Image courtesy of Wellcome Collection. Image courtesy of Wellcome Collection. The pattern of recurrent cases in East Suffolk led researchers John and Dorothy Black to assume that plague was endemic in this region [36]. The third bubonic plague pandemic is a reminder, as historian Myron Echenberg has explained, that responses to epidemic disease are modulated by political geography. [36,37,55], see also the electronic supplementary material). It was noted by Proust that, ‘As in the previous meeting about cholera, it was decided that the treatment applicable to ships must be regulated by their sanitary condition at the arrival and not by the state of the port of provenance which gives only indications, which may be valuable indications but which are only indications. AU - Engelmann, Lukas. AU - Grover, Claire. Credit: Wellcome Collection. Digest of recent observations on the epidemiology of plague, Great Britain: report from Glasgow. For instance, the Nordic countries, which reported infectious diseases such as polio and cholera, did not report any plague case during the Third Pandemic. Finally, we discuss the international efforts aimed at prevention and intervention measures, namely improved hygiene and sanitation, that ultimately led to the disappearance of plague in Europe. Yet, Europe still experienced plague outbreaks during the Third Pandemic, which began in China and spread globally at the end of the nineteenth century. These events prompted European officials to convene an international sanitary conference in February 1897 in Venice to specifically discuss the spread of plague [21]. By continuing to browse The recommendations of the conference to governments resulted in a complex system of regulations that controlled carriers coming by land and sea from infected regions [21]. In the original reports, cases in the period before September 1927 were recorded mainly as outbreaks with start–end dates and those after September 1927 were recorded as weekly or monthly incidence. The low numbers of plague-infected rats found during European outbreaks suggest that they played a relatively minor role in plague transmission. Scheube wrote that, ‘The development and spread of plague is influenced in a great measure by the unfavorable hygienic conditions, essentially connected with social misery’ [75, p. 12]. During the later part of the nineteenth century, diseases such as cholera and later plague were spreading throughout the world, partly owing to the advent of steamships [26]. By entering your details, you are agreeing to HistoryExtra terms and conditions and privacy policy. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited. China's Yunnan province was the setting for the third and last great plague pandemic, which began in the 1850s. wrote the paper with contribution of the other authors. The plague in Tournai, then part of … Black Death. You can unsubscribe at any time. We declare we have no competing interests. Enter your email address below and we will send you your username, If the address matches an existing account you will receive an email with instructions to retrieve your username, Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis (CEES), Department of Biosciences, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway, Department of Biomedical and Specialty Surgical Sciences, University of Ferrara, Ferrara, Italy, Division of Physiology, Institute of Basic Medical Sciences, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway. Electronic supplementary material is available online at http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.4454687. The third plague pandemic has left a pervasive legacy, which is often forgotten by those who mistakenly set the origins of modern epidemiology and epidemic control at the 1918 influenza pandemic. They wrote after the outbreak that ‘inquiry failed to discover any evidence that rat mortality prevailed to an unusual extent’ [63, p. 26]. At the beginning of the Third Pandemic, physicians and scientists used new methods to increase their knowledge of plague, including microbiological and experimental techniques [45]. For example, during the plague in Glasgow in 1901, a woman who had fallen ill with the plague was visited by two friends from Liverpool [38] (see the electronic supplementary material). Two events emphasized the re-emerging threat of plague to Europe in the late 1800s. The earliest known European cases occurred in September and October 1896, when two sailors from Bombay died of plague on ships docked in London on the Thames [21]. We used narrative and scientific reports in four languages (English, French, Italian and German) to supplement the case data. The winter seasonality of the Plague of Cyprian points to … International Organization for Standardization (ISO) Country code in parentheses.). Using supplemental literature, we summarize the potential sources of plague in Europe and the transmission of the disease, including the role of rats. “We observed how the Third Plague Pandemic in 1894 stopped in Europe at the middle of last century, in concomitance with the introduction of insecticide, but also of private baths, washing machines, the vacuum cleaner and other means to enforce personal and environmental hygiene”, Bramanti explains. See also the electronic supplementary material, table S1.Download figureOpen in new tabDownload PowerPointFigure 2. For instance, when plague broke out in Glasgow in 1900 (see the electronic supplementary material), the Medical Officer of Health caught and examined 326 rats, but found no evidence of plague in the rat population [39,63]. The digitization of international records of notifiable diseases, including plague, has enabled us to retrace the introductions of the disease to Europe from the earliest reported cases in 1899, to its disappearance in the 1940s. The 1918 influenza pandemic was the most severe pandemic in recent history. You will shortly receive a receipt for your purchase via email. T1 - Plague Dot Text. The Third Plague Pandemic (1855–1959) was unprecedented for a number of reasons. For plague, detailed records of cases and deaths appear in the Public Health Reports beginning in 1899 (electronic supplementary material, table S1). Perhaps the most extensive rat surveys carried out during the Third Pandemic in Europe were in and around East Suffolk, Britain, where cases appeared regularly from 1906 to 1918 [36,44]. In addition to rats, the authorities found some ferrets, cats and rabbits that died of plague [44]. From a comparison with the grey literature summarized in the electronic supplementary material, it is evident that not all cases have been reported in the Public Health Reports. Her mother also contracted the disease and died 3 days after her daughter's death, followed by her stepfather and a neighbour who nursed her mother. AU - Tobin, Richard. ; K.R.D. ‘Liverpool Port Sanitary Authority rat-catchers dipping rats in buckets of petrol to kill fleas for plague control. Yet, Europe still experienced plague outbreaks during the Third Pandemic, which began in China and spread globally at the end of the nineteenth century. foci and reservoirs) to the rest of the world in a short time [88]. and N.C.S. Today, the spillover of plague from these reservoirs leads to the thousands of cases of plague reported every decade [85]. We see that cases were mainly notified in large cities and ports, which had more traffic from trade but also may have had more resources and established practices for detecting infectious diseases. Case records and outbreak reports for the Third Pandemic are numerous and have improved our understanding of the historical epidemiology and distribution of plague. For some of the early outbreaks, such as those in Porto (1899) and Glasgow (1900), the cases are more temporally resolved. Yet these discoveries did little to improve public health measures. Surveys for plague were carried out over an area of more than 2000 km2 [36,44]. Enter your email address below and we will send you the reset instructions. The Third Pandemic started in 1772 in Yunnan province, southwest China, and spread to other parts of the world from Hong Kong in 1894 (3). Public Domain. A summary of the history and a survey of the present distribution of the disease. For overlapping reports, we used the most recent in time, corresponding to the highest number of cases and deaths. Although plague is no longer a public health issue in Europe today, the threat of the disease remains close in both space and time. and L.W. Figure 1. Cases of pneumonic plague were reported during many of the outbreaks in Europe (electronic supplementary material, table S1) and often spread within households and among close contacts [36,44]. This article was first published in the July 2015 issue of BBC History Magazine. It was then carried by ships to Japan, Singapore, Taiwan and the Indian subcontinent [18,19]. Rats were also examined during and after outbreaks in East Suffolk [36,44], Malta [67–69], Italy [66], Corsica [70], Spain [65] and France [64] (see the electronic supplementary material). The first was an outbreak of pneumonic plague in Vetlianka, along the Volga River, in Russia [21]. Thank you for subscribing to HistoryExtra, you now have unlimited access. Perhaps this will also be the case with the present crisis, a history researcher writes. The Third Plague Pandemic originated in the Yunnan region of southwest China, where plague caused multiple outbreaks since 1772 [15–17]. The Third Plague Pandemic in Europe Plague has a long history on the European continent, with evidence of the disease dating back to the Stone Age. T2 - Text mining and annotation of outbreak reports of the Third Plague Pandemic (1894-1952) AU - Casey, Arlene. The third plague: the 19th-century pandemic that killed 12 million people. The first two major plague pandemics began with the Plague of Justinian and the Black Death. Even in Malta, where the environment is much more favourable to rodent reproduction [67], Barnett observed that ‘plague outbreaks always come to an end even if nothing is done to kill rats or their fleas’ [67, p. 17]. These reports show that plague was continually introduced to European ports throughout the Third Pandemic by ships arriving from abroad, often from the former European colonies such as Bombay, Buenos Aires and Alexandria (electronic supplementary material, table S1). and K.R.D. It is clear from the prevention measures enacted that the authorities were aware of the role of maritime trade in the spread of plague (e.g. Pneumonic plague occurs when plague infects the lungs, either primarily by the spread of infectious droplets or secondarily as a complication of bubonic plague. In addition, from the middle of the twentieth century, the number of pests and parasites was reduced by the introduction of insecticides like dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), which was used heavily in many places like Malta from 1946 onwards [69]. The two species of rats carry the same species of fleas. Throughout history, a plague or pandemic, has affected the outcome of more than one ancient Greek wars, as studies by historians and medical scientists suggest. In many places in Europe, this work included the destruction of slums, improvement of sewage systems and the widespread development of safe water supply systems [79]. The Third Plague Pandemic (1855–1959) was unprecedented for a number of reasons. The infectious fever wreaked havoc … designed research; B.B. While plague may be truly absent in these areas, we cannot exclude the possibility that plague was undectected or unnotified. We are thankful to Sari C. Cunningham for her editorial work. Plague in Africa from 1935 to 1949: a survey of wild rodents in African territories, Rapport sur une missione médicale en Russie; La peste du gouvernement d'Astrakhan, Medieval and modern bubonic plague: some clinical continuities, A commentary on recent plague investigations in Transbaikalia and southern Russia, Simla, India: Printed at the Government Central Print Office, Dr. Wu Lien Teh, plague fighter and father of the Chinese public health system, The past, present, and future of public health surveillance, Plague: modern preventive measures in ships and ports, Prevalence of disease: foreign and insular. Indeed, from the 1950s, the introduction of baths in the majority of European dwellings, and the use of vacuum cleaners and washing machines, strongly enhanced personal hygiene and that of the domestic environment (e.g. The black rat has a history in Europe dating back to medieval times, but it has never been present in large numbers because the climate in Europe is too cold for it to be able to live and reproduce outside heated buildings [56]. In some cases, it appears that infected vectors transmitted the disease between people in close contact. Liverpool, England. Nevertheless, over-reporting may have occurred if cases were misdiagnosed as plague. [36,63,64,67,74]), often in the poorest quarters of cities, where the majority of cases were found during outbreaks such as Oporto (1899), Glasgow (1900) and Marseille (1900–1921). If the address matches an existing account you will receive an email with instructions to reset your password. In the Middle Ages, many … Media in category "Plague, third pandemic" The following 35 files are in this category, out of 35 total. The third pandemic began in China in the 19th century, and spread to other parts of Asia and the United States. The Plague of Cyprian was a pandemic that afflicted the Roman Empire about from AD 249 to 262. Official reports and accounts of individual outbreaks such as those in Oporto, Glasgow and Taranto (summarized in the electronic supplementary material) offer more detailed information about case numbers, symptoms, transmission and mortality, which may differ from the information in the Public Health Reports and electronic supplementary material, table S1. We present these raw data in the electronic supplementary material, table S1 (1899–1927 in blue, 1927–1947 in green), with the highest resolution available from the reports. Figure 1. Weeks later in Liverpool, a chain of deaths from plague began among the relatives and neighbours who handled the clothes worn by the two girls in Glasgow [38]. The third pandemic was caused by being bitten by a flea that was on a rodent. Il minamento della Rada di Mar Grande (1943) e l'episodio epidemico di peste bubbonica (1945), Control of plague in Taranto, Italy, 1945/1946: an account of a successful programme of rodent extermination, The last epidemic of plague in England? [4]). In Taranto in 1945, the allied forces, contributed noticeably to the fight against the epidemic by spraying large quantities of DDT against ‘fleas, but also bugs, lice and ticks' [66, p. 167]. AU - Alex, Beatrice. Rat monitoring was also carried out in Marseille, France, where 132 cases of plague were reported from 1919 to 1929 [64]. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited. N1 - To be published in 12 Sep 2019. The overall mortality rate … Here, we investigate plague during the Third Pandemic in Europe, as it differs from other parts of the world, in order to characterize the unique epidemiology of the disease during this time period. Ancient DNA studies have identified Yersinia pestis, the aetiological agent of the Third Pandemic, as the cause of the previous plague pandemics: the First Pandemic (sixth to eighth centuries) [1–3] and the Second Pandemic (fourteen to nineteenth centuries) [4–8]. However, in the years following the outbreak, they found some evidence of plague in the rat population: in 1901 (122 of 1641), in 1902 (30 of 6492) and in 1907 (1 of 140) [55]. Other documented sources of plague in Europe were from direct human transmission of pneumonic plague (e.g. There are also accounts of bubonic plague transmission without a clear association with rats, probably from infected vectors (e.g. The third plague pandemic (1855–1859) started in China in the mid-19th century, spreading to all inhabited continents and killing 10 million people in India alone. However, it was often proposed that other sources of plague, such as infected human-specific or human-biting parasites, like fleas and lice, were important for transmission in Europe during the Third Pandemic [21,36,63,64,74]. The social impacts of the Black Death in Europe during the 14th century. Its modern name commemorates St. Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, an early Christian writer who witnessed and described the plague. [81]). Indeed, in the last years, the frequency of plague outbreaks in developing countries in Africa should not be overlooked; industrialized countries must react promptly to plague outbreaks as well as other epidemic diseases, in order to inform the population and help fight against them. Plague was reported in 11 countries, and many cities, including Lisbon, Marseille, Paris and Pireas, experienced multiple outbreaks (table 1). Plague is not a disease that is found in Europe today, and we found no mention of plague outbreaks after 1950. Indeed, during the nineteenth century, the spread of several diseases like tuberculosis, smallpox, cholera and yellow fever prompted extensive campaigns in European cities to improve hygienic conditions [79]. For the first time in history, bubonic plague reached all five continents, striking major cities from Hong Kong (in 1894) to Bombay (1896), Sydney (1900), Cape Town (1901) and Los Angeles (1924). “Plague in an Ancient City,” presumably Athens, by Michiel Sweerts (c 1652-1654). Plague was notably absent in some parts of Europe. In the two later waves about half the deaths were among 20- to 40-year-olds, an unusual mortality age pattern for influenza. For instance, in Venice in 1897, they organized quarantines, controlled maritime traffic from infected areas without stopping trade, and regulated the hygienic condition of ships, travellers, crew and goods entering Europe. The authors acknowledge funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme/ERC grant agreement (AdG MedPlag, grant agreement no. The worldwide outbreak would eventually claim some 15 million lives before petering out in the 1950s. Ancient DNA studies have identified Yersinia pestis, the aetiological agent of the Third Pandemic, as the cause of the previous plague pandemics: the First Pandemic (sixth to eighth centuries) [1–3] and the Second Pandemic (fourteen to nineteenth centuries) [4–8]. This paved the way for several major changes in society and interacted with developments that were already underway. Reported suspected plague cases per year in Europe (1899–1950) from the Public Health Reports. CC BY 4.0.Download figureOpen in new tabDownload PowerPoint. Accounts of the Athenian plague graphically describe the social consequences of an epidemic. It was rumoured that dead rats were observed before the outbreak, but none were examined. PY - 2019/9/12. The plague is thought to have caused widespread manpower shortages for food production and the Roman army, severely weakening the empire during the Crisis of the Third Century. Of these, 60% were R. norvegicus and 40% were R. rattus in the docks, while all of the rats in the city were black rats. From the first reports of plague, European sanitary authorities actively searched for dead rats in cities [39,63–66], urban districts [36,44], isles [67–70] and on ships [19], and they used early bacteriological methods to test for the plague bacterium in the local black and brown rat populations (e.g. Contaminated water was/is the source of transmission of this infectious disease that causes severe diarrhea that can potentially lead to dehydration and even death. While plague clearly has a long history in Europe, there are no known reservoirs for the disease today [12], which has generated debate surrounding how the ecology and epidemiology of plague has changed over time [13,14]. This pandemic was the third outbreak of its kind, harkening back to the days of the Plague of Justinian that occured around 541-542 AD and the Black Death that desolated much of the world between 1347 and 1500 AD, both of which killed millions and reshaped the political and social spheres of the world. [36,44,63]) and the transportation of infected vectors (e.g. Beitrag zur Kenntnis der Verhaltensweise von Ratten vergleichend dargestellt bei, London, UK: Batsford Academic and Educational, Madrid, Spain: Comision Permanente de Investigaciones Sanitarias, Mesagne (Brindisi), Italy: Giordano Editore, Rat control in a plague outbreak in Malta, Epidemiology of a bubonic plague outbreak in Glasgow, Scotland in 1900, Between the Carlo R. and the Orleannais: public health and maritime prophylaxis in the description of two cases of ships transporting immigrants arriving in the port of Rio de Janeiro, 1893–1907, The French hygiene offensive of the 1950s: a critical moment in the history of manners, Immunity as a factor in the epidemiology of medieval plague, Metapopulation dynamics of bubonic plague, Plague persistence in western Europe: a hypothesis, Plague reappearance in Algeria after 50 years, 2003, Plague outbreak in Libya, 2009, unrelated to plague in Algeria, Globalization, international law, and emerging infectious diseases, Plague: a millenary infectious disease reemerging in the XXI century, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.4454687, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, Climate drivers of plague epidemiology in British India, 1898–1949, 1913, 1915, 1919, 1920, 1925, 1926, 1927, 1928, 1899, 1910, 1914, 1920, 1921, 1922, 1923, 1924, 1926, 1928, 1901, 1905, 1908, 1912, 1914, 1916, 1919, 1920, 1926, 1902, 1903, 1907, 1919, 1920, 1924, 1925, 1926, 1930, 1932, 1933, 1935, 1936, 1913, 1914, 1915, 1916, 1919, 1920, 1921, 1922, 1925, 1926, 1927, 1929, 1930. The datasets supporting this article have been uploaded as part of the supplementary material (electronic supplementary material, table S1). The American zoologist Davis [56] described similar differences in articles from the mid-1950s. It was originated in India and reached Asia, Europe, North America and Africa. Following the outbreak, the authorities trapped 148 rats, 14 were R. rattus and the rest were R. norvegicus, but they found no evidence of plague [70]. Credit: Wellcome Collection. The low number of human plague cases in Europe during the Third Pandemic could be explained by a low number of infected rats, but it could also be a reflection of effective public health intervention measures that reduced the contact between humans and infected vectors, such as isolation of patients and contacts, prohibition of gatherings and improved hygiene (e.g. The prevailing view among researchers in the Indo-Pacific region, including Thompson [51] who observed plague outbreaks in Sydney, Hunter who reported on plague in Hong Kong [52] and those of the Indian Plague Commission [53], was that black rats played an important role in the spread of plague, both as hosts in the chain of transmission and as carriers of the disease on ships [54]. We are indebted to Giovangualberto Carducci, who has provided us with valuable published and unpublished material about the plague in Taranto 1945, and to the project Visual Representations of the Third Plague Pandemic, funded by a European Research Council Starting Grant under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme/ERC grant agreement no. This necessitated the development of adequate measures to prevent the introduction and spread of infectious diseases to Europe. At the end of the nineteenth century, the newly established discipline of microbiology found causative relationships between germs and diseases. For the first time in history, bubonic plague reached all five continents, striking major cities from Hong Kong (in 1894) to Bombay (1896), Sydney (1900), Cape Town (1901) and Los Angeles (1924). The most recent, the so-called “Third Pandemic,” erupted in 1855 in the Chinese province of Yunnan. [39,63,72]). Over the next few years, plague spread to many cities around the world: Bombay, Singapore, Alexandria, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Honolulu, San Francisco and Sidney, among others [20]. After a small outbreak of plague in Taranto, Italy, in 1945, there was a large-scale anti-rodent campaign, which killed around 5000 rats [42]. We systematically collected data for plague cases in Europe from the Public Health Reports (formerly Bulletins of the Public Health and Weekly Abstract of Sanitary Reports) between 1879 and 1950 accessed through PubMed Central (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/). Proust described in Bombay that in places where it was possible to clean dwellings, houses and streets, plague outbreaks could be contained or avoided [21]. Is bubonic plague still lurking in the City of Glasgow? Locations and years of reported plague outbreaks in Europe (1899–1950) from the Public Health Reports and electronic supplementary material. Although there is not universal consensus regarding where the virus originated, it spread worldwide during 1918-1919. influenza pandemic of 1918–19: Walter Reed Hospital. The largest rat epizootic found in Marseille occurred in the poor downtown areas in 1930, where 42 infected rats were discovered out of the 7275 that were examined [64]. We describe important cases and outbreaks that took place during the Third Pandemic and the international efforts enacted to prevent the importation and spread of the disease. These reports have been compiled and summarized for several regions: North America [22,23], South America [23,24], Africa [23,25] and Asia [23]. We excluded Russia because their reporting of cases internationally has been sparse and irregular. Thanks! Three commissions were sent to nearby Astrakhan by European governments (French, British and joint Austrian–German) to study the outbreak which resulted in more than 400 cases [21,27–31]. It appears that plague was also transported by other means, as there are several accounts relating to specific cargo, such as clothing, rags, grain and other merchandize probably containing infected rats or fleas [20,21,32,36–44]. Locations and years of reported plague outbreaks in Europe (1899–1950) from the, The Stone Age plague and its persistence in Eurasia, Emergence and spread of basal lineages of, A decade of plague in Mahajanga, Madagascar: insights into the global maritime spread of pandemic plague, 4 Epidemiology of the Black Death and successive waves of plague, Climate-driven introduction of the Black Death and successive plague reintroductions into Europe, Towards ‘the atlas of plague and its environment in the People's Republic of China’: idea, principle and methodology of design and research results, Plague: a disease which changed the path of human civilization, Epidemiology of human plague in the United States, 1900–2012, Plague studies: I. 1–2]. Quarantine, forced evacuations and torching neighbourhoods, such as Honolulu’s Chinatown (1900), were all employed against the pandemic, causing distress and conflict across afflicted areas. Photograph, 1900/1920’. Map of reported plague cases in Europe (1899–1947) from the Public Health Reports and electronic supplementary material, including the number of outbreaks in each location (see also the electronic supplementary material, table S1).Download figureOpen in new tabDownload PowerPoint. Finally, we discuss the eventual disappearance of plague in Europe owing to increased hygiene and a lack of a long-term rodent reservoir.
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