The Third Plague Pandemic in Europe
royalsocietypublishing.org/journal/rspb
Barbara Bramanti1,3,†, Katharine R. Dean1,†, Lars Walløe2
and Nils Chr. Stenseth1
1
Research
Cite this article: Bramanti B, Dean KR,
Walløe L, Chr. Stenseth N. 2019 The Third
Plague Pandemic in Europe. Proc. R. Soc. B
286: 20182429.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2018.2429
Received: 27 October 2018
Accepted: 27 March 2019
Subject Category:
Ecology
Subject Areas:
health and disease and epidemiology
Keywords:
Yersinia pestis, hygiene, human ectoparasites,
Rattus rattus
Authors for correspondence:
Barbara Bramanti
e-mail: barbara.bramanti@ibv.uio.no
Nils Chr. Stenseth
e-mail: n.c.stenseth@ibv.uio.no
†
These authors contributed equally to this
study.
Electronic supplementary material is available
online at http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.
figshare.c.4454687.
Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis (CEES), Department of Biosciences, and 2Division of
Physiology, Institute of Basic Medical Sciences, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
3
Department of Biomedical and Specialty Surgical Sciences, University of Ferrara, Ferrara, Italy
BB, 0000-0002-5433-663X; KRD, 0000-0003-2262-0385; LW, 0000-0002-8919-0511;
NCS, 0000-0002-1591-5399
Plague has a long history on the European continent, with evidence of the disease
dating back to the Stone Age. Plague epidemics in Europe during the First and
Second Pandemics, including the Black Death, are infamous for their widespread
mortality and lasting social and economic impact. Yet, Europe still experienced
plague outbreaks during the Third Pandemic, which began in China and spread
globally at the end of the nineteenth century. 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. Using supplemental literature, we summarize
the potential sources of plague in Europe and the transmission of the disease,
including the role of rats. 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.
1. Introduction
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]. During all three pandemics, distinct strains of
Y. pestis were introduced to Europe causing epidemics of plague, including
the infamous Black Death (1346–1353); the strains from the first two pandemics
are now extinct. Recently, researchers have identified the earliest known strains
of Y. pestis in Europe dating as far back as the Stone Age [9–11].
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]. 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.
The Third Plague Pandemic originated in the Yunnan region of southwest
China, where plague caused multiple outbreaks since 1772 [15 –17]. In 1894,
plague reached Canton and then spread to Hong Kong, where Alexandre
Yersin identified the bacterium.
It was then carried by ships to Japan, Singapore, Taiwan and the Indian subcontinent [18,19]. 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]. 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].
Case records and outbreak reports for the Third Pandemic are numerous and
have improved our understanding of the historical epidemiology and distribution
of plague. These reports have been compiled and summarized for several regions:
North America [22,23], South America [23,24], Africa [23,25] and Asia [23].
& 2019 The Authors. 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.
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/). 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. For some of the early outbreaks,
such as those in Porto (1899) and Glasgow (1900), the cases are
more temporally resolved. 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. For overlapping reports, we used the most recent
in time, corresponding to the highest number of cases and
deaths. Our study area was continental Europe, excluding
Russia, but including the Mediterranean islands. We excluded
Russia because their reporting of cases internationally has been
sparse and irregular. We converted city and country data to latitudes and longitudes for mapping using GEOPY (https://geopy.
readthedocs.io/en/stable/).
We used narrative and scientific reports in four languages
(English, French, Italian and German) to supplement the case
data. These reports are translated and summarized in the
electronic supplementary material. The reports consisted of
primary accounts, secondary accounts and scientific reports,
which are mainly found in grey literature.
3. Results
There were 1692 cases and 457 deaths from plague reported
in Europe between 1899 and 1947 (figure 1; electronic supplementary material, table S1), with the largest number of
cases in the years 1899 and 1920. Cases were geographically
widespread, although they were primarily found in coastal
or inland port cities (figure 2). Plague was reported in 11
countries, and many cities, including Lisbon, Marseille,
Paris and Pireas, experienced multiple outbreaks (table 1).
Plague was notably absent in some parts of Europe. For
instance, the Nordic countries, which reported infectious diseases such as polio and cholera, did not report any plague
case during the Third Pandemic.
From a comparison with the grey literature summarized in
the electronic supplementary material, it is evident that not all
cases per year
250
200
150
100
50
1899
1901
1903
1905
1907
1909
1911
1913
1915
1917
1919
1921
1923
1925
1927
1929
1931
1933
1935
1937
1939
1941
1943
1945
1947
1949
0
year
Figure 1. Reported suspected plague cases per year in Europe (1899–1950)
from the Public Health Reports. See also the electronic supplementary material,
table S1.
cases have been reported in the Public Health Reports. For
instance, the last outbreak in Taranto in 1945, with 30 cases
and 15 deaths, was hidden owing to military reasons, and
possibly, other cases were not reported in times of war. 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. Some regions, such as the Nordics and
Eastern Europe, did not report any case of plague. While
plague may be truly absent in these areas, we cannot exclude
the possibility that plague was undectected or unnotified.
Nevertheless, over-reporting may have occurred if cases were
misdiagnosed as plague. While early bacteriological methods
were used to identify plague in some instances, to our
knowledge, most of the cases in the electronic supplementary
material, table S1 were not confirmed. 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.
4. Discussion
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]. This
necessitated the development of adequate measures to prevent
the introduction and spread of infectious diseases to Europe.
The European sanitary authorities responded by meeting
often to discuss preventative measures against plague and
other diseases. International conferences were held in Venice
in 1892, in Dresden in 1893 and in Paris in 1894 [21].
Two events emphasized the re-emerging threat of plague to
Europe in the late 1800s. The first was an outbreak of pneumonic plague in Vetlianka, along the Volga River, in Russia [21].
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]. The second event was the discovery of two sailors
from Bombay who died of plague on a ship in London in
1896 [21,32]. These events prompted European officials to convene an international sanitary conference in February 1897 in
Venice to specifically discuss the spread of plague [21]. Another
key international plague conference was held in Shenyang
(old name, Mukden) in April 1911, with epidemiologists and
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2. Methods
plague cases in Europe (1899-1950)
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However, a similar account for Europe is missing, making it difficult to compare local and global transmission patterns. Europe
is also the only region for which we have extended records and
accounts on the previous plague pandemics, in particular those
of the Second Pandemic. Thus, having documented outbreaks
of the Third Pandemic can enable comparisons with historical
ones, especially considering that the Third Pandemic in
Europe was restricted to the pre-antibiotic era.
Here, we compile the reported plague cases for Europe
during the Third Pandemic from digitized records of notifiable
diseases, previous studies and grey literature. 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. We also
investigate the role of rats and other sources of plague, which
contributed to decades of small outbreaks. Finally, we discuss
the eventual disappearance of plague in Europe owing to
increased hygiene and a lack of a long-term rodent reservoir.
3
1–2
3–4
5–7
8–10
11–13
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outbreaks
Proc. R. Soc. B 286: 20182429
Figure 2. 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).
scientists from 11 countries (China, Japan, USA, Great Britain,
France, Germany, Italy, Austria–Hungary, The Netherlands,
Russia and Mexico) [33]. The conference was chaired by
Dr Wu Lien Teh, who had stopped the great epidemic of pneumonic plague in Manchuria and Mongolia (about 60 000
victims) by 1910 [33].
Following the international conferences, regular reporting
of infectious diseases in Europe began in the 1890s [34]. For
plague, detailed records of cases and deaths appear in the
Public Health Reports beginning in 1899 (electronic supplementary material, table S1). 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).
Ships arriving in European ports, such as those in the UK,
were checked for early signs of plague at arrival and filled
out a ‘Declaration of Health’ [35]. These early signs of plague
included suspicion of human or rat cases onboard, as well as
unexplained rat mortality [35], which was also noted in
many of the case reports (electronic supplementary material,
table S1). 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].
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. [21,35]). 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. 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. This is the
new principle underlying modern international prophylaxis’
[21, p. vi]. 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]. Despite the regulations in place, Europe experienced several outbreaks of plague during the Third
Pandemic, but the vast majority of these outbreaks were
small (electronic supplementary material, table S1).
(a) Role of rats and other sources of plague
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].
From the late 1800s, Lowry [46], Rocher [47] and Yersin [48],
among others, observed a connection between human
and rat plague mortality during epidemics in India and
China, suggesting that black rats were involved in transmission. This observation was later confirmed by Simond,
who demonstrated in 1897 that rat-fleas were vectors for the
disease [49,50]. 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]. When plague was introduced
to Europe during the Third Pandemic, rats were heavily scrutinized by European health authorities (figure 3) when plague
years
Athens (EL)
Avonmouth (UK)
1913, 1915, 1919, 1920, 1925, 1926, 1927, 1928
1919, 1931
Barcelona (ES)
Catania (IT)
1902, 1919, 1922, 1931
1914, 1920, 1921, 1922
Chios (EL)
1893, 1914, 1916, 1920
Dublin (IE)
Dunkirk (UK)
1920, 1921
1902, 1922
Glasgow (UK)
Hull (UK)
1900, 1901, 1907, 1908
1901, 1916
Lisbon (PT)
1899, 1910, 1914, 1920, 1921, 1922, 1923, 1924,
1926, 1928
Liverpool (UK)
1901, 1905, 1908, 1912, 1914, 1916, 1919, 1920,
London (UK)
1926
1900, 1905, 1910, 1917, 1918, 1919, 1920
Marseille (FR)
1902, 1903, 1907, 1919, 1920, 1924, 1925, 1926,
1930, 1932, 1933, 1935, 1936
Mytilene (EL)
1927, 1928, 1929, 1930
Naples (IT)
Paris (FR)
1901, 1921, 1922, 1924, 1929
1920, 1921, 1922, 1923, 1924, 1926, 1929
Patras (EL)
Pireas (EL)
1922, 1924, 1925, 1926, 1927
1913, 1914, 1915, 1916, 1919, 1920, 1921, 1922,
Porto (PT)
1925, 1926, 1927, 1929, 1930
1899, 1900, 1923
Pyrgos (EL)
1925, 1929, 1930
Rhodes (EL)
Saint-Ouen (FR)
1910, 1921, 1925
1926, 1930
Syros (EL)
Taranto (IT)
1914, 1916, 1923
1927, 1945
Thessaloniki (EL)
1914, 1915, 1919, 1920, 1924, 1925
Trieste (IT)
Zakynthos (EL)
1906, 1908, 1912, 1913
1915, 1920, 1926
cases were discovered (e.g. [36,37,55], see also the electronic
supplementary material).
There were two species of commensal rats present in
Europe during the Third Pandemic, the black rat (Rattus
rattus), also called the ship rat or the roof rat, and the brown
rat (Rattus norvegicus), also called the sewage rat. 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]. The brown rat came to
Europe from Russia during the early part of the eighteenth century and was abundant in all European cities around 1900
[57,58]. The two species are similar in appearance, but they
have very different behaviour, as first described in a German
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location
zoological journal in 1952 by Eibl-Eibesfeldt [59] and later in
great detail by Telle [60]. The American zoologist Davis [56]
described similar differences in articles from the mid-1950s.
The British zoologist Twigg later describes these differences
in his book on ‘The Black Death’ [61]. These sources state that
the black rat is an efficient climber, which makes nests in the
walls and roofs of buildings, while the brown rat may live outdoors in the European climate, is an efficient swimmer, and
makes nests in borrows in the soil, in cellars or in sewage
pipes [57,59]. The two species of rats carry the same species of
fleas. Owing to their different behaviour, black rats are living
closer to humans than brown rats. During the Third Pandemic,
plague was transported around the world by black rats on
ships. At this time, black rats were not generally found in
Europe, except in warehouses in ports and in a few towns [62].
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.
[36,39,43,63–68,70]). 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].
They wrote after the outbreak that ‘inquiry failed to discover
any evidence that rat mortality prevailed to an unusual
extent’ [63, p. 26]. 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].
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).
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]. 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. In 1945, they found only two rats tested positive
[66] and, in 1946, none were infected [43]. There was a similar
outbreak in Ajaccio, Corsica, on 12 May 1945, with 13 cases of
plague reported over 10 weeks [71]. It was rumoured that
dead rats were observed before the outbreak, but none were
examined. 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]. Rat monitoring was
also carried out in Marseille, France, where 132 cases of
plague were reported from 1919 to 1929 [64]. 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].
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]. The pattern of recurrent cases in East Suffolk led
researchers John and Dorothy Black to assume that plague
was endemic in this region [36]. Surveys for plague were carried
out over an area of more than 2000 km2 [36,44]. However, only
60 plague-infected rats were found out of more than 266 000 rats
that were caught during the 3 year survey [36,44]. In addition to
rats, the authorities found some ferrets, cats and rabbits that
died of plague [44]. The local authorities concluded that the
infected rats were most probably brought by grain ships
which unloaded their cargo in the area to lighten their draught
before continuing onwards [36,44].
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Table 1. Locations and years of reported plague outbreaks in Europe
(1899 – 1950) from the Public Health Reports and electronic supplementary
material. (Only locations with multiple plague outbreaks are shown (see
also the electronic supplementary material, table S1). International
Organization for Standardization (ISO) Country code in parentheses.)
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Figure 3. ‘Liverpool Port Sanitary Authority rat-catchers dipping rats in buckets of petrol to kill fleas for plague control. Liverpool, England. Photograph, 1900/1920’.
Image courtesy of Wellcome Collection. Credit: Wellcome Collection. CC BY 4.0.
Other documented sources of plague in Europe were
from direct human transmission of pneumonic plague
(e.g. [36,44,63]) and the transportation of infected vectors (e.g.
[36,63]) (electronic supplementary material, table S1). Pneumonic plague occurs when plague infects the lungs, either
primarily by the spread of infectious droplets or secondarily as
a complication of bubonic plague. 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]. For
example, in East Suffolk, a 9-year-old girl became ill with
pneumonic plague and died in a cottage 5 miles from Ipswich
on 13 September 1910 [36,44]. 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.
To prevent further spread, the funeral services of the victims
were held in open air and the contacts of the deceased were
isolated [36,44].
There are also accounts of bubonic plague transmission
without a clear association with rats, probably from infected
vectors (e.g. [39,63,72]). Many different flea species can carry
and transmit plague, such as those commonly found on rats
(Xenopsylla cheopis), cats (Ctenocephalides felis) and humans
(Pulex irritans) [21]. Ectoparasites were so abundant in
Europe that the Third International Congress on School
Hygiene held in Paris in 1910 advised to fight against them,
because one out of every three children was infested [73]. As
it is still the case for today, vermin infestations back then
were associated with poverty and unhygienic living conditions
(e.g. [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). 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].
In some cases, it appears that infected vectors transmitted the
disease between people in close contact. 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). 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]. Indeed, infected ectoparasites
in clothing, rags, grain sacks and other textiles could explain
the appearances of plague even in the absence of infected
rats (e.g. [21,38,63]).
Overall, the connection between urban rodents and human
plague in Europe during the Third Pandemic is less clear than
for outbreaks in India and China [21,46,48–50,54,75–78]. 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 low numbers of
plague-infected rats found during European outbreaks suggest
that they played a relatively minor role in plague transmission.
However, some researchers have argued that the authorities
were unlikely to find plague-infected rats because they
would go into hiding [51], thus differing in their behaviour
from the rats in Hong Kong during the outbreak of 1894,
which were described as dead ‘in abundance on the streets
and in the houses’ [48, p. 311]. 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. [21,63,72]).
(b) Disappearance of plague
Plague is not a disease that is found in Europe today,
and we found no mention of plague outbreaks after 1950.
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]. It is possible that future ancient
DNA studies will demonstrate that all of the different lineages
of Y. pestis involved in historic outbreaks went extinct after their
introduction into Europe (see also Namouchi et al. [4]).
5. Conclusion
Data accessibility. The datasets supporting this article have been
uploaded as part of the supplementary material (electronic supplementary material, table S1).
Authors’ contributions. B.B. and L.W. conceived the work; B.B., L.W. and
N.C.S. designed research; B.B. carried out the research of the historical texts with help of L.W.; K.R.D. collected data and performed
analyses; B.B. and K.R.D. wrote the paper with contribution of the
other authors.
Competing interests. We declare we have no competing interests.
Funding. 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. 324249, PI, BB.), as well as from core funding to CEES.
Acknowledgements. 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. 336564
(PI Christos Lynteris, University of St Andrews). We are thankful
to Sari C. Cunningham for her editorial work. Finally, we would
like to thank three anonymous referees whose comments have
improved our contribution.
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Proc. R. Soc. B 286: 20182429
Although plague is no longer a public health issue in Europe
today, the threat of the disease remains close in both space
and time. Plague was in Europe until the middle of the last century, just two generations ago. The disease has recurred in
Algeria [86] and Lybia [87] less than a decade ago, in places
that are less than 300 miles from European boarders. Moreover,
plague is currently present in 11 countries around the world
[85]; at a time of globalization, characterized by the increased
mobility of people and goods, diseases can easily spread from
endemic or enzootic regions (i.e. foci and reservoirs) to the
rest of the world in a short time [88]. A recent paper [89],
which analysed plague cases reported since the end of the last
century, has proposed classifying plague as a re-emerging disease. 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.
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The disappearance of plague in Europe during the Third
Pandemic can be attributed to two main factors, improved
hygiene and the lack of a present-day sylvatic reservoir for
the disease.
At the end of the nineteenth century, the newly established
discipline of microbiology found causative relationships
between germs and diseases. In 1897, Proust observed that, ‘It
is no matter of doubt that the plague cannot produce nowadays
the disasters of the Black Death in the 14th c. Fortunately, the
general hygienic conditions have much changed’ [21, pp. 1–2].
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]. 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].
Contemporary scholars regarded cleaning and disinfecting
as an essential part of plague control measurements [21,67,80].
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]. Indeed, from the 1950s, the introduction of baths in the majority of European dwellings, and
the use of vacuum cleaners and washing machines, strongly
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