The Plague of the Philistines to the Fires of London [PAPER]
Here's my research paper on the Black Death, as promised.
The Plague of the Philistines to the Fires of London
holmes221b
Just about everyone in the world has heard of Black Death and how it killed over a third of the European population in the mid-1300s, and that it’s caused by a species of bacteria, Yersinia pestis. But what many do not realize is that the plague is actually a zoonotic disease that primarily affects rodents, such as rats and prairie dogs-humans just happen to be vulnerable to infection by Y. pestis too. People also tend to forget that the Black Death was not the only epidemic in human history.
The earliest account of what could possibly be an outbreak of the plague is found in the Hebrew Bible. The P’lishtim (or Philistines) had captured the ark of God and brought it to the city of Ashdod, where they placed the ark in the temple of their chief god, Dagon. According to The Complete Jewish Bible, that was when God “began oppressing the people of Ashdod; he ravaged them, striking Ashdod and its surrounding area with tumors” (pg. 303). The ark was then sent to other cities, but where ever they brought the ark, the plague struck-first Gat, then ‘Ekron. The ark remained in the possession of the P’lishtim for the next seven months, after which they sent it back to Isra’el, along with a guilt offering of five gold models of tumors and five gold rats; whether this offering appeased God or not, the Hebrew Bible doesn’t say. What it does say is that after the ark came to Beit-Shemesh-a Hebrew city near the border with the P’lishtim-, God apparently killed 50,070 Beit-Shimshi for the terrible crime of looking at the ark. How they died, the Hebrew Bible does not say.
This story can also be found in the Christian Bible. For the most part, the two accounts are pretty much the same-that is, up until the point where the ark arrives in Beit-Shemesh (alternatively, Beth-shemesh). Where the Hebrew Bible speaks of God killing over 50,000 people, the Christian Bible differs dramatically: “The descendants of Jeconiah did not join in the celebration with the inhabitants of Beth-shemesh when they greeted the ark of the Lord, and seventy of them were struck down. The people went into mourning at this great calamity with which the Lord had afflicted them” (The New American Bible, pg. 248). These differences are likely a result of translation, though.
Y. pestis is not the only microscopic killer that could have been behind this biblical plague-Francisella tularensis, a species of bacteria that causes the deadly disease tularemia in humans, is another likely suspect.
F. tularensis, like Y. pestis, is transmitted via flea bites. And just like the plague, tularemia is known to be carried by rodents. Tularemia is also often mistaken for the plague. F. tularensis has one advantage over Y. pestis, however, when it comes to being defined as the culprit of this biblical plague-there was an outbreak of tularemia in Canaan around 1715 BC that reached Egypt, placing the disease in the area prior to the epidemic that afflicted the Philistines.
Whether it was Y. pestis or F. tularensis-or even some other deadly pathogen entirely-, the ark of the God of Isra’el acted as a kind of biblical ‘Typhoid Mary’, carrying disease from place to place until it was finally returned to the people of Isra’el.
From AD 540 to 590, a massive outbreak of bubonic plague struck the Byzantine Empire, during the reign of Justinian I. One third of the population (an estimated 100 million people) is believed to have died of plague during this decades-long epidemic, at a rate of 5000 deaths a day, with an all-time high of 10,000 deaths daily at its peak.
As a result of the Plague of Justinian and the inability of doctors to successfully treat sufferers of the plague, the advancement of medical knowledge halted for centuries, to be replaced by explanations of a much more religious nature-disease in general, for instance, began to be equated with vice and sin, rather than with filth, poor hygiene, and natural causes (Faria, n.p.). Medicine was not the only field of study affected thus by the outbreak. Law, engineering, the natural sciences, as well as the Greco-Roman liberal arts were all but forgotten in the wake of the Plague of Justinian (Interestingly enough, the next major outbreak of the plague, in the mid-1300’s, would result in the questioning of religion and faith, and a return to looking at science for answers).
As religion became more important in the daily lives of Europeans, bathing and cleanliness became a rarity, even among the upper classes-such things were viewed as being unhealthy as well as being irreverent-to be clean was to be vain, and vanity was a sin in the eyes of God. As a result, there was regular contact between humans and fleas in the years following the Plague of Justinian, setting the stage for another outbreak of the plague in the 1300s.
From 1346 to 1361, Europe was ravaged by the Black Death-the second major outbreak of the plague during the Middle Ages-and 27 million people in Europe died of the plague during this epidemic, leaving large tracts uncultivated due to the reduction in the number of people able to work (Faria, n.p.).
The nursery rhyme “Ring around the Rosy” is believed to have originated as early as the Black Death outbreak of the disease. The first line (“Ring-a-Ring o’Rosies”) describes the rosy red rash in the shape of a ring-one of the symptoms of the plague. The plague was believed to be spread by bad smells, so people carried sweet smelling herbs, or posies, in pouches and pockets-“A Pocket full of Posies”-in the vain hope of protecting themselves from the disease. Another symptom of the plague is violent sneezing fits-“A-tishoo! A-tishoo!”-, though this line was eventually replaced with “Ashes, Ashes”-which presumably refers to the cremation of plague victims-by Americans. The final line of the rhyme-“We all fall Down!”-clearly refers to death.
The third and final major outbreak of the plague during the Middle Ages lasted only a couple of months-and only in England, particularly the bustling city of London on the banks of the Thames River. At its peak, the Great Plague of London killed 2000 Londoners a week. The outbreak was cut short by the Great Fire of London in September 1666, and was the last major epidemic to strike the city until the great cholera epidemics of the 19th century (Thurley, n.p.).
Bibliography
1. Balaban, Naomi E., and James E. Bobick. The Handy Anatomy Answer Book. Detroit: Visible Ink Press, 2008.
2. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "CDC Plague Information | Emergency Preparedness & Response." http://www.bt.cdc.gov/agent/plague/ (accessed November 27, 2010).
3. Drancourt M, Roux V, Dang LV, Tran-Hung L, Castex D, Chenal-Francisque V, et al. "Genotyping, Orientalis-like Yersinia pestis, and plague pandemics Emerging Infectious Diseases". 10. 9 (2004), http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol10no9/03-0933.htm. (accessed November 27, 2010).
4. Dufel, Susan E, and Deirdre Cronin. "CBRNE - Plague: eMedicine Emergency Medicine." September 22, 2009. http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/829233 (accessed November 27, 2010).
5. Faria, Miguel A. "Medical History --- Plagues and Epidemics." 2002. http://www.haciendapub.com/faria4.html (accessed December 8, 2010).
6. Fix, Douglas F. "Yersinia." http://www.cehs.siu.edu/fix/medmicro/yersi.htm (accessed December 8, 2010).
7. Freemon, Frank R. "Bubonic plague in the Book of Samuel The Royal Society of Medicine". 98. 9 (2005), 436, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1199652. (accessed November 29, 2010).
8. Innvista, "The Tragedy at Beth-Shemesh." http://www.innvista.com/culture/religion/bible/compare/beth.htm (accessed November 29, 2010).
9. Medieval-life.net, "Black Death." 2000. http://www.medieval-life.net/black_death.htm (accessed December 8, 2010).
10. The New American Bible. Wichita: Fireside Bible Publishers, 1991.
11. "Ring around the Rosy rhyme." http://www.rhymes.org.uk/ring_around_the_rosy.htm (accessed December 8, 2010).
12. Stedman's Concise Medical Dictionary for the Health Professions. 3rd ed. John H. Dirckx (editor). Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins, 1997.
13. Stern, David H. (translator). Complete Jewish Bible. Jerusalem: Jewish New Testament Publications, Inc., 1998.
14. Trevisanato, SI. "The biblical plague of the Philistines now has a name, tularemia Med Hypotheses". 69. 5 (2007), 1144-6, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17467189. (accessed November 29, 2010).
15. Trevisanato, SI. "Did an epidemic of tularemia in Ancient Egypt affect the course of world history? Med Hypotheses". 63. 5 (2004), 905-10, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15488667. (accessed November 29, 2010).
16. Thurley, Simon, et al. "Fire." http://web.archive.org/web/20060827072854/http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/H/history/fire/experts.html (accessed December 8, 2010).
17. Wayangankar, Siddharth, Rhett L. Jackson, Michael Stuart Bronze, and Venkat R. Minnaganti. "Plague: eMedicine Infectious Diseases." October 28, 2009. http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/235627 (accessed November 27, 2010).
18. World Health Organization, "Fact Sheet N°267 - Plague." February 2005. http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs267/en/index.html (accessed November 27, 2010).
19. Wikipedia, "Great Fire of London." December 2, 2010. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Fire_of_London (accessed December 8, 2010).
20. WrongDiagnosis.com, "Plague Symptoms, Diagnosis, Treatments and Causes." November 18, 2010. http://www.wrongdiagnosis.com/p/plague/intro.htm (accessed November 27, 2010).
21. WrongDiagnosis.com, "Tularemia Symptoms, Diagnosis, Treatments and Causes." November 18, 2010. http://www.wrongdiagnosis.com/t/tularemia/intro.htm (accessed November 29, 2010).
The Plague of the Philistines to the Fires of London
holmes221b
Just about everyone in the world has heard of Black Death and how it killed over a third of the European population in the mid-1300s, and that it’s caused by a species of bacteria, Yersinia pestis. But what many do not realize is that the plague is actually a zoonotic disease that primarily affects rodents, such as rats and prairie dogs-humans just happen to be vulnerable to infection by Y. pestis too. People also tend to forget that the Black Death was not the only epidemic in human history.
The earliest account of what could possibly be an outbreak of the plague is found in the Hebrew Bible. The P’lishtim (or Philistines) had captured the ark of God and brought it to the city of Ashdod, where they placed the ark in the temple of their chief god, Dagon. According to The Complete Jewish Bible, that was when God “began oppressing the people of Ashdod; he ravaged them, striking Ashdod and its surrounding area with tumors” (pg. 303). The ark was then sent to other cities, but where ever they brought the ark, the plague struck-first Gat, then ‘Ekron. The ark remained in the possession of the P’lishtim for the next seven months, after which they sent it back to Isra’el, along with a guilt offering of five gold models of tumors and five gold rats; whether this offering appeased God or not, the Hebrew Bible doesn’t say. What it does say is that after the ark came to Beit-Shemesh-a Hebrew city near the border with the P’lishtim-, God apparently killed 50,070 Beit-Shimshi for the terrible crime of looking at the ark. How they died, the Hebrew Bible does not say.
This story can also be found in the Christian Bible. For the most part, the two accounts are pretty much the same-that is, up until the point where the ark arrives in Beit-Shemesh (alternatively, Beth-shemesh). Where the Hebrew Bible speaks of God killing over 50,000 people, the Christian Bible differs dramatically: “The descendants of Jeconiah did not join in the celebration with the inhabitants of Beth-shemesh when they greeted the ark of the Lord, and seventy of them were struck down. The people went into mourning at this great calamity with which the Lord had afflicted them” (The New American Bible, pg. 248). These differences are likely a result of translation, though.
Y. pestis is not the only microscopic killer that could have been behind this biblical plague-Francisella tularensis, a species of bacteria that causes the deadly disease tularemia in humans, is another likely suspect.
F. tularensis, like Y. pestis, is transmitted via flea bites. And just like the plague, tularemia is known to be carried by rodents. Tularemia is also often mistaken for the plague. F. tularensis has one advantage over Y. pestis, however, when it comes to being defined as the culprit of this biblical plague-there was an outbreak of tularemia in Canaan around 1715 BC that reached Egypt, placing the disease in the area prior to the epidemic that afflicted the Philistines.
Whether it was Y. pestis or F. tularensis-or even some other deadly pathogen entirely-, the ark of the God of Isra’el acted as a kind of biblical ‘Typhoid Mary’, carrying disease from place to place until it was finally returned to the people of Isra’el.
From AD 540 to 590, a massive outbreak of bubonic plague struck the Byzantine Empire, during the reign of Justinian I. One third of the population (an estimated 100 million people) is believed to have died of plague during this decades-long epidemic, at a rate of 5000 deaths a day, with an all-time high of 10,000 deaths daily at its peak.
As a result of the Plague of Justinian and the inability of doctors to successfully treat sufferers of the plague, the advancement of medical knowledge halted for centuries, to be replaced by explanations of a much more religious nature-disease in general, for instance, began to be equated with vice and sin, rather than with filth, poor hygiene, and natural causes (Faria, n.p.). Medicine was not the only field of study affected thus by the outbreak. Law, engineering, the natural sciences, as well as the Greco-Roman liberal arts were all but forgotten in the wake of the Plague of Justinian (Interestingly enough, the next major outbreak of the plague, in the mid-1300’s, would result in the questioning of religion and faith, and a return to looking at science for answers).
As religion became more important in the daily lives of Europeans, bathing and cleanliness became a rarity, even among the upper classes-such things were viewed as being unhealthy as well as being irreverent-to be clean was to be vain, and vanity was a sin in the eyes of God. As a result, there was regular contact between humans and fleas in the years following the Plague of Justinian, setting the stage for another outbreak of the plague in the 1300s.
From 1346 to 1361, Europe was ravaged by the Black Death-the second major outbreak of the plague during the Middle Ages-and 27 million people in Europe died of the plague during this epidemic, leaving large tracts uncultivated due to the reduction in the number of people able to work (Faria, n.p.).
The nursery rhyme “Ring around the Rosy” is believed to have originated as early as the Black Death outbreak of the disease. The first line (“Ring-a-Ring o’Rosies”) describes the rosy red rash in the shape of a ring-one of the symptoms of the plague. The plague was believed to be spread by bad smells, so people carried sweet smelling herbs, or posies, in pouches and pockets-“A Pocket full of Posies”-in the vain hope of protecting themselves from the disease. Another symptom of the plague is violent sneezing fits-“A-tishoo! A-tishoo!”-, though this line was eventually replaced with “Ashes, Ashes”-which presumably refers to the cremation of plague victims-by Americans. The final line of the rhyme-“We all fall Down!”-clearly refers to death.
The third and final major outbreak of the plague during the Middle Ages lasted only a couple of months-and only in England, particularly the bustling city of London on the banks of the Thames River. At its peak, the Great Plague of London killed 2000 Londoners a week. The outbreak was cut short by the Great Fire of London in September 1666, and was the last major epidemic to strike the city until the great cholera epidemics of the 19th century (Thurley, n.p.).
Bibliography
1. Balaban, Naomi E., and James E. Bobick. The Handy Anatomy Answer Book. Detroit: Visible Ink Press, 2008.
2. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "CDC Plague Information | Emergency Preparedness & Response." http://www.bt.cdc.gov/agent/plague/ (accessed November 27, 2010).
3. Drancourt M, Roux V, Dang LV, Tran-Hung L, Castex D, Chenal-Francisque V, et al. "Genotyping, Orientalis-like Yersinia pestis, and plague pandemics Emerging Infectious Diseases". 10. 9 (2004), http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol10no9/03-0933.htm. (accessed November 27, 2010).
4. Dufel, Susan E, and Deirdre Cronin. "CBRNE - Plague: eMedicine Emergency Medicine." September 22, 2009. http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/829233 (accessed November 27, 2010).
5. Faria, Miguel A. "Medical History --- Plagues and Epidemics." 2002. http://www.haciendapub.com/faria4.html (accessed December 8, 2010).
6. Fix, Douglas F. "Yersinia." http://www.cehs.siu.edu/fix/medmicro/yersi.htm (accessed December 8, 2010).
7. Freemon, Frank R. "Bubonic plague in the Book of Samuel The Royal Society of Medicine". 98. 9 (2005), 436, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1199652. (accessed November 29, 2010).
8. Innvista, "The Tragedy at Beth-Shemesh." http://www.innvista.com/culture/religion/bible/compare/beth.htm (accessed November 29, 2010).
9. Medieval-life.net, "Black Death." 2000. http://www.medieval-life.net/black_death.htm (accessed December 8, 2010).
10. The New American Bible. Wichita: Fireside Bible Publishers, 1991.
11. "Ring around the Rosy rhyme." http://www.rhymes.org.uk/ring_around_the_rosy.htm (accessed December 8, 2010).
12. Stedman's Concise Medical Dictionary for the Health Professions. 3rd ed. John H. Dirckx (editor). Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins, 1997.
13. Stern, David H. (translator). Complete Jewish Bible. Jerusalem: Jewish New Testament Publications, Inc., 1998.
14. Trevisanato, SI. "The biblical plague of the Philistines now has a name, tularemia Med Hypotheses". 69. 5 (2007), 1144-6, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17467189. (accessed November 29, 2010).
15. Trevisanato, SI. "Did an epidemic of tularemia in Ancient Egypt affect the course of world history? Med Hypotheses". 63. 5 (2004), 905-10, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15488667. (accessed November 29, 2010).
16. Thurley, Simon, et al. "Fire." http://web.archive.org/web/20060827072854/http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/H/history/fire/experts.html (accessed December 8, 2010).
17. Wayangankar, Siddharth, Rhett L. Jackson, Michael Stuart Bronze, and Venkat R. Minnaganti. "Plague: eMedicine Infectious Diseases." October 28, 2009. http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/235627 (accessed November 27, 2010).
18. World Health Organization, "Fact Sheet N°267 - Plague." February 2005. http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs267/en/index.html (accessed November 27, 2010).
19. Wikipedia, "Great Fire of London." December 2, 2010. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Fire_of_London (accessed December 8, 2010).
20. WrongDiagnosis.com, "Plague Symptoms, Diagnosis, Treatments and Causes." November 18, 2010. http://www.wrongdiagnosis.com/p/plague/intro.htm (accessed November 27, 2010).
21. WrongDiagnosis.com, "Tularemia Symptoms, Diagnosis, Treatments and Causes." November 18, 2010. http://www.wrongdiagnosis.com/t/tularemia/intro.htm (accessed November 29, 2010).