Black death was not spread by rat fleas- say researchers

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http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014 ... don-plague

This tidbit caught my attention:

"As an explanation [rat fleas] for the Black Death in its own right, it simply isn't good enough. It cannot spread fast enough from one household to the next to cause the huge number of cases that we saw during the Black Death epidemics," said Dr Tim Brooks from Porton Down"

This is in my opinion, an example of '1st world' researchers not understanding the reality of non-1st world quality of life.

I have spent time living among populations that live in extreme poverty in '5th' world countries and I can tell you for a fact that fleas are EVERYWHERE. You can't go from one household to another nor one village to another and not have to deal with them getting on your body.

In medieval europe where cities were insanely packed with people the fleas would have quite easily spread from one homestead to another by fleas just by human contact. An airborne plague would have spread much faster geographically (between towns and cities) than it did due to the much higher contagion rate...but the plague did not spread like wildfire in medieval europe. It hit a location hard and it took some time to start hitting adjacent population centers.

I've been reading about the Court of Elizabeth I for years. I'm no expert, but it comes up again and again that the Queen had fleas. And so did the nobles, nevermind the poor folks. Fleas resided in wigs and clothes and there was no way to get rid of them.

But you are ignoring other relevant factors.

Fleas don't "migrate." They might be carried place to place, but they don't set out to do so themselves. So, infected fleas might only travel X distance...limiting the speed at which a plague may spread.

Also, humans, even then, have resistance to disease. The disease might have spread among those with lower resistances to getting ill among the general population.

Finally, cities, even now, are breeding grounds for disease. Poor sanitation makes it all the worse. So, the disease has a better chance of flourishing in the cities as compared to the countryside.

That is what I meant by the plague not spreading as quickly as an airborne would from city to adjacent towns.



Very few had them and even those that did got very sick and sometimes ended up crippled by it. Resistance isn't immunity. Only someone who had survived being sick of the plague became immune to that particular strain. Those were very,very rare fortunate people.



Yes. Which in my opinion makes it less likely to be airborne. If it was airborne the plague would have had a significantly faster rate of infection given how virulent it is. In Florence as well as in the British and French cities of the times the plague took months to jump from different sections of the city to others. Where it hit however, it was very,very bad.

This is still a controversial area, but the evidence seems to suggest that it wasn't carried by fleas.

Essentially, the only evidence that it did come from fleas is that the modern Bubonic plague (Yersinia pestis) is spread that way. However, it is not the same disease.

Before the disease caused by Y. pestis was discovered by Western medicine, there was no association between the Black Death and rats or fleas. This may have actually meant it took us longer to work out how Y. pestis was vectored- people presumed it must be spread person-to-person, because Black Death was, but actually modern plague is almost impossible to spread person to person (you need to literally cough into their face to have any chance).

Y. pestis causes rats to die before humans get infected. Chinese peasants learned to avoid villages experiencing mass deaths of rats. There are no similar records found in Europe.

The brown rat was not found in Europe at the time of the Black Death. The black rat was, but certainly in the UK it was only common in port cities (it was so rare in the countryside that people didn't bother protecting stores of grain from it). Black Death spread through the countryside. This would not be possible if it was vectored by fleas and rats. Similarly, there were no rats in Iceland, but they got the plague.

The relevant flea is also not common in Europe, it isn't suited to our climate. Other fleas can vector Y. pestis, but they aren't very good at it.

Y. pestis has never established itself in Europe, though it has in much of the tropics. Whenever it has been brought over here, it has died out quickly.

We can't know what the Black Death was. It probably wasn't one disease. Our current "best guess" is that it was an RNA filvirus like ebola or marbug.

Interesting,I had always thought that one of the causes was the fear of witches,which led to cats being killed,and an then an explosion of rodents,and the fleas on rodents.Since people just dumped waste on the street there would be plenty of food for the rats,but also lots of fecal matter which could spread disease.I'm sure some of it had to be in the ground water,most wells would be shallow.

Birds.

What you have neglected to mention here is that when Plague enters an area with a high population density like a medieval city, or the hold of a ship, for instance, it becomes airborne, and pneumonic plague results. I still don't doubt that rats helped spread it, as did people who fled cities and town where it was present, unknowing that they had been infected themselves until they themselves came down with the disease up to a week later.

As I understand it, the royalty of the all time all had small dogs. One of the main jobs of the dogs was that when the royals were ready for bed, they would first put in the dogs to attract the fleas. Once the fleas were on the dogs, they would put the dogs on the floor and climb into bed to go to sleep.

It is much better to be bitten by a flea carrying the plague than to get it by breathing in infected air.

In the one case you get bubonic plague with a death rate of something like 50%. In the other you get pneumonic plague with a death rate of something like 90% or higher. A

Supposedly, it wasn't unusual for the first person in the household to survive the plague and the rest of the household to die of it. The first person got Bubonic Plague from a flea while the rest of the household got Pneumonic plague by breathing in the infected air.

Note: I'm not absolutely sure about the exact numbers of the death rate from each. It's been about 20% since I ran across this.

Lavender and other herbs were also used to repel fleas,they will also jump into fire.You can light a candle,place it in a dish of water with a few drops of soap in it,and the fleas will jump in and drown.This works if you only have a few fleas,not an infestation.And they won't jump off a host,this works for fleas that are still on the floor.

as an ex rat rescuer and owner,am fed up of the number of people who blame the rats for the plague when it was the fleas who spread it.

very interesting, never heard that before- the royalty never stop at anything to better their own lives whilst making others miserable.

Rat rescuer!? You never cease to amaze me!

The rats around here are field ones,they always look healthy,with a shiny coat and bright eyes.They don't try and get into houses,but they will chew stuff that's in sheds.

I'm reading the article saying in the 25 skeletons or at least some of them, it was the plague.

You missed the elephant in the room on that website

Pre-natal screening for Autism .....

http://www.theguardian.com/science/blog ... plications