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Pest - history, causes and signs
In 541 AD, a pestilence broke out in the ancient Egyptian city of Pelusium, which was clearly the plague - with black spots, painful bumps, blood ejection, and sudden death. It ravaged Alexandria, invaded Antioch and Syria, and reached Constantinople in 542. Since Emperor Justinian ruled there, the epidemic is called "Justinian plague". Seafarers spread them in the Mediterranean: to Illyria, Tunisia, Spain and Italy. From Arles she left a trail of death to the Rhine; 300,000 people fell victim to her alone in Constantinople. For the time being the wave came to an end, but in 557 the plague raged again in Antioch, then again in Constantinople, and now also in Ravenna, Istria and Liguria. 570 people died in the Rhone Valley.
contents
- The big dying
- The origin
- Pestmedizin
- The plague in modern times
- Big Bang of the modern age?
- Breeding ground for the disease
- The plague today
- diagnosis
- Pest - prevention and treatment
By the end of the eighth century, a plague epidemic broke out about every twelve years, expanding for two to three years on the western Mediterranean, the Rhenish Germania and parts of Gaul, in the east into Syria, Asia Minor and Mesopotamia, and then disappearing again. The disease virtually depopulated countries of the Roman Empire, especially on the shores of the Mediterranean and along the river valleys, the richest areas of the Occident.
The hour struck for the neighboring peoples who had spared the plague: 544 invaded the Berbers in Tunisia; the Avars and Lombards conquered 542 Illyrians; Persia and Greece attacked the Arabs in 630. But the new masters also became infected. When Caliph Omar took Damascus, he kept his troops in the desert until the plague had decimated the inhabitants and subsided; only then did he march in 637. A few years later, however, the plague also swept away the Arabs in Palestine.
The big dying
In the Middle Ages the visitation from Europe had disappeared - why do not we know. But in the 14th century it came back, and it was worse than ever. The historians Sournia and Ruffié write: "Transferred to today's conditions, you would have to compare their raging with a worldwide nuclear war."
Rats were responsible for the spread of the plague during the 14th century in Europe. (Image: Erica Guilane-Nachez / fotolia.com) In 1347 Tartars besieged a trading fortress of the Genoese in the Black Sea port Kaffa. However, they had to withdraw because more and more soldiers died of an epidemic. The besiegers left the Italians a deadly farewell: they catapulted the deceased over the walls; Within days, so many Genoese died that the survivors fled in panic and headed home. Their galleys arrived a little later in Messina in Sicily.
A Franciscan priest reported that "the sailors bore in their bones an illness that seized anyone who spoke only to them, so that he could not escape death in any way." The black death had come, and he should Europe for decades go to hell.
First it hit Pisa, then Genoa, then Siena. Florence, then one of the largest and richest cities on the continent, became a cemetery. Giovanni Boccaccio wrote: "For the great multitude of corpses, which were brought to all the churches every day, even nearly every hour, the consecrated ground of the cemeteries was not sufficient, large pits were made and the newcomers to hundreds put in; There, like merchant merchandise in ships, they were stacked one upon another and covered with little earth until the pit was filled to the brim. "
The word comes from the Latin pestis and means plague. At first the lymph nodes, groins, armpits and neck glands swell. This bubonic plague can develop into a pneumonic plague due to the bacteria in the blood. The bubonic plague could survive those affected when the suppurated lymph nodes were cut open early. The pulmonary plague, however, always led to death.
The humans were helpless against the horror. Superstition mingled with medicine and rumors. Fischer-Fabian writes: "In the remotest of China, the earth had opened, blood had rained from the sky, snakes, toads, rats in immense numbers had driven people out of their homes. (...) The wind hurts the mist of pestilence over to the countries of Europe, carried by the avenging angels. Because God has imposed the plague as a punishment for the sins of men. "
But praying did not help. Fischer-Fabian continues: "After every prayer service more people died than before. Most victims were among those who participated; they were infected and infected others again. "
Streets, villages and monasteries were deserted; few survivors seized wealth; the administration broke up; empty houses took over migrants; Europe experienced the greatest new mix of ethnic groups since the Migration Period. In Tuscany, the Medici rose and replaced the elite elite.
Jews, leprosy patients, Roma and Sinti as well as alleged "warlocks" were blamed for the plague: they should have poisoned the wells and thus spread the disease. An agitated mob destroyed their homes and burned them at stake.
Europe lost more than a third of its population within three years. In the Far East the catastrophe was similarly apocalyptic: in 1353, 80% of people died in the Chinese province of Shansi; Only one in three survived in the province of Hupeh.
The origin
The origin of the great plague was probably in Central Asia, today's Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Mongolia. The plague bacterium exists in wild rodents, and the region was plagued by the plague again and again when the rodents left their building.
William Bernstein explains that the triumph of Genghis Khan and the subsequent trade between Asia and Europe would have brought the plague bacteria to Europe. It is possible, writes Philipp Alcabes, that the wild rodents transmitted the plague to rats, the rats lived in the caravan centers and so moved on the Silk Road to the west.
Pestmedizin
The doctors of the 14th century were helpless. They dealt with the teaching of Hippocrates; after that infections were due to a lack of balance of blood, mucus, black and yellow bile. They knew nothing of contagion and believed that evil winds carried the plague from Asia to Europe; Gases from the interior of the earth were also suspected.
The prevention was logically helpless: people should avoid heavy work and not sleep during the day; they should open the windows only to the north, but not to the east. They should avoid humid warm air as well as stagnant water.
Should also help the "Dreckapotheke", so the modern idea that nasty to nasty help: ointments from toad spawn, spider eggs and chicken droppings should also relieve the plague as a healthy lifestyle and the renunciation of pork.
The doctors lit incense as well as myrrh, frankincense and sandalwood. Sometimes they suspected a constellation of Jupiter, Saturn and Mars, then joined the priests who recognized the signs of the Last Day. After all, according to the Bible, it announced itself with the appearance of the apocalyptic horsemen - and one of them was the pestilence.
Fewer physicians proceeded more modernly: they crept into the cemeteries and dissected the corpses, for they rightly suspected the origin of the evil in the bodies of the victims and not outside. Pope Clement himself allowed the body to open, which had been strictly forbidden in the High Middle Ages. Had it been worm infestation and other parasites, they would have been successful, but bacteria can be seen neither with the naked eye, nor was it known in the Middle Ages for their existence.
Even today, many people are infected with bacteria of the genus Yersinia Pestis every year. (Image: royaltystockphoto / fotolia.com) The plague in modern times
In England, the plague struck 1667 for the last time with 68,000 victims; In Scandinavia she disappeared in 1712 and in Austria in 1716. She continued to seek the East, and returned to Europe with Napoleon. French troops subjugated Egypt and faced countless plague victims in southern Syria. In 1816 she raged again in Marseille, 1819 in Mallorca and 1828 in Odessa. But since the middle of the 19th century, core Europe remained largely free of the plague.
Not so Asia: In Astrakhan in 1876 she claimed various lives, in India and China the epidemic continued to rage; In 1896, she set out from Mumbai, allegedly killing 6 million Indians. What's more, international trade spread the bacterium worldwide. In 1897 she met Suez, 1899 South Africa, 1900 San Francisco. In 1920 she again frightened Paris and Marseilles, but no epidemics occurred.
Big Bang of the modern age?
Historians argue that the epidemic promoted the development of modernity. The plague waves shook the medieval world view, namely in the psyche of the people. A divinely-ordained order in which the Lord, like the servant, the priest, and the beggar, found their place, collapsed within a few years.
At least in medicine, the disease drove progress. The plague shook confidence in Hippocrates' teaching theory. The people observed that people were suffering from the plague that had previously had contact with plague victims. However, the theory of conatlusion, in which diseases were triggered by touch rather than by bad winds, did not prevail until around 1500.
Breeding ground for the disease
The plague of 1348-1352 claimed much more casualties than the plague waves of the early Middle Ages. Nevertheless, parts of Europe were spared: neither were they geographically isolated, for example as lonely mountain valleys or islands, nor social. The "islands" in the epidemic were Flanders, the Auvergne, parts of Franconia and southern Germany. Hamburger, Bremer and Cologne, however, died in quantities.
The evolutionary biologist Josef H. Reichholf shows how the natural conditions changed in the late Middle Ages. The "little ice age" had begun. In the High Middle Ages, the climate had warmed up; the Mediterranean warmth spread north of the Alps. For example, figs ripened on the Rhine.
In the first decades of the 14th century, however, it was cold. The brown rats used to live in the open air, in the rubbish heaps of the city ditches. People stored food in basements. The climate worsened so fast that the Central Europeans had not developed adequate heating systems. They put on another layer of clothing, giving fleas a perfect habitat. Life was much more in the houses now; previously our ancestors were just as often outside as they are today on the Mediterranean.
Most of the contemporaries had only candles and shavings as a source of light - that was not enough to chase the nocturnal rats and fleas. The brown rat (Rattus norvegicus) brought with it the rat flea, and it bore the pathogen Yersinia pestis. She supplanted the smaller and heat-loving house rat (Rattus rattus). The house-rat was pushed back to the warm attics, the brown rat occupied the cellars and vaults. The population had also quadrupled since 900; the cities were overcrowded. For the plague so there were favorable conditions.
Since the Messina outbreak, incoming ships have been forced to spend forty days in quarantine before being allowed to enter the ports - a useful measure against human infection. The rats, however, did not prevent them from running ashore on board, and the horror took its course.
The plague today
A plague wave with rapidly increasing numbers of victims as in the Middle Ages is unlikely in Europe today. Health regulations in the aviation and maritime sectors, rat killing on ships, notification of the plague and better hygiene make it difficult for the plague bacterium. Bacillus, rat and flea are fought in triplicate and infection chains can be stopped. There are also effective medicines and antibiotics for the plague. Detected early, the bubonic plague no longer means death today.
However, it is not eradicated in the Western world. Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona and California are breeding grounds for the bacterium, which lives here not in rats but in croissants. It was not until the 20th century that the plague entered the New World and rapidly spread from ship rats to wild rodents.
National Park visitors feed the ground squirrels and become infected. Every year on average seven people in the US die of the plague. The biggest concern of the local doctors is that the ground squirrels transfer the plague back to the rats that live in the cities; then individual cases could easily become an epidemic.
In 2015, 11 people became infected by September and four died. Most were infected in Yosemite National Park. The last victim died in Utah in August; In this state, approximately 70 prairie dogs had died from the plague.
Also in China, there are always plague cases. A 38-year-old man died after feeding an infected groundhog to his dog. Then he got over 40 degrees fever, headache and body aches, his lymph nodes on the groin inflamed and formed black bumps. After a few days he was dead.
diagnosis
Depending on the type of pest, there are differences of the earliest stage: In the bubonic plague bubbles form around the bite of the flea, often a rash spreads; The lymph nodes of this region are heavily swollen, the bitten area hurts.
If suspected, the doctor stabs into a swollen lymph node and sends the sample to a laboratory. Here the Max von Pettenkofer Institute for Medical Microbiology in Munich comes first.
The pneumonic plague is characterized by coughing, bloody sputum, high fever and nausea. The bacterium is detectable in saliva. The patient must be promptly isolated.
In a plague sepsis, the bacterium is in the blood of the patient. They are bedridden, their blood pressure is low, and they have a high fever.
Pest - prevention and treatment
In pest areas of Central Asia, the Southwest of the US, China, India, and Central Africa, travelers should be aware of precautionary measures: treat pets against fleas to prevent transmission, DEET-containing mosquito repellents prevent the spread of fleas to humans; Avoid contact with sick and dead rodents.
Risk factors are:
Low living and hygiene standards, such as in India
Direct contact with rodents such as Indian temples, African slums and American national parks.
There is one vaccine against, but it lasts only six months and its effectiveness has not been systematically proven. Antibiotics such as streptomycin, gentamycin, tetracycline, doxycycline and chloramphenicol help against the plague diseases. If left untreated, about 50% of the sick die from the bubonic plague, but the disease is treated early, only every fifth. (Dr. Utz Anhalt)
Literature:
Jacques Ruffié / Jean-Charles Sournia: The plagues in human history. Munich 1992