Bubonic Plague

This paper examines the ways in which the third plague pandemic was documented and visualized in relation to rapidly evolving ideas about disease, medicine, and the environment by engaging with a set of photo-albums produced in late nineteenth-century Bombay. As one of the first examples of epidemiological photography, a new genre of photography that had developed at the turn of the century in the wake of the bubonic plague epidemic, the photo-albums serve as a significant archive of late nineteenth-century colonial epidemiological, visual, and urban practices. Through my analysis of the Bombay photographs, I aim to foreground the environmental and biological contexts of cultural practices, focusing on the multiple ways in which non-human materials such as water, air, light, and microorganisms can drive and effect image making. I thus propose an epistemological shift in our reading of colonial photography that foregrounds the dynamic materiality of the natural world.

We analyze in this reasearch the work "The Decameron" written by Giovanni Boccaccio between 1348 and 1353, as a literatura that permeates problems and events that took place in the daily and symbolic life of medieval Florentine society. We will analyze, more specifically, the proem and the Journey of Pampineia, where the work is structured from the decision that ten characters take to retreat outside the city walls, as a result of the bubonic plague. We seek to understand, from the source, what are the justifications for the plague’s outbreak, how society dealt with it, and what strategies were suggested to survive in this context. Methodologically, we will utilize Reinhart Koselleck’s theory about space of experience and horizon of expectation, but applied here to the Middle Ages. Thus, we seek to demonstrate how the bubonic plague, being the presentification of God’s punishment, incited by the misconduct of the social corpus, triggers a long-lasting trauma that enables the construction of a utopia in The Decameron. Such utopia, articulated through a cultural diversity typical of Middle Ages, seems to suggest the modification of social and institutional behavior, in order to guarantee human survival.

Este estudio investiga el impacto de la peste bubónica en el puerto salitrero de  Iquique, al norte de Chile, de abril a septiembre de 1903. Nos enfocamos en el impacto que tuvo la epidemia en los sectores populares, las reacciones de estos al disciplinamiento higienista de la incipiente salud publica y el tratamiento de cadáveres y cementerios asociados a la epidemia.

Short Description
Significance: By the details of the symptom description, the treatment options, and the regionalisation the evil kernel descriptions may well be identified as suspected bubonic plague. BENEDICTOW (2004: 41) hypothesized that evil kernel swellings may be considered to be sporadic incidences of endemic plague.

Abstract
For more than hundred years the textual documentation of evil kernel swellings (è hé zhǒng 惡核腫) consisted of merely two passages YU Botao cited 1910 in his Nuanced Points on Bubonic Plague. Identification with lymph node swellings due to Yersinia pestis infection was made easy by projecting backwards colloquial expressions for plague buboes that likewise made use of a fruit kernel metaphor (Li Yushang 2002a). Since WU Lien-teh et al. (1936: 11) took this point from YU this two-passage-story was never questioned. But while BENEDICTOW (2010: 499) asserted that the two medical texts’ “clinical descriptions are unambiguous”, BUELL (2012: 132-135) considered them to be “too vague to say for sure”.
This interim report expands on preliminary findings that enlarged the number of medical texts on the evil kernel topic. Among them, the source text to both of the above-mentioned passages was found in a fragment of the Xiao pin fang 小品方 written between 454 and 473 CE by CHEN Yanzhi 陳延之 (PFISTER 2019). It was considered indispensable for medical students both in the Tang Code and ancient Japanese codes (KOSOTO 1986).
The work gives both a theoretical elucidation of evil kernels and two prescriptions to treat them. It describes the size and terrible painfulness of the swellings, the strong fever and shivers, psychologic changes, and uses the dispersion of an unspecific poison in the body as explanatory model. This complex sign of disease is regionalised as being one often seen in the southern parts of China.
The degree to that one was acquainted with the disease is shown in Chan jing 產經, which gives a prescription adapted to children. SUN Simiao modifies the regionalisation of the disease, and adds specific travel advice for officials deployed in these regions.

Panel *104: The ‘New Paradigm’ of Plague Studies:  Expanded Geographies and Chronologies of the Medieval Pandemics, Organized by: William H. York.
May 10, 2022, 11:00 EDT; 17:00 CEST

The 57th International Congress on Medieval Studies will take place online Monday, May 9, through Saturday, May 14, 2022.
https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress

Piles of corpses lie in careless heaps, jumbled together as if waiting to be swept up and disposed of by some giant broom. Neat rows of houses disgorge bodies as if sticking out their tongues. Renaissance depictions of long-distant plague outbreaks view earlier epidemics through the prism of contemporary experience, when bubonic plague had become endemic throughout Europe, recurring in any given locality every ten to twenty years. From Millard Meiss’ influential analysis of painting in Florence and Siena after the Black Death to Jean Delumeau’s insistence on Western European “guilt culture” fuelled by sin and fear, the return of plague in 1348 has traditionally been viewed as the pre-eminent marker of a decidedly negative emotional turn in early modern Europe. This article explores Italian Renaissance representations of the experience of plague on the bodies of its victims to contest such negative readings. Understanding the emotional dynamics of these images, their affective strategies and purposes, sheds new light on the much debated issue of Renaissance responses to the pandemic.

Plague scenes show the disease’s effects in harrowing detail, from piles of corpses studded with mortiferous arrows hurled by an angry God, to the unnaturally marked bodies of victims, their naked flesh exposed to reveal their inflamed buboes, sure sign of impending death. My study interrogates the emotional dynamics generated by the carefully orchestrated exposition of bodies variously threatened, diseased, dying, and dead, or impervious, transfigured, protected and cured. Identifying the range of feelings displayed and aroused, the behaviours endorsed or denounced, and the empathetic ties constructed between depicted protagonists and contemporary viewers, challenges traditional views of the invariably negative effects of the Black Death and later epidemics.

Like the better-known literary accounts, the visual images analysed in this article recycle familiar tropes of abandonment, social disintegration and civic desolation as deliberate shock tactics. Yet behind the gruesome details and dramatic vignettes is an intense desire for wholeness, for reconciliation between heaven and earth. My study concludes that plague images roused and manipulated beholders’ emotions for a range of commemorative, hortatory, consolatory and prophylactic purposes. Viewers were repelled and reassured, horrified and comforted, denounced for their sins and offered heavenly protection, urged to pass through a variety of psychodramas as part of necessary process of repentance and redemption. As I conclude, through their variety of address and calculated emotional pyrotechnics, such images provided effective coping mechanisms for early modern populations dealing with ongoing presence of plague in their midst.

PFISTER 2018 [Bibliography] Camelids & plague
Working bibliography.
Contents
Bibliographies 2
Linguistics 4
Bioarchaeology • Domestication • Genetics 8
General works • History • Culture 21
Medieval Dunhuang Manuscripts 30
Camel Plague • Pestis camelorum • chuma verblyudov 35
Historical veterinary medicine • ethnoveterinary medicine 59
Veterinary medicine (20th c. onwards) 62

Bubonic Plague and Malaria at Amarna. Recent studies evidence that the bubonic plague affected the people living at the Workmen’s Village at Amarna. Also, ancient DNA (a-DNA) analyses confirm that several members of the Egyptian royal family tested positive for malaria. Recent excavations at Amarna’s South Tombs Cemetery reflect an increase in mortality within the population from malaria, and probably from other diseases, such as tuberculosis, dysentery, and smallpox. Furthermore, the plague may have been interpreted as a punishment sent by the old gods ignored by Akhenaten and may thus have brought about the end of the cult of Aten, and the abandonment of the new capital city.

In this post, I will analyze how the medieval population of Damascus responded to the medieval Black Death in a similar way as they did to droughts and thus put plagues in the category of “natural disasters.”[1] Because “natural disasters” came from God or were part of his divine decree, worship was directed solely to Him in lifting the disease from the land. The “natural disasters” were not seen as having originated from other groups, such as minorities, so we do not see largescale scapegoating. Rather, the religious authority organized a gathering similar to the rain prayer (ṣalāt al-istisqāʾ) which was designed to unite the community around the common crisis and affirm God’s ability to end it. However, critics argued that the gatherings were a religious innovation (bidʿa) as no analogy (qiyās) could be drawn to prescribed ritual prayers. Moreover, they contended that disease and deaths in fact increased after these gatherings demonstrating their ineffectiveness and potential harm.

A legal radio drama about the United States investigation into the Japanese Unit 731 human experimentation unit, eventual contract negotiations and its lasting ramifications throughout the Cold War and today. The legal research piece is told in dramatic form from the perspective of the American biologist and med-school professor entrusted with leading the investigation, and his struggle to balance his duty to his country against the Hippocratic Oath.

In 1936 WU Lien-teh located two passages in two medieval Chinese medical texts that used the term ‘evil kernel(s)’ (è hé 惡核), and in retrospective diagnosis identified it as “malignant buboes”, the lymph node swellings occuring in cases of bubonic plague. Subsequent research stuck both with the preliminary finding that merely two textual passages could be found, and the identification of the disease. Some researchers even claimed that the date 610 CE should be the date when bubonic plague “entered China” for the first time, and aligned it with the Justinian plague epidemics (541-750 CE). These assumptions merit revision: Because 610 CE is the date when the “Treatise on Origin and Symptoms of All Disorders” (Zhu bing yuan hou lun) by CHAO Yuanfang (fl. 605-610 CE) reached the Sui court, it has nothing to do with outbreaks of any kind of epidemics. Moreover, our exploratory study already identified eight distinct texts that use the term ‘evil kernel’. The source of both passages cited by WU 1936 was found in a testimonium to the otherwise lost text “Brief Pieces on Prescriptions” (Xiao pin fang) by CHEN Yanzhi (?, 5th c. CE), which was written between 454 and 473 CE (Eastern Jin dynasty). CHEN Yanzhi mentions that the cases of ‘evil kernels’ occur frequently in southern China. If therefore, the symptom complex associated with the subcutaneous ‘evil kernels’ is indeed referring to bubonic plague, we could assume that plague was already endemic in southern China during the late fifth century. This begs the question of how it made its way there from the remote Central Asian regions into both northeastern and southern China, where it is still endemic today in animal hosts. The present study translates relevant source texts for the first time into English, gives an in-depth discussion of the above mentioned problematics, and a full treatment of the culture-specific notion of ‘evil kernels’ (è hé), as it evolves throughout imperial times.
Keywords: technical term ‘evil kernels’ (è hé 惡核); history of disease; suspected bubonic plague; early medieval China.
Video: https://www.facebook.com/LWLMuseumHerne/videos/2022780684441561/
oder https://www.genfk.com/user.php?id=108482469204735

Üble Kerne unter der Haut. Neu erschlossene medizinische Quellen zur Beulenpest im frühmittelalterlichen China [Evil Kernels Under the Skin. New Sources to Bubonic Plague in Early Medieval China], in: LWL-MUSEUM FÜR ARCHÄOLOGIE, WESTFÄLISCHES LANDESMUSEUM, HERNE; LEENEN Stefan, BERNER Alexander, MAUS Sandra, MÖLDERS Doreen (ed.) 2019 Pest! Eine Spurensuche. Darmstadt: wbg Theiss, pp. 64-73. [ISBN 978-3-8062-3996-6]

Catalogue of the special exhibition "Pest! Eine Spurensuche" (Plague! Tracking Evidences) from 20 September 2019 to 10 May 2020,  LWL-Museum für Archäologie in Herne (Germany) https://pest-ausstellung.lwl.org/de/

Lead: "Manche klein wie ein Hanfsamen, andere groß wie ein Taubenei – die Beschreibungen der »Üble-Kerne-Schwellung« in chinesischen heilkundlichen Quellen des Frühmittelalters waren bislang nicht Bestandteil der Pestgeschichte Chinas. Für die Beulenpest im China des 6. und 7. Jahrhunderts u.Z. gab es scheinbar nur zwei Belegstellen. Der vorliegende Beitrag erschließt nun weitere frühe Textbeispiele."

The article aims to highlight the personal and social rivalries that arose within the Russian medical community, in the context of management of the Moscow plague epidemic in the years 1770-1772. The analysis of the dispute between Danilo S. Samoilovič and Charles de Mertens in the years 1778-1784, allows us to trace the personal tensions and envy between the two colleagues, where elements of nationalism and chauvinism intersect, reflecting the complex relationship between indigenous and foreign elements, typical of the Russian medical class and social élite during the Eighteenth Century.

Trilingual (Latin - Polish - English) bibliophile edition of Contra Saevam Pestem Regimen Acuratissimum by Matthias of Miechów (A Very Acurate Regimen against the Vicious Plague, editio princeps  Cracow, 1508). Ed. Zdzisław Gajda. Transcription and Polish Translation by Danuta Turkowska. English Translation by Teresa Bałuk-Ulewiczowa. Kraków: Jagiellonian University Medical College, 1995/

During my research on suspected bubonic plague descriptions in Early Medieval Chinese medical sources emerged a group of five signs of disease (hòu 候) that require further discussion:
I. è hé 惡核, ‘evil kernels’, identified as malignant buboes in Yersinia pestis infection (bubonic plague, see Pfister 2019); II. è mài 惡脉, ‘evil vessels’, also called chì mài 赤脉, ‘reddened (blood) vessels’, i.e. lymphangitis; III. è ròu 惡肉, ‘evil flesh’, suddenly appearing nipple-like fleshy outgrowths; IV. biāo jū 熛(瘭)疽, ‘flaming (red) abscesses’, are described in contradistinction to paronychia; and V. biàn bìng 編(䐔, 㾫)病, the ‘interweaving disease’, which is called in the south tà zháo dú 㯓(榻, 搨)著毒, the ‘blotchlike burned-in poison’, and retrospectively diagnosed by some as lymphatic filariasis (Sun Dejian et al. 2013); do not confuse with piān bìng 㾫病 ‘hemiplegia’ (!).
Most of these signs seem to imply diseases affecting the lymphatic system, and thereby constitute interesting early materials before the historical horizon of the conceptualisation of the lymphatic system. The paper discusses in a compact way (a) the transmission of the sources involved, (b) the sequence of the textual modules therein, (c) the problematics of the identifications of the five signs with biomedical diseases, and (d) possible environmental aspects of those which were associated with the southern provinces of China (i.e. signs I, IV, V).
Keywords: history of diseases, è hé 惡核, è mài 惡脉, è ròu 惡肉, biāo jū 熛疽, biàn bìng 編病
PFISTER, Rudolf (2019) Üble Kerne unter der Haut. Neu erschlossene medizinische Quellen zur Beulenpest im frühmittelalterlichen China [Evil Kernels Under the Skin. New Sources to Bubonic Plague in Early Medieval China], in: LWL-MUSEUM FÜR ARCHÄOLOGIE, WESTFÄLISCHES LANDESMUSEUM, HERNE; LEENEN Stefan, BERNER Alexander, MAUS Sandra, MÖLDERS Doreen (ed.) 2019 Pest! Eine Spurensuche. Darmstadt: wbg Theiss, pp. 64-73. [ISBN 978-3-8062-3996-6] (in German) https://www.academia.edu/36817756/
SUN, De-jian; DENG, Xu-li; DUAN, Ji-hui (2013) The history of the elimination of lymphatic filariasis in China, in: Infectious Diseases of Poverty 2:30. http://www.idpjournal.com/content/2/1/30
*
Please note the conference is postponed from 2020 to 2024 due to the COVID-19 pandemic:
ICTAM-ASHM  "Challenges to Asian Medicines: Drawing a New Big Picture 2024"
http://www.ictam-ashm.com/index.php
*

The paper analyses the terminology for the human skin, its functions and diseases in Early Chinese medical manuscripts, and compares findings with early medieval source texts. The often fragmented sources are combed through for descriptions of skin structure, skin sensitivity and its disorders. The topographic body surface description of the mài (vessels), and their relation to inner structures constitutes an impressive theoretical tool that enabled fine-grained analysis of pain, and certain sensory experiences. Examples of skin-related diseases like the lacquer disease and leprosy will be discussed.
• Panel: New Approaches to Chinese Medical Literature (Lo/Harper).
• ICTAM IX Kiel, 6-12 August 2017.
• <http://www.ictam2017.uni-kiel.de/en/vision-statement>

Note:
Evil Kernels Under the Skin • Lymph Node Swellings in Medieval China (Presentation ICTAM IX, Kiel 2017)
Talk clarifiying the culture-specific notion of 'evil kernels' (è hé 惡核) in early medieval China, and their relationship with lymph node swellings, esp. in bubonic plague.
Both a research paper (forthcoming 2018 in Asian Medicine), and a Sourcebook Module will be prepared.

An excerpt is attached.

A Peste Negra difundiu-se do Oriente para Ocidente, tendo afectado uma parte significativa das populações medievais de quase todo o mundo. Constantinopla, a capital do Império Bizantino, foi especialmente afligida por sucessivas vagas epidémicas ao longo dos séculos XIV e XV, muito devido à sua posição geográfica privilegiada e ao comércio marítimo com vários portos do Mediterrâneo. Apesar do grave impacto da doença e dos elevados índices de mortalidade, são muito poucas as descrições da peste na historiografia bizantina tardia. Os últimos séculos do império correspondem a um período conturbado da sua história, pelo que os historiadores dão preferência ao relato de acontecimentos políticos e militares, no contexto dos quais fazem referências breves à peste entre os Bizantinos. No século XV, Laonico Calcocondilas transmite informações pontuais sobre a origem, propagação e natureza letal da peste, no excurso sobre os Germanos. Antes dele, no século XIV, Nicéforo Grégoras e João Cantacuzeno descrevem o ambiente em Constantinopla sob os efeitos da peste de 1347 e 1348, informando sobre a disseminação geográfica, os sintomas, o estado de espírito dos cidadãos, as mortes ou eventual recuperação dos infectados, pondo sobretudo em evidência o carácter indomável da epidemia e a manifesta vulnerabilidade da população. Neste ensaio, apresento traduções portuguesas inéditas destes três historiadores, analisando as suas descrições da peste a partir dos dados históricos disponíveis e dos seus modelos literários.

The Black Death spread from East to West, affecting a significant part of medie¬val populations around the world. Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, was especially afflicted by successive epidemic waves throughout the 14th and 15th centuries, largely because of its privileged geographical position and maritime trade with various Mediterranean ports. Despite the severe impact of the disease and the high mortality rates, there are very few descriptions of the plague in late Byzantine historiography. The last centuries of the empire corresponded to a troubled period in its history, so historians prefer to report political and military events, in the context of which they make brief references to the plague among the Byzantines. In the 15th century, Laonikos Chalkokondyles conveys synoptic infor¬mation about the origin, propagation and lethal nature of the plague, in the excursus on the Germans. Before him, in the 14th century, Nikephoros Gregoras and Ioannes Kantakouzenos describe Constantinople’s state under the effects of the plague of 1347 and 1348, reporting on the geographic spread, symptoms, state of mind of citi¬zens, deaths or eventual recovery of the infected, above all highlighting the indo¬mitable nature of the epidemic and the manifest vulnerability of the population. In this essay, I present unpublished Portuguese translations by these three historians, analysing their descriptions of the plague from the available historical data and their literary models.

Leiden-Berlin-Marburg Seminar Series • Ancient Near-Eastern Perspectives of the Inner Body and Healing • (February 3 to April 28, 2021)
Seminar to be held April 28, 2021
*
Preliminary abstract:

Comparing ‘evil kernels’ (è hé 惡核) and ‘pestilential boubōnes’ as described respectively by Chen Yanzhi 陳延之 in Xiao pin fang 小品方 (Brief Pieces on Prescriptions, 454–473 CE) and Rufus of Ephesus (Ῥοῦφος ὁ Ἐφέσιος) in Perì boubōnos (On Buboes), preserved by Oreibasios (ca. 325–ca. 400 CE).
*
Related paper (in German): Üble Kerne unter der Haut. Neu erschlossene medizinische Quellen zur Beulenpest im frühmittelalterlichen China [Evil Kernels Under the Skin. New Sources to Bubonic Plague in Early Medieval China] (Author's version)

https://www.academia.edu/36817756/

The bacteria Yersinia pestis is the etiological agent of plague and has caused human pandemics with millions of deaths in historic times. How and when it originated remains contentious. Here, we report the oldest direct evidence of Yersinia pestis identified by ancient DNA in human teeth from Asia and Europe dating from 2,800 to 5,000 years ago. By sequencing the genomes, we find that these ancient plague strains are basal to all known Yersinia pestis. We find the origins of the Yersinia pestis lineage to be at least two times older than previous estimates. We also identify a temporal sequence of genetic changes that lead to increased virulence and the emergence of the bubonic plague. Our results show that plague infection was endemic in the human populations of Eurasia at least 3,000 years before any historical recordings of pandemics.

The Black Death arose at a time of emerging states that would later become Empires. At a time of greater exploration and new discoveries. Armies, colonisers and traders all imported and exported the disease in ships and overland. It was a time of robust economic activity after the total stagnation of centuries. When the plague first came to Europe on Italian trading ships, arriving from Crimea, the Italian trading ships arriving from Crimea, the Italian authorities instituted some of the first official public health measures. Many local and civic authorities became involved in public health for the first time and many of the measures they instituted were used for centuries afterwards to control the spread of any infectious disease outbreak.  Many of the public health measures that the world recognizes today first emerged during the Black Death. These included Medical inspections, a plague doctor would come to inspect suspected cases of plague and isolate the infected and their families in their homes, a medieval quarantine. Isolation of people who were in plague hospitals was an immediate task. Hospitals were built throughout Europe and remained as fever hospitals for infectious patients till 1900s. The authorities restricted ships to port. In 1347 the Venetian authorities isolated ships in port for 30 days to ensure they were not infected. The period was extended to 40 days, and the world "quarantine" comes from the Italian word for forty.  There was a total control in the movement of goods and people.

In 2018, geneticists presented the results of a special study conducted within the framework of studying the problem of the origin and evolution of Yersinia pestis – the bubonic plague. Apparently, the most ancient strain of this virus known to date comes from the Mikhailovsky II burial mound located in Samara Oblast. Excavations of three barrows at this site in 2015 revealed materials from the initial stage of the Late Bronze Age associated in the steppe Volga region with the Pokrovka type of the Srubnaya cultural and historical community. The authors publish information about the burial complexes of barrows 2, 3, 7, three of which (barrow 3, burials 2, 5, 9) actually contained remains with the gene samples of the Yersinia pestis strain. Along with descriptions of burials and grave goods from the excavated portion of the Mikhailovsky II burial mound, the paper features details of the ceramics manufacturing technology, as well as the results of anthropological studies. The fact that the most ancient form of plague was discovered in the materials of the Srubnaya culture, perhaps, makes another contribution to the range of issues related to the study of the Late Bronze Age of Eurasia.

Em 1899 declarou-se no Porto uma epidemia de peste bubónica que traumatizou a vida da cidade, pois foram postas em práticas medidas sanitárias que deram origem a tensões sociais e políticas relevantes. A doença caracteriza-se pela aparição de bubões, que resultam de inflamações dos gânglios linfáticos, os quais podem supurar ou gangrenar, levando à morte. As pulgas dos ratos eram os principais veículos do contágio.

Archaeological investigations for Crossrail at Liverpool Street revealed the development of this area, from the medieval marsh of Moorfields to municipal, non-parochial, burial ground and later suburb. The New Churchyard, or ‘Bethlem’ as it was later known, was established after the severe plague of 1563 and was in use from 1569 to 1739; some 25,000 people in total were buried here. Detailed osteological analysis of one quarter of the 3354 burials excavated supports documentary evidence that the burials included migrants and many of the city’s poor. Some were the victims of recurrent epidemics and outbreaks of plague when mass, but orderly, graves were dug.