040 --> 00:36:26,040
Speaker 1: three different transmission vectors and what could be known about

642
00:36:26,080 --> 00:36:28,080
Speaker 1: them about like how fast you would expect them to

643
00:36:28,120 --> 00:36:30,120
Speaker 1: spread and what the mortality would be and all that.

644
00:36:30,200 --> 00:36:34,960
Speaker 1: So they created these mathematical models for spread by primarily

645
00:36:35,120 --> 00:36:39,040
Speaker 1: pneumonic droplets people getting pneumonic plague and then coughing and

646
00:36:39,080 --> 00:36:42,960
Speaker 1: infecting other people, and then flea bites directly from rats

647
00:36:43,400 --> 00:36:47,680
Speaker 1: and then spread via human ectoparasites. And they compared these

648
00:36:47,680 --> 00:36:52,200
Speaker 1: models together um based on existing data about mortality rates

649
00:36:52,239 --> 00:36:55,200
Speaker 1: from nine known locations of plague outbreak in Europe during

650
00:36:55,200 --> 00:36:58,200
Speaker 1: the Second pandemic, and according to their model, the human

651
00:36:58,239 --> 00:37:01,239
Speaker 1: ectoparasites spread fit the day DA better than the other

652
00:37:01,400 --> 00:37:03,719
Speaker 1: methods of spread did. So they think this is one

653
00:37:03,840 --> 00:37:06,840
Speaker 1: good line of evidence that the primary way plague was

654
00:37:06,880 --> 00:37:09,680
Speaker 1: spread at this time was via these human ectoparasites. It

655
00:37:09,719 --> 00:37:13,360
Speaker 1: was human to human but primarily from little things getting

656
00:37:13,360 --> 00:37:15,880
Speaker 1: on you that bite you and then jump to another

657
00:37:15,920 --> 00:37:19,600
Speaker 1: person and and bite them. And even if few people

658
00:37:19,600 --> 00:37:21,520
Speaker 1: so again, we we don't know that this is correct,

659
00:37:21,560 --> 00:37:23,680
Speaker 1: but it's an interesting idea, and it makes me think

660
00:37:23,680 --> 00:37:27,080
Speaker 1: about how even though few if any people would have

661
00:37:27,200 --> 00:37:30,640
Speaker 1: understood the vectors of the disease in this way at

662
00:37:30,640 --> 00:37:33,440
Speaker 1: the time, Uh, it doesn't make me think about how

663
00:37:33,480 --> 00:37:36,480
Speaker 1: if you read plague treatises and people writing about the

664
00:37:36,520 --> 00:37:39,160
Speaker 1: plague at the time, I recall a lot of things

665
00:37:39,280 --> 00:37:45,640
Speaker 1: mentioning clothes like infected clothes and bedclothes of the deceased,

666
00:37:45,760 --> 00:37:48,760
Speaker 1: and and the idea of you know, touching the things

667
00:37:48,800 --> 00:37:51,879
Speaker 1: they wore and all that being being dangerous, and that

668
00:37:51,880 --> 00:37:54,000
Speaker 1: that makes me wonder if I'm remembering that right, I mean,

669
00:37:54,000 --> 00:37:56,520
Speaker 1: that doesn't make me wonder if there is, in a

670
00:37:56,560 --> 00:37:59,400
Speaker 1: way something people are picking up about places where you

671
00:37:59,480 --> 00:38:04,080
Speaker 1: might expect to find the ectoparasites of infected people. Yeah, yeah,

672
00:38:04,120 --> 00:38:05,839
Speaker 1: that's a good point. I mean, on the other hand,

673
00:38:06,360 --> 00:38:09,400
Speaker 1: if these were people suffering from extreme flu like symptoms,

674
00:38:10,080 --> 00:38:12,520
Speaker 1: it also made might might make sense to steer clear

675
00:38:12,520 --> 00:38:15,520
Speaker 1: if their their their garments and their their sheets and

676
00:38:15,560 --> 00:38:20,280
Speaker 1: so forth for other reasons, because of potential fluids and whatnot.

677
00:38:20,640 --> 00:38:23,880
Speaker 1: Now I saw some some coverage of this particular study.

678
00:38:23,920 --> 00:38:25,600
Speaker 1: I think one of them had a headline that was

679
00:38:25,680 --> 00:38:29,440
Speaker 1: essentially something like rats are off the hook for the

680
00:38:29,560 --> 00:38:32,000
Speaker 1: Black Death. Uh, come on, do you think do you

681
00:38:32,000 --> 00:38:34,880
Speaker 1: think that's fair? I mean, I guess I get halfway

682
00:38:34,880 --> 00:38:36,680
Speaker 1: fair if you're trying to be cute. I mean, of course,

683
00:38:36,840 --> 00:38:39,440
Speaker 1: given the understanding that it's not just like one study

684
00:38:39,480 --> 00:38:41,400
Speaker 1: and then you're done with the subject, like you know,

685
00:38:41,560 --> 00:38:44,200
Speaker 1: you're you're building a base of knowledge, and you'd see

686
00:38:44,200 --> 00:38:46,880
Speaker 1: how this would compare to other lines of evidence for

687
00:38:46,960 --> 00:38:49,160
Speaker 1: and against the idea. But even then I think it

688
00:38:49,200 --> 00:38:52,200
Speaker 1: wouldn't be fully rats are off the hook because I

689
00:38:52,200 --> 00:38:55,000
Speaker 1: if I'm understanding this idea correctly, I think it would

690
00:38:55,000 --> 00:38:57,239
Speaker 1: still be the idea that there is, of course a

691
00:38:57,320 --> 00:39:00,800
Speaker 1: natural rodent reservoir, and this is where you're sending Epestis

692
00:39:01,200 --> 00:39:04,440
Speaker 1: lives in its standard cycle, it's cycle in the wild,

693
00:39:04,840 --> 00:39:06,640
Speaker 1: and so at some point the jump would have had

694
00:39:06,680 --> 00:39:09,279
Speaker 1: to happen. You would just say that rats are not

695
00:39:09,440 --> 00:39:15,000
Speaker 1: primarily the thing carrying it to each person who gets infected. Right,

696
00:39:19,760 --> 00:39:24,000
Speaker 1: thank thank So, it seems like we know, second plague

697
00:39:24,000 --> 00:39:27,839
Speaker 1: pandemic almost definitely was your cine epestis, you know, hitting

698
00:39:27,880 --> 00:39:32,000
Speaker 1: people primarily in the bubonic disease form. But there are

699
00:39:32,000 --> 00:39:35,560
Speaker 1: a lot of interesting, still as yet unsettled questions out

700
00:39:35,560 --> 00:39:40,120
Speaker 1: there about it, how exactly it worked, and research goes on. Yeah,

701
00:39:40,160 --> 00:39:42,359
Speaker 1: and then you know, there's so many different factors when

702
00:39:42,360 --> 00:39:45,360
Speaker 1: you start looking at you know, what causes uh, um,

703
00:39:45,480 --> 00:39:49,359
Speaker 1: plague episodics and and outbreaks. Uh. You know, you have

704
00:39:49,360 --> 00:39:51,400
Speaker 1: so many different factors to take into account, like like

705
00:39:51,480 --> 00:39:55,320
Speaker 1: higher high rates of death among reservoir rodent species, climate

706
00:39:55,360 --> 00:39:59,080
Speaker 1: related factors, you know, cooler summers following wet winners. That

707
00:39:59,120 --> 00:40:02,840
Speaker 1: seems to be a factor as well that I've seen highlighted. Um.

708
00:40:02,920 --> 00:40:04,719
Speaker 1: And then you can also throw in things like high

709
00:40:04,760 --> 00:40:09,600
Speaker 1: density human populations, uh, you know, multiple rodent types living

710
00:40:09,640 --> 00:40:13,920
Speaker 1: within that population and so forth. Um. But one of

711
00:40:13,960 --> 00:40:15,920
Speaker 1: the big questions that often comes up is Okay, well

712
00:40:15,920 --> 00:40:18,640
Speaker 1: where did it actually come from? Which you know, in

713
00:40:18,680 --> 00:40:22,360
Speaker 1: some in some ways that's a loaded question because, like

714
00:40:22,400 --> 00:40:25,080
Speaker 1: I said, you can you can in North America, you

715
00:40:25,120 --> 00:40:28,399
Speaker 1: can essentially like wander out into the wilderness and there

716
00:40:28,400 --> 00:40:31,600
Speaker 1: will be plague somewhere out there. Their rodent reservoirs um

717
00:40:31,960 --> 00:40:34,839
Speaker 1: all over the place for it. But in terms of

718
00:40:34,920 --> 00:40:38,840
Speaker 1: like this particular outbreak of the you know, the Black Death, Uh,

719
00:40:39,000 --> 00:40:40,920
Speaker 1: there's been a lot written on it. I was reading

720
00:40:41,360 --> 00:40:45,640
Speaker 1: was the Black Death in India and China by George D. Sussman. Uh.

721
00:40:45,760 --> 00:40:48,560
Speaker 1: This was published in the Bulletin of History of Medicine

722
00:40:48,600 --> 00:40:52,160
Speaker 1: in twenty eleven, and in the author first explore some

723
00:40:52,200 --> 00:40:55,480
Speaker 1: of the early understandings about the geographic origins of the

724
00:40:55,480 --> 00:40:59,200
Speaker 1: affliction and then moves on into other areas. So there

725
00:40:59,239 --> 00:41:01,680
Speaker 1: was apparently an under standing in the fourteenth century, evident

726
00:41:01,719 --> 00:41:06,600
Speaker 1: in the writings of fourteen century Italian lawyer Gabrielle de

727
00:41:06,719 --> 00:41:10,400
Speaker 1: Musis that the Black Death had struck throughout the known world,

728
00:41:10,440 --> 00:41:14,440
Speaker 1: that it was an international crisis, perhaps of biblical proportions

729
00:41:14,760 --> 00:41:17,760
Speaker 1: as play, and it was hitting places so far away

730
00:41:18,000 --> 00:41:20,640
Speaker 1: that they were almost mythical, that even those places were

731
00:41:20,680 --> 00:41:24,200
Speaker 1: struggling with plague. And then he goes on to mention,

732
00:41:24,320 --> 00:41:25,799
Speaker 1: so a lot of the scholarship that we have comes

733
00:41:25,800 --> 00:41:28,399
Speaker 1: from the Christian in the Islamic worlds Uh. He goes

734
00:41:28,400 --> 00:41:32,960
Speaker 1: on to mention fourteenth century poet Uh even al Lardi,

735
00:41:33,960 --> 00:41:37,000
Speaker 1: who was situated I believe in Aleppo, which is in

736
00:41:37,040 --> 00:41:41,040
Speaker 1: modern day Syria, and he spoke with merchants who had

737
00:41:41,080 --> 00:41:44,399
Speaker 1: traveled and observed the plague elsewhere, and he himself would

738
00:41:44,440 --> 00:41:48,040
Speaker 1: die of the plague in thirteen forty nine. But he

739
00:41:48,120 --> 00:41:51,360
Speaker 1: wrote that the pandemic had begun in northern Asia, in

740
00:41:51,440 --> 00:41:54,759
Speaker 1: what he called the land of darkness. Quote China was

741
00:41:54,800 --> 00:41:58,279
Speaker 1: not preserved from it, nor could the strongest fortress hinder it.

742
00:41:58,640 --> 00:42:01,600
Speaker 1: The plague afflicted the Indians in India. It weighed upon

743
00:42:01,680 --> 00:42:05,080
Speaker 1: the send it sees with its hand, and ensnarled even

744
00:42:05,120 --> 00:42:08,440
Speaker 1: the land of the Ozbeks. How many backs did it break?

745
00:42:08,719 --> 00:42:11,960
Speaker 1: In what is Transoxiana, That, by the way, is an

746
00:42:12,000 --> 00:42:15,960
Speaker 1: ancient name for lower Central Asia. And then he continues,

747
00:42:16,040 --> 00:42:19,400
Speaker 1: the plague increased and spread further. But of course, as

748
00:42:19,400 --> 00:42:21,479
Speaker 1: we'll discuss here, you know, this was a time during

749
00:42:21,520 --> 00:42:23,960
Speaker 1: which there was no germ theory of disease. This bit

750
00:42:24,000 --> 00:42:27,600
Speaker 1: from alardi Uh comes close to capturing the feel of

751
00:42:27,360 --> 00:42:31,160
Speaker 1: an actual pandemic. But there's obviously something lacking here, and

752
00:42:31,200 --> 00:42:34,200
Speaker 1: it would be lacking for some time in human attempts

753
00:42:34,239 --> 00:42:38,600
Speaker 1: to understand the Black Death's origins. Now, Suspen points to

754
00:42:38,719 --> 00:42:43,640
Speaker 1: German medical historian JFC Hecker, and he writes in eighteen

755
00:42:43,640 --> 00:42:47,279
Speaker 1: thirty two of it extending out of China, but he

756
00:42:47,320 --> 00:42:49,840
Speaker 1: links this to a number of alleged events in this

757
00:42:49,960 --> 00:42:52,960
Speaker 1: part of the world around thirteen thirty three, things like

758
00:42:53,040 --> 00:42:57,200
Speaker 1: earthquakes and locusts um a falling meteor, and he then

759
00:42:57,239 --> 00:42:59,319
Speaker 1: goes on to discuss it in very much the sort

760
00:42:59,320 --> 00:43:04,080
Speaker 1: of context of miasthma theory. He describes it as a quote,

761
00:43:04,200 --> 00:43:08,200
Speaker 1: a progressive infection of zones both above and below the

762
00:43:08,200 --> 00:43:11,560
Speaker 1: Earth's surface that sweeps east to west. So again, not

763
00:43:11,680 --> 00:43:14,200
Speaker 1: an understanding of something that will travel from person to

764
00:43:14,280 --> 00:43:18,160
Speaker 1: person or via rodents or any any you know, anything

765
00:43:18,560 --> 00:43:21,280
Speaker 1: like we know now, but rather a kind of bad

766
00:43:21,320 --> 00:43:24,920
Speaker 1: air fall out sweeping across Eurasia. And in the absence

767
00:43:24,960 --> 00:43:27,040
Speaker 1: of other types of explanations, you could see how that

768
00:43:27,080 --> 00:43:28,560
Speaker 1: would make a lot of sense. I mean, it could

769
00:43:28,600 --> 00:43:32,600
Speaker 1: pretty neatly match the observed history of the progression of

770
00:43:32,760 --> 00:43:37,760
Speaker 1: the disease. Yeah. Now, Susmen eventually concludes that the Black

771
00:43:37,800 --> 00:43:41,000
Speaker 1: Death might not have visited China or India during the

772
00:43:41,040 --> 00:43:44,200
Speaker 1: fourteenth century, And then again, I mean, we can't say

773
00:43:44,280 --> 00:43:47,080
Speaker 1: with degree of certainty. He just says that it seems

774
00:43:47,120 --> 00:43:49,480
Speaker 1: like this might have been not in the case, though

775
00:43:49,640 --> 00:43:54,200
Speaker 1: it would hit China and India in later centuries. UH.

776
00:43:54,239 --> 00:43:57,440
Speaker 1: There's a great deal of European focused material on plague

777
00:43:57,440 --> 00:43:59,759
Speaker 1: as well as a tradition of saying that it emerged

778
00:44:00,239 --> 00:44:03,440
Speaker 1: in China, and it seems like the third plague pandemic

779
00:44:03,480 --> 00:44:05,719
Speaker 1: of the eighteen hundreds may have begun there. But it's

780
00:44:05,840 --> 00:44:08,319
Speaker 1: it's hard to trace the second plague pandemic, the Black

781
00:44:08,360 --> 00:44:14,279
Speaker 1: Death with accuracy. UH. European and Middle Eastern UH epidemics

782
00:44:14,320 --> 00:44:17,680
Speaker 1: can be traced to Crimea in thirteen forty six, but

783
00:44:17,800 --> 00:44:21,080
Speaker 1: before that, UH, it's it's hard to say. Accounts vary

784
00:44:21,239 --> 00:44:24,680
Speaker 1: from in or near China to the Mongolian step to

785
00:44:24,800 --> 00:44:29,000
Speaker 1: Central Asia. I've seen Kurdistan and Iraq brought in brought

786
00:44:29,080 --> 00:44:31,600
Speaker 1: up in an older paper I think from ninety seven

787
00:44:31,600 --> 00:44:35,200
Speaker 1: by Norris um. So at any rate, it remains disputed,

788
00:44:35,400 --> 00:44:39,239
Speaker 1: though you'll find science headlines, especially from around twenty say

789
00:44:39,280 --> 00:44:42,200
Speaker 1: things like the origins of the Black Death traced back

790
00:44:42,239 --> 00:44:46,479
Speaker 1: to China. Gene sequencing has revealed, but in this they're

791
00:44:46,520 --> 00:44:49,920
Speaker 1: tracing it back two thousand years to the region, which

792
00:44:50,040 --> 00:44:52,839
Speaker 1: is accurate would position it as the cause of the

793
00:44:52,920 --> 00:44:57,400
Speaker 1: Justinian plague more specifically, and when they what they ultimately

794
00:44:57,440 --> 00:45:00,600
Speaker 1: say in that study is in or near China, which

795
00:45:00,640 --> 00:45:03,840
Speaker 1: covers a wide area of Asia. But again you'll often

796
00:45:03,840 --> 00:45:05,759
Speaker 1: find write ups of plague where they'll say, oh, it

797
00:45:05,800 --> 00:45:09,360
Speaker 1: originated in China, or originated in Mongolia, or it originated

798
00:45:09,360 --> 00:45:12,719
Speaker 1: in Central Asia. Um. And, like we said, that's one

799
00:45:12,760 --> 00:45:16,000
Speaker 1: of the things about diving into into research of the

800
00:45:16,000 --> 00:45:18,839
Speaker 1: Black Death is you go into it thinking that there

801
00:45:18,880 --> 00:45:22,760
Speaker 1: are certain like like really just just just hardcore knowns.

802
00:45:22,760 --> 00:45:25,840
Speaker 1: Some there's some solid pillars in this house of research,

803
00:45:26,120 --> 00:45:29,399
Speaker 1: and and some are, but some are not nearly as

804
00:45:29,400 --> 00:45:31,920
Speaker 1: solid as you think. You know, Rob, the whole reason

805
00:45:31,960 --> 00:45:33,719
Speaker 1: you brought this up with so we could talk about

806
00:45:33,719 --> 00:45:36,719
Speaker 1: religious responses to the second plague pandemic. We haven't even

807
00:45:36,760 --> 00:45:38,400
Speaker 1: gotten there yet, and I think we might have to

808
00:45:38,440 --> 00:45:41,000
Speaker 1: call episode one right here and come back and dive

809
00:45:41,080 --> 00:45:44,759
Speaker 1: into those religious responses in the next episode. I believe so.

810
00:45:44,840 --> 00:45:46,800
Speaker 1: But we're off to a good start. I think we've

811
00:45:47,280 --> 00:45:50,320
Speaker 1: we've we've we've highlighted what the adversary is, and the

812
00:45:50,520 --> 00:45:54,240
Speaker 1: next we'll see what the religious authorities did and tried

813
00:45:54,280 --> 00:45:59,240
Speaker 1: to do to deal with it or or allowed or permitted, etcetera. UM,

814
00:45:59,280 --> 00:46:01,440
Speaker 1: so it should be. It should be a fun discussion,

815
00:46:02,200 --> 00:46:04,200
Speaker 1: all right. In the meantime, if you would like to

816
00:46:04,239 --> 00:46:07,080
Speaker 1: write in about this episode or any other episode, do

817
00:46:07,160 --> 00:46:09,320
Speaker 1: so get in touch with us. Yeah yeah. Or you

818
00:46:09,400 --> 00:46:12,320
Speaker 1: a microbiologist who works with your cine a pestus, do

819
00:46:12,360 --> 00:46:13,680
Speaker 1: you do you want to tell us all about it

820
00:46:14,200 --> 00:46:16,360
Speaker 1: right on in? Yeah, we would. We would be delighted

821
00:46:16,400 --> 00:46:18,359
Speaker 1: to hear from you. Uh. If you want to listen

822
00:46:18,400 --> 00:46:20,759
Speaker 1: to other episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind, you'll

823
00:46:20,760 --> 00:46:23,080
Speaker 1: find them in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind Podcast

824
00:46:23,160 --> 00:46:26,400
Speaker 1: feed with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, listener Man

825
00:46:26,480 --> 00:46:30,239
Speaker 1: on Monday, and Artifacts on Wednesday, and on Friday's we

826
00:46:30,320 --> 00:46:32,279
Speaker 1: do a little Weird how Cinema. That's our time just

827
00:46:32,320 --> 00:46:35,680
Speaker 1: to talk about a particular weird movie, and then we

828
00:46:35,760 --> 00:46:39,280
Speaker 1: run a rerun over the weekend. Huge thanks as always

829
00:46:39,280 --> 00:46:42,520
Speaker 1: to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you

830
00:46:42,560 --> 00:46:44,440
Speaker 1: would like to get in touch with us with feedback

831
00:46:44,480 --> 00:46:46,680
Speaker 1: on this episode or any other to suggest a topic

832
00:46:46,719 --> 00:46:49,240
Speaker 1: for the future, just to say hello, you can email

833
00:46:49,320 --> 00:47:00,200
Speaker 1: us at contact at Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

834
00:47:00,239 --> 00:47:02,720
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I heart Radio.

835
00:47:03,080 --> 00:47:05,200
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836
00:47:05,239 --> 00:47:08,040
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837
00:47:08,120 --> 00:47:17,600
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.