WEBVTT - God and the Black Death, Part 1 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:05.280 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of 0:00:05.360 --> 0:00:14.280 My Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow 0:00:14.320 --> 0:00:17.600 your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. 0:00:17.680 --> 0:00:21.240 And today Hey, it's the Diseases and the Heavens. Because 0:00:21.560 --> 0:00:24.880 rob you recently said, Hey, would you be interested in 0:00:24.920 --> 0:00:28.880 doing an episode or two on the interactions between plague 0:00:28.880 --> 0:00:32.839 pandemics of the past and God and religious interpretations. And 0:00:32.880 --> 0:00:36.400 I was like, wow, yeah, that sounds really interesting. But Robert, 0:00:36.400 --> 0:00:38.800 I gotta admit, this is one of those topics where 0:00:38.920 --> 0:00:41.239 something sounds really interesting with then as soon as you 0:00:41.280 --> 0:00:44.040 start getting into it, you realize, oh, no, it's one 0:00:44.040 --> 0:00:48.080 of those word the more I read, the less I know. Um. 0:00:48.360 --> 0:00:51.360 That is definitely the case with the historical scholarship on 0:00:51.440 --> 0:00:54.600 religious responses to to the plague this it seems like 0:00:54.680 --> 0:00:58.120 this is a really complicated area of research. Yes, i'd 0:00:58.120 --> 0:01:01.320 say a complicated area of research and also a robust 0:01:01.400 --> 0:01:04.520 and thriving area of research. And I think that's something 0:01:04.520 --> 0:01:07.160 that I might surprise some listeners out there to know 0:01:07.280 --> 0:01:09.399 that like the Black Death and the study of the 0:01:09.400 --> 0:01:12.040 Black Death and our attempt to understand uh, you know, 0:01:12.080 --> 0:01:15.399 things like mortality rates and how it's spread, and and 0:01:15.440 --> 0:01:17.800 then how people responded to it, and it's and its 0:01:17.800 --> 0:01:20.319 effects short term and long term. You might think that 0:01:20.400 --> 0:01:22.240 this is this is a matter of the history books. 0:01:22.280 --> 0:01:25.960 This is something that has been settled for decades, if 0:01:26.000 --> 0:01:29.520 not centuries, and there's perhaps very little, like just some 0:01:29.600 --> 0:01:32.040 fine tuning of the research these days. But it's not 0:01:32.080 --> 0:01:34.360 the case. There's a lot of work that goes on 0:01:35.120 --> 0:01:38.840 in this area of study, and there's still exciting stuff 0:01:38.840 --> 0:01:40.640 coming out. I mean, you go back a couple of 0:01:40.680 --> 0:01:42.479 decades and it seems like a lot of what people 0:01:42.560 --> 0:01:45.319 were arguing about was whether or not plague was caused 0:01:45.360 --> 0:01:49.240 by plague. Yeah, and I remember this. Uh. I don't 0:01:49.240 --> 0:01:52.280 think I ever wrote anything specifically for how Stuff Works 0:01:52.280 --> 0:01:55.200 dot com about the Black Death. Maybe I had to 0:01:55.240 --> 0:01:58.560 cover it like briefly in some sort of you know, 0:01:58.880 --> 0:02:02.080 like a top ten pandemics type of an article or something. 0:02:02.600 --> 0:02:04.600 But I remember at the time this being the case 0:02:04.640 --> 0:02:07.480 where there were these different different theories about what it 0:02:07.560 --> 0:02:11.040 might have been. Was it perhaps this particular ailment or disease, 0:02:11.080 --> 0:02:13.680 was it this one, or was it actually what we 0:02:13.720 --> 0:02:16.480 think of as bubonic plague? Yeah, and so at least 0:02:16.520 --> 0:02:18.880 I think that question is mostly settled. We can give 0:02:18.880 --> 0:02:20.919 a fairly firm answer on that one today. But I 0:02:21.280 --> 0:02:25.680 was just surprised how much about the plague pandemics is 0:02:25.720 --> 0:02:28.519 still up in the air or has been questioned or 0:02:28.800 --> 0:02:32.720 is still controversial. Uh, And and how often a fact 0:02:32.800 --> 0:02:35.400 you thought you knew about it might not actually be correct. 0:02:36.160 --> 0:02:38.520 But anyway, so I was also wondering, like, how did 0:02:38.520 --> 0:02:40.440 you get interested in this? What what made you want 0:02:40.440 --> 0:02:43.120 to talk about the Black Death and and the powers 0:02:43.160 --> 0:02:45.880 of God? Oh? Well, I think part of it was 0:02:45.919 --> 0:02:47.959 I was I picked up and burcos the Name of 0:02:47.960 --> 0:02:49.920 the Rose again when I was reading through through that, 0:02:50.040 --> 0:02:53.920 and I was reminded about how it's it's mentioned that 0:02:55.000 --> 0:02:57.920 brother William eventually dies in the plague or is lost 0:02:57.960 --> 0:03:00.359 in the plague, and like knowing that the egg is 0:03:00.400 --> 0:03:04.079 the thing that comes the Black Death specifically, uh, is 0:03:04.120 --> 0:03:06.880 the thing that comes after the events of the novel 0:03:07.080 --> 0:03:09.320 and um, And so sometimes that, you know, makes me 0:03:09.360 --> 0:03:13.000 think about the world that is described in that book 0:03:13.080 --> 0:03:16.120 and and how how it's going to fare against a 0:03:16.160 --> 0:03:20.480 threat like this. And then of course it goes without saying, uh, 0:03:20.520 --> 0:03:24.359 you know, we're we're recording this, researching this during uh 0:03:24.400 --> 0:03:28.760 an ongoing global pandemic, and so I think it's it's 0:03:28.760 --> 0:03:30.480 something that has been on a lot of people's minds. 0:03:30.480 --> 0:03:32.360 A lot of people have turned their minds back to 0:03:32.880 --> 0:03:38.000 historical plagues. Um Now, of course, in fighting this pandemic 0:03:38.000 --> 0:03:40.200 COVID nineteen, we we have a number of tools not 0:03:40.280 --> 0:03:43.960 available to humanity during the late Middle Ages. We know 0:03:44.040 --> 0:03:48.120 what actually causes the illness we're facing, we're able to 0:03:48.160 --> 0:03:51.160 figure out how it works, and we have both treatments 0:03:51.200 --> 0:03:54.320 and most marvelous of all vaccines that we can use. 0:03:54.800 --> 0:03:58.800 And speaking of vaccines, go get vaccinated against COVID nineteen 0:03:58.840 --> 0:04:00.840 if you have the ability to do so, and if 0:04:00.840 --> 0:04:03.520 you're not sure, talk to a medical doctor and find 0:04:03.520 --> 0:04:06.400 out what you need to know from them. So obviously 0:04:06.440 --> 0:04:08.680 there were no vaccines in the time of the of 0:04:08.760 --> 0:04:12.120 the Black Death in the fourteenth century outbreak of of 0:04:12.160 --> 0:04:14.880 the plague. But also there really weren't any treatments. I mean, 0:04:14.880 --> 0:04:17.000 if you get plague today, we know today that it 0:04:17.120 --> 0:04:19.600 is a bacterial infection and if caught early, it can 0:04:19.640 --> 0:04:23.200 be treated pretty effectively with antibiotics. I mean back at 0:04:23.200 --> 0:04:25.160 the time of the Black Death there there there really 0:04:25.200 --> 0:04:29.720 were not effective interventions at all. Yeah, it's it's really 0:04:29.800 --> 0:04:32.360 kind of staggering to to think about it, to think 0:04:32.360 --> 0:04:36.880 about to imagine a time right before the Black Death, 0:04:37.440 --> 0:04:40.560 and just think about what a mismatch this was medieval 0:04:40.600 --> 0:04:45.680 societies versus a deadly contagious disease caused by UH an 0:04:45.680 --> 0:04:49.320 invisible bacterium. The disease, on one hand, you might say, 0:04:49.480 --> 0:04:52.279 you know, understands its human adversaries to a certain extent, 0:04:52.360 --> 0:04:54.440 you know, UH, and not that it has a will 0:04:54.520 --> 0:04:56.880 or an intelligence, but it gets in there and it 0:04:56.920 --> 0:05:00.600 does its thing. The humans on the other hand, I mean, 0:05:00.680 --> 0:05:03.599 they have the gift of reason, certainly, they have technology 0:05:03.640 --> 0:05:07.320 and society, but they lack a germ theory of disease. 0:05:07.760 --> 0:05:10.559 They don't really know how the enemy in this case, 0:05:11.160 --> 0:05:14.360 the Black Death, how it functions, or even truly what 0:05:14.400 --> 0:05:16.760 it is. So they're blind in many ways. And on 0:05:16.839 --> 0:05:20.040 top of that, they have leaned into a supernatural understanding 0:05:20.080 --> 0:05:22.520 of the world. They believe in gods and saints and 0:05:22.560 --> 0:05:26.520 demons and miracles, and they trust in religious organizations and 0:05:26.560 --> 0:05:30.240 religious authorities or in many cases powers that are ordained 0:05:30.360 --> 0:05:34.320 by religious authorities. Another way of looking at things in 0:05:34.320 --> 0:05:39.000 this scenario is that in some ways, you have humanity 0:05:39.040 --> 0:05:43.359 stranded between two unseen worlds, be at least partially invisible 0:05:43.400 --> 0:05:46.839 world of disease and then the invisible world of religion. 0:05:47.600 --> 0:05:49.680 Uh So, you know, it's like, this is the matchup. 0:05:49.680 --> 0:05:52.960 How will these religious organizations and authorities respond to the 0:05:53.000 --> 0:05:57.000 Black Death? What chance do they have? And so in 0:05:57.160 --> 0:06:01.440 this episode, in the whatever episode or episodes follow it. Well, 0:06:01.480 --> 0:06:02.840 I thought we might get into that a little bit 0:06:02.839 --> 0:06:06.599 and talk about how imperfect societies respond to what is 0:06:06.600 --> 0:06:09.360 in many ways, you know, a perfect pathogen with a 0:06:09.400 --> 0:06:12.040 focus on on religion. But before we get into the 0:06:12.040 --> 0:06:14.000 religious stuff, we will have to talk about just like 0:06:14.080 --> 0:06:16.919 what was the Black Death? Uh as far as we 0:06:17.000 --> 0:06:19.680 understand it? Okay, Well, I guess we should start with 0:06:19.720 --> 0:06:22.840 that question. What do we think we know today about 0:06:22.880 --> 0:06:27.000 the nature of this disease? So first of all, let's 0:06:27.000 --> 0:06:28.680 just talk about like what do we mean we mean 0:06:28.680 --> 0:06:33.040 the Black Death versus like other plagues? Right, So, historians 0:06:33.160 --> 0:06:36.120 generally consider the Black Death to have lasted from around 0:06:36.120 --> 0:06:40.839 thirteen forty six uh ce obviously to thirteen fifty three 0:06:41.200 --> 0:06:45.120 throughout Afro Eurasia, more or less on the heels of 0:06:45.200 --> 0:06:49.159 the Great Famine of thirteen fifteen through thirteen seventeen. And 0:06:49.200 --> 0:06:52.160 this this will become important in a bit. But now 0:06:52.320 --> 0:06:54.800 one thing that's important to consider, and this is true 0:06:54.839 --> 0:06:58.719 of of multiple cases of plague pandemic in the world 0:06:58.720 --> 0:07:01.440 that we'll talk about in just a set can The 0:07:01.480 --> 0:07:03.719 black Death is a term is sometimes applied to this 0:07:03.800 --> 0:07:07.599 sort of initial outbreak that has been widely studied as 0:07:07.760 --> 0:07:11.000 having happened and say like uh, Europe in the Middle East, 0:07:11.080 --> 0:07:15.360 around the Mediterranean beginning around thirty six or forty seven, 0:07:15.960 --> 0:07:18.800 and then continuing for some years after that. But each 0:07:18.840 --> 0:07:23.640 of these pandemics is not contained to just a few years. 0:07:23.720 --> 0:07:27.240 There are these recurrent waves. So there will be an 0:07:27.240 --> 0:07:30.480 initial wave of infection and then it just and then 0:07:30.520 --> 0:07:32.560 it sort of goes away for a while within a 0:07:32.600 --> 0:07:35.760 certain region, but then there will be subsequent outbreaks throughout 0:07:35.880 --> 0:07:40.160 different regions over the following uh centuries really in the 0:07:40.160 --> 0:07:42.720 case of the one that begins in the fourteenth century 0:07:43.280 --> 0:07:45.640 and uh and one of the papers I was looking 0:07:45.680 --> 0:07:49.680 at was was calling these recurrent waves. Yeah, yeah, So 0:07:49.680 --> 0:07:52.960 it's important to realize that the Black Death of the 0:07:52.960 --> 0:07:55.880 fourteenth century, it's not thought to be the first great 0:07:55.920 --> 0:07:59.560 outbreak of playing in the Old world. The Plague of 0:07:59.560 --> 0:08:03.480 Justine In occurred between UH five forty one and five 0:08:03.560 --> 0:08:06.440 forty nine see. And it was also not the last 0:08:06.440 --> 0:08:09.280 pandemic of plague, as major outbreaks would occur throughout the 0:08:09.320 --> 0:08:12.680 fourteenth and seventeen centuries, including the Great Plague of London 0:08:12.720 --> 0:08:15.880 in sixteen sixty five and sixteen sixty six. But the 0:08:15.920 --> 0:08:19.960 fourteenth century outbreak is what is generally referred to when 0:08:19.960 --> 0:08:22.760 we talk about the Black Death, a pandemic that claimed 0:08:22.760 --> 0:08:25.560 the lives of between seventy five and two hundred million 0:08:25.640 --> 0:08:30.600 people and reshaped society for the survivors. I've seen drastically 0:08:30.640 --> 0:08:35.920 different estimates of what percentage of people within certain regions 0:08:36.440 --> 0:08:38.679 the Black Death killed. So I think this is not 0:08:38.760 --> 0:08:41.080 a settled question. It's something that has to be you know, 0:08:41.120 --> 0:08:43.120 it's not like there were just like there was a 0:08:43.200 --> 0:08:46.320 census of people and you can chart everyone who died. 0:08:46.480 --> 0:08:48.400 Has this is a number that has to be established 0:08:48.440 --> 0:08:51.679 through estimates. But like in on cases, you have good 0:08:51.720 --> 0:08:54.360 data to go on. You know, you can look at 0:08:54.440 --> 0:08:58.120 essentially death rolls from certain certain regions and certain time periods, 0:08:58.160 --> 0:09:01.080 and then some work has been done in me in 0:09:01.080 --> 0:09:05.400 in examining cemeteries and the like. Yeah, exactly, as a 0:09:05.679 --> 0:09:08.199 one figure I looked at for the Black Death said 0:09:08.240 --> 0:09:10.640 that the Black Death and its recurrent waves may have 0:09:10.760 --> 0:09:14.360 wiped up somewhere between one third to two thirds of 0:09:14.400 --> 0:09:17.760 the population of Europe. Anyway you shake it, a lot 0:09:17.800 --> 0:09:21.920 of people died. I mean, you know, in any variants 0:09:21.920 --> 0:09:24.199 in the numbers doesn't really take away from just how 0:09:24.440 --> 0:09:27.200 how brutal this was. Now, one source I was looking 0:09:27.240 --> 0:09:29.080 at and all of this was the The Anthropology of 0:09:29.120 --> 0:09:33.720 Plague by Sharon in de Witt, published in Pandemic Disease 0:09:33.760 --> 0:09:37.160 in the Medieval World, And this was from One of 0:09:37.160 --> 0:09:41.640 the things that DeWitt talks about is the idea that again, 0:09:41.720 --> 0:09:45.120 this this particular outbreak of plague, the Black Death, is 0:09:45.160 --> 0:09:49.480 following a period of rapid population growth and plenty due 0:09:49.520 --> 0:09:53.520 to warm climates and advancements in agriculture. When the warm 0:09:53.559 --> 0:09:56.839 period ended, however, there were ripples throughout Europe. There was 0:09:56.920 --> 0:10:00.320 less food. Uh, there was famine, There was a you know, 0:10:00.320 --> 0:10:03.520 there's an abundance of labor under a feudal system. So 0:10:03.800 --> 0:10:07.040 most people during this time experienced a decline in their 0:10:07.080 --> 0:10:12.080 standard of living. Non plague illness and malnutrition. Uh was 0:10:12.080 --> 0:10:15.360 was running rampant, and so there's this this strong argument 0:10:15.360 --> 0:10:17.240 to me, may the do it writes about it length 0:10:17.559 --> 0:10:20.600 that this put made them even more susceptible to this 0:10:20.679 --> 0:10:24.520 new disease or this new outbreak of a disease that 0:10:24.559 --> 0:10:27.600 had previously ravaged parts of the region. Yeah. And and 0:10:27.640 --> 0:10:30.880 this has been another major trend in writing over say 0:10:30.920 --> 0:10:34.960 the past hundred years about the about the Black Death 0:10:35.040 --> 0:10:38.440 of the fourteenth century and its recurrent waves. What what, 0:10:38.840 --> 0:10:43.680 how exactly does that get situated within the broader social, economic, 0:10:43.760 --> 0:10:47.000 and cultural context of the time which had occurred, What 0:10:47.000 --> 0:10:50.040 what led to it, what exacerbated it, and what changes 0:10:50.080 --> 0:10:52.839 did it bring about? Because it's widely believed that I 0:10:52.840 --> 0:10:55.480 guess we're not going to get super deep into these 0:10:55.920 --> 0:10:58.319 particular historical theories, but there have been a lot of 0:10:58.360 --> 0:11:00.920 theories about what rolled the Black Death may have played 0:11:00.920 --> 0:11:05.480 and say, revolutionizing the economic history of Europe, and uh, 0:11:05.640 --> 0:11:08.280 did it in some way trigger changes that might lead 0:11:08.360 --> 0:11:10.920 to things you associate with the Late Middle Ages or 0:11:10.920 --> 0:11:15.600 the Renaissance exactly? Yeah, And you know, I think it's 0:11:15.720 --> 0:11:17.240 it's also one of these things where you look at 0:11:17.280 --> 0:11:19.440 some of the older scholarship, or if you just look 0:11:19.480 --> 0:11:23.280 at sort of generalized um, you know, summaries of the 0:11:23.320 --> 0:11:25.160 Black Death, you know, and it's often pointed out, well, 0:11:25.200 --> 0:11:27.680 this affected everybody. It didn't matter what level of society 0:11:27.720 --> 0:11:29.800 you were you were at, and to to a to 0:11:29.840 --> 0:11:31.840 a large extent, that is true. I mean, people died 0:11:31.880 --> 0:11:34.520 at every every level of society. And there's this kind 0:11:34.520 --> 0:11:38.040 of idea that you know, the Black Death is it's 0:11:38.120 --> 0:11:40.240 it's you know, you get into these religious ideas of 0:11:40.280 --> 0:11:42.920 the judgment of humanity and it seems like it's just 0:11:43.040 --> 0:11:47.360 everybody is is suffering equally. But uh, does that hold 0:11:47.400 --> 0:11:50.880 up if we start looking at different populations, be at 0:11:51.040 --> 0:11:54.880 things like population density or dealing with you know, large 0:11:54.920 --> 0:11:59.640 portions of the population that are malnourished and so forth. Anyway, 0:11:59.679 --> 0:12:01.200 here's a is a quote from de Witt in that 0:12:01.320 --> 0:12:04.320 article I mentioned quote. The very high levels of Black 0:12:04.360 --> 0:12:08.720 death mortality and the results from hazard analysis, which indicate 0:12:08.760 --> 0:12:12.360 that this mortality was selective and targeted frail people of 0:12:12.360 --> 0:12:15.520 all ages, means that the epidemic might have exerted a 0:12:15.559 --> 0:12:19.280 strong selective force on the northern population, removing the frail 0:12:19.280 --> 0:12:23.200 list unhealthiest individuals on a very large scale. You have 0:12:23.240 --> 0:12:26.920 the post Black death population included individuals who were exposed 0:12:26.960 --> 0:12:29.840 to and survived the Black Death. This episode of selection 0:12:29.920 --> 0:12:33.120 might at least in part, explain the very rapid apparent 0:12:33.200 --> 0:12:37.679 changes in medieval plague epidemiology. These changes include the apparent 0:12:37.720 --> 0:12:43.400 decline and plague mortality as described in contemporaneous historical documents. Okay, 0:12:43.400 --> 0:12:46.559 so what's she getting at their um, So she's getting 0:12:46.559 --> 0:12:48.920 into this, you know this idea that Okay, so that 0:12:48.960 --> 0:12:51.360 the plague hits, it wipes out a lot of people, 0:12:51.440 --> 0:12:53.760 a lot of people that at at at all levels 0:12:53.800 --> 0:12:57.400 of society and all ages that may have been extra 0:12:57.440 --> 0:13:00.600 susceptible to the ravages of the disease. But then afterwards 0:13:00.640 --> 0:13:04.200 you perhaps have have a certain resistance in the survivors. 0:13:04.440 --> 0:13:06.400 But then she also points out that, on the other hand, 0:13:06.600 --> 0:13:10.400 patterns of human plague deaths might reflect the disease dynamics 0:13:10.400 --> 0:13:14.240 of nearby animal host populations, which can influence exposure of 0:13:14.320 --> 0:13:16.520 humans to plague. And we'll get we'll get into more 0:13:16.520 --> 0:13:20.560 of like what that means later about about about the 0:13:20.840 --> 0:13:24.040 disease dynamics and animal hosts. But but you know, it 0:13:24.679 --> 0:13:26.760 also might mean that survivors were in better shape to 0:13:26.760 --> 0:13:30.680 survive the plague and or had better access to nutrition 0:13:30.800 --> 0:13:35.000 or standard of living in the years after the Black 0:13:35.040 --> 0:13:39.360 Death had had really ravaged the population. Because after the 0:13:39.400 --> 0:13:41.720 Black Death, there's this idea that you ultimately end up 0:13:41.760 --> 0:13:46.199 with potentially more sustainable population, potentially and improved gene pool 0:13:46.640 --> 0:13:50.320 with possible resistance to the plague. The feudal system was 0:13:50.320 --> 0:13:53.000 was weakened by all of this, potentially paving the way 0:13:53.080 --> 0:13:56.160 for further changes. Um This is a direction a lot 0:13:56.160 --> 0:13:58.280 of the scholarship goes in. Yet, what what does it 0:13:58.440 --> 0:14:03.959 due to the world that allows a certain amount of 0:14:03.960 --> 0:14:07.760 a rapid change to take place? Um or introduces new 0:14:07.840 --> 0:14:14.000 changes that could occur at the you know, the socioeconomic level, etcetera. UM. 0:14:14.040 --> 0:14:15.480 Of course, on the other hand, I think we have 0:14:15.520 --> 0:14:17.480 to be careful about getting into that, you know, that 0:14:17.600 --> 0:14:20.640 sort of uh, what doesn't kill you makes your stronger 0:14:20.680 --> 0:14:22.840 idea that like, you know, the plague was good. It 0:14:22.960 --> 0:14:25.840 just it strengthened everybody has and made a better world because, uh, 0:14:26.120 --> 0:14:29.120 in the words of Conan O'Brien, what doesn't kill you 0:14:29.360 --> 0:14:32.520 almost kills you. So it was still a period of 0:14:32.560 --> 0:14:35.720 great suffering and death. I meant to an extent that 0:14:35.760 --> 0:14:38.320 it's it's it's difficult to imagine. And of course that 0:14:38.400 --> 0:14:41.480 is going to have, um have an effect on the 0:14:41.520 --> 0:14:44.200 survivors that goes beyond just you know as any kind 0:14:44.240 --> 0:14:48.240 of like fitness that results any kind of resistance to 0:14:48.240 --> 0:14:52.360 to illness, or an improvement in your access to UM, 0:14:52.480 --> 0:14:55.400 you know, to to a higher standard of living. Right, 0:14:55.440 --> 0:14:57.760 So you shouldn't be lured into thinking like, oh, well, 0:14:57.800 --> 0:15:00.480 if after the plague the people who were of tended 0:15:00.520 --> 0:15:03.160 to have a hired resistance to disease and may have 0:15:03.240 --> 0:15:05.680 there may have been some economic benefits for them, that 0:15:05.680 --> 0:15:08.840 that doesn't mean like the plague was a good thing, right, right, 0:15:08.920 --> 0:15:11.680 And I mean, plus, there's a lot of a lot 0:15:11.680 --> 0:15:15.800 of great data on just how events of this nature. 0:15:15.840 --> 0:15:19.040 I mean there's a lasting effect of say malnutrition on 0:15:19.040 --> 0:15:22.520 on one's descendants that sort of thing. So to be clear, 0:15:22.760 --> 0:15:25.880 plague bad, plague, plague very bad. I think I think 0:15:25.920 --> 0:15:27.880 that is one of the firm facts we can we 0:15:27.880 --> 0:15:37.960 can say consensus on that. Now, what was the plague? Well, uh, 0:15:38.320 --> 0:15:42.840 as we mentioned earlier, there were various alternative theories and hypotheses. 0:15:42.880 --> 0:15:46.200 I mean, I guess they're still technically are alternative theories 0:15:46.240 --> 0:15:49.400 and hypotheses, but none of them have enough support to rival. 0:15:49.480 --> 0:15:52.840 They now commonly agreed upon understanding that the plague in 0:15:52.960 --> 0:15:56.320 question was bubonic plague caused by the plague bacterium your 0:15:56.360 --> 0:15:59.720 Cinea pestis. Yeah, so it seems like in the late 0:15:59.720 --> 0:16:01.960 twe aeth in early twenty first century, there was some 0:16:02.040 --> 0:16:05.760 of this academic debate about the infectious agent driving the 0:16:05.760 --> 0:16:07.680 black death. But yeah, I agree, it does seem like 0:16:07.720 --> 0:16:10.000 it is a pretty firm matter of consensus now that 0:16:10.760 --> 0:16:13.400 that the black death beginning in the fourteenth century was 0:16:13.520 --> 0:16:17.600 caused by your Cinea pestis, and that bacterium that that 0:16:17.760 --> 0:16:20.760 bacillus was is something that we've known about since the 0:16:20.880 --> 0:16:23.840 year eighteen ninety four, when it was discovered I think 0:16:23.840 --> 0:16:28.400 by two different researchers pretty much simultaneously. One was Kitasato 0:16:28.520 --> 0:16:33.000 Shibasaburo of Japan and the other was Alexander Yeerson of France. 0:16:33.000 --> 0:16:35.600 So I think from his name Yrson, you get your Cinea, 0:16:35.720 --> 0:16:39.840 the genus name of the bacterium that causes the plague. Uh. 0:16:39.880 --> 0:16:42.200 And so this was around the year eighteen ninety four, 0:16:42.280 --> 0:16:44.560 which was also the time of the eighteen ninety four 0:16:44.600 --> 0:16:47.680 Hong Kong outbreak of plague, which was a major part 0:16:47.720 --> 0:16:50.840 of the Third plague pandemic. You mentioned that there there 0:16:50.880 --> 0:16:53.680 have been three major plague pandemics in history that we 0:16:53.720 --> 0:16:58.360 know about, the Plague of Justinian beginning in the sixth century, 0:16:58.840 --> 0:17:01.320 then the Black Death began in the fourteenth century, and 0:17:01.360 --> 0:17:04.440 then this more recent one from the from the nineteenth 0:17:04.440 --> 0:17:07.760 and twentieth century, right, and they've been There's been been 0:17:07.760 --> 0:17:10.359 some other stuff sprinkled around in there as well, but 0:17:10.400 --> 0:17:14.160 those are the big ones. Now. You're cine epestis, As 0:17:14.160 --> 0:17:17.119 the CDC points out, it has a place in nature, 0:17:17.440 --> 0:17:20.240 even in the modern world, even in North America. Uh, 0:17:20.400 --> 0:17:23.480 your seny epestis is transmitted by fleas to a variety 0:17:23.480 --> 0:17:26.800 of rodents. Uh that certainly in these rodents certainly include 0:17:26.840 --> 0:17:31.600 the rat, but they also include squirrels, chipmunks, vols, and rabbits. 0:17:32.040 --> 0:17:35.679 This situation is is relatively stable, it's thought, with the 0:17:35.680 --> 0:17:41.240 bacteria circulating at low rates and without excessive mortality again 0:17:41.359 --> 0:17:44.560 in these rodent populations. Yeah, so as with the number 0:17:44.600 --> 0:17:48.760 of zoonotic diseases, humans are not not the natural host 0:17:48.880 --> 0:17:52.679 of this bacterium. You're sinning epestis, your cine Epestis lives 0:17:52.680 --> 0:17:55.119 in this natural cycle, I think it's sometimes called the 0:17:55.200 --> 0:18:00.320 Sylvan cycle, traveling between the bodies of fleas and small 0:18:00.359 --> 0:18:03.040 mammals generally rodents like rats, like you say, And then 0:18:03.080 --> 0:18:07.040 the bacteria multiply within the gut of the flea, and 0:18:07.080 --> 0:18:09.760 then when the flea bites a rat host to suck 0:18:09.840 --> 0:18:12.159 its blood, it sort of spits up some of the 0:18:12.200 --> 0:18:16.080 infectious bacteria in its gut into the rat and can 0:18:16.119 --> 0:18:19.399 infect a new rat host. But of course sometimes infectious 0:18:19.400 --> 0:18:23.240 microbes can jump from their natural host species to another, 0:18:23.560 --> 0:18:26.000 like humans, and and this is where you get zoonotic 0:18:26.080 --> 0:18:29.720 diseases like plague. I was actually reading an article in 0:18:29.920 --> 0:18:33.199 Scientific American. I think it wasn't originally in SIME. It 0:18:33.240 --> 0:18:35.880 was a reprint from Quanta, but it was by an 0:18:35.920 --> 0:18:40.920 author named Carrie Arnold from that was covering a study 0:18:40.960 --> 0:18:45.800 published in Nature Communications in about the evolution of this 0:18:45.960 --> 0:18:50.120 bacterium of your Cineopestis, which causes the plague uh. And 0:18:50.240 --> 0:18:53.720 the paper was by Zimbler at All called early emergence 0:18:53.720 --> 0:18:58.040 of your cine Epestis as a severe respiratory pathogen. And 0:18:58.480 --> 0:19:00.959 so the authors were looking into the question of where 0:19:01.080 --> 0:19:03.720 did your Cinea Pestis come from and how did it 0:19:03.800 --> 0:19:07.159 become so virulent? And so they write in their abstract 0:19:07.200 --> 0:19:10.879 as follows. We showed that the acquisition of a single 0:19:10.960 --> 0:19:14.520 gene encoding the protease p l A. I think I'm 0:19:14.520 --> 0:19:16.640 not sure if that's pronounced play or plot, but it's 0:19:16.720 --> 0:19:20.399 p l A. P l A was sufficient for the 0:19:20.440 --> 0:19:24.320 most ancestral, deeply rooted strains of why Pestis to cause 0:19:24.480 --> 0:19:27.680 neumonic plague. And we'll get more into the different varieties 0:19:27.720 --> 0:19:31.480 in a moment, indicating that why Pestus was primed to 0:19:31.560 --> 0:19:34.960 infect the lungs at a very early stage in its evolution. 0:19:35.480 --> 0:19:39.320 As why Pestists further evolved, modern strains acquired a single 0:19:39.359 --> 0:19:44.840 amino acid modification within p l A that optimizes protease activity. 0:19:45.280 --> 0:19:49.480 While this modification is unnecessary to cause neumonic plague, the 0:19:49.520 --> 0:19:53.720 substitution is instead needed to efficiently induce the invasive infection 0:19:53.800 --> 0:19:58.160 associated with the bubonic plague. These findings indicate that why 0:19:58.200 --> 0:20:01.359 Pestis was capable of causing new monic plague before it 0:20:01.440 --> 0:20:06.760 evolved to optimally cause invasive infections in mammals soneumonic plague. 0:20:06.760 --> 0:20:09.960 The version in the lungs is is, as we'll explain 0:20:10.000 --> 0:20:13.160 it a bit, the most deadly form of your cineopestis infection. 0:20:13.880 --> 0:20:18.000 But but it has probably existed longer than the bubonic 0:20:18.080 --> 0:20:21.640 form of infection. But once the bacteria evolved the ability 0:20:21.720 --> 0:20:25.000 to cause the bubonic plague, the main version of the 0:20:25.080 --> 0:20:29.440 disease associated with the black death, the disease function of 0:20:29.480 --> 0:20:33.359 this bacterium was in a sense probably optimized for maximum 0:20:33.400 --> 0:20:37.639 infectious potential. And then this this article by Carry Arnold 0:20:37.720 --> 0:20:42.280 quotes a microbiologist from Northern Arizona University at Flagstaff named 0:20:42.320 --> 0:20:48.040 Paul Kim who mentions that with your cine apestis quote, 0:20:48.080 --> 0:20:52.840 a single bacterium can cause disease in mice. It's hard 0:20:52.880 --> 0:20:56.000 to get much more virulent than that. Uh, and so 0:20:56.160 --> 0:20:59.600 that that's an incredibly infectious agent. That's if you're trying 0:20:59.640 --> 0:21:02.040 to set up like a thunder dome of bacteria, it 0:21:02.080 --> 0:21:04.760 seems like you're sine epestis could be a sort of 0:21:04.840 --> 0:21:11.080 infecting champion. If a single bacterium can can cause this disease. Well, yeah, so, 0:21:11.160 --> 0:21:14.040 as like we said that the idea is in in 0:21:14.080 --> 0:21:18.040 the natural model, it's just um, your cine epestis and 0:21:18.160 --> 0:21:21.720 these rotents but then these complications occur, so for starters, 0:21:21.760 --> 0:21:24.240 sometimes for different reasons, the death rate in the desired 0:21:24.320 --> 0:21:28.359 rodent hosts population goes up and the fleas have to 0:21:28.359 --> 0:21:32.560 go somewhere else. UM. And other times you have you know, 0:21:32.600 --> 0:21:36.400 people coming into close contact with these animals, with these fleas, 0:21:36.440 --> 0:21:39.960 and we see these these these spreading events occur, and 0:21:40.040 --> 0:21:42.360 the flea still has to feed, so it might move 0:21:42.400 --> 0:21:45.720 on to other animals, including domestic animals and ultimately human 0:21:45.760 --> 0:21:49.560 beings as well. Now humans can acquire it from handle 0:21:49.720 --> 0:21:53.560 handling the bodies and pelts of infected animals. UM. Dogs 0:21:53.560 --> 0:21:56.480 are apparently less likely to become ill, but can still 0:21:56.520 --> 0:22:01.600 bring the fleas into close proximity with human beings. Interestingly enough, 0:22:01.640 --> 0:22:04.600 cats typically become very ill with it, and they can 0:22:04.680 --> 0:22:09.199 also directly infect humans through their cough if they if 0:22:09.280 --> 0:22:11.920 they have the plague. Did you see anything? I feel 0:22:11.920 --> 0:22:15.200 like I saw a headline somewhere recently about about an 0:22:15.240 --> 0:22:19.080 outbreak of plague among mountain lions in North America. Do 0:22:19.119 --> 0:22:21.160 you know what I'm talking about? I did not see 0:22:21.200 --> 0:22:24.200 that article, but I mean, based on this information about cats, 0:22:24.200 --> 0:22:26.480 it sounds like it could be very destructive. Okay, yeah, 0:22:26.520 --> 0:22:28.879 I just checked that I was remembering this right. This 0:22:29.200 --> 0:22:31.639 was from a couple of articles from April of last 0:22:31.680 --> 0:22:36.160 year in that found that in Yellowstone and Yellowstone National 0:22:36.200 --> 0:22:38.679