Medieval History
Beneath the Royal Mint Court, diagonally across the street from the Tower of London, lie 1,800 mute witnesses to the foresight of the city fathers in the year 1348. Recognizing that the Black Death then scourging Europe would inevitably reach London, the authorities prepared a special cemetery in East Smithfield, outside the city walls, to receive the bodies of the stricken.
By autumn, the plague arrived. Within two years, a third or so of London?s citizens had died, a proportion similar to that elsewhere in Europe. The East Smithfield cemetery held 2,400 of the victims, whose bodies were stacked five deep.
The agent of the Black Death is assumed to be Yersinia pestis, the microbe that causes bubonic plague today. But the epidemiology was strikingly different from that of modern outbreaks. Modern plague is carried by fleas and spreads no faster than the rats that carry them can travel. The Black Death seems to have spread directly from one person to another.
Click here to read this article from the New York Times
- Anthropologist Compares Medieval Lives, Pre- And Post-black Death
Each time Sharon DeWitte takes a 3-foot by 1-foot archival box off the shelf at the Museum of London she hopes it will be heavy. ?Heavy means you know you have a relatively complete skeleton,? said DeWitte, an anthropologist at the University of South...
- Researchers Discover Original Bacteria Of The Black Death
The bacteria responsible for causing the 1348 Black Death, identified as one of the most cataclysmic events in human history, has been identified by researchers from Canada and Germany. Using a novel method of DNA enrichment coupled with high-throughput...
- A 'black Death' Saga With More Than One Plague
The plague that decimated Europe's population in the 14th century provided plenty of support for the notion of a higher power ? and a lower one. God's wrath and the devil's malice seemed plausible explanations for such widespread loss of life....
- Black Death Came From China, Study Finds
An international team of scientists have concluded that the plague known as the Black Death originated in China over 2600 years ago. In the article, ?Yersinia pestis genome sequencing identifies patterns of global phylogenetic diversity?, which was published...
- Plague And Famine: An Interdisciplinary View
Plague and Famine: An Interdisciplinary View I am organizing a session for the 45th International Congress on Medieval Studies to be held from May 13-16, 2010 at Western Michigan University at Kalamazoo on the relationship between plague and famine. Famines...
Medieval History
Hunting for a Mass Killer in Medieval Graveyards
Beneath the Royal Mint Court, diagonally across the street from the Tower of London, lie 1,800 mute witnesses to the foresight of the city fathers in the year 1348. Recognizing that the Black Death then scourging Europe would inevitably reach London, the authorities prepared a special cemetery in East Smithfield, outside the city walls, to receive the bodies of the stricken.
By autumn, the plague arrived. Within two years, a third or so of London?s citizens had died, a proportion similar to that elsewhere in Europe. The East Smithfield cemetery held 2,400 of the victims, whose bodies were stacked five deep.
The agent of the Black Death is assumed to be Yersinia pestis, the microbe that causes bubonic plague today. But the epidemiology was strikingly different from that of modern outbreaks. Modern plague is carried by fleas and spreads no faster than the rats that carry them can travel. The Black Death seems to have spread directly from one person to another.
Click here to read this article from the New York Times
- Anthropologist Compares Medieval Lives, Pre- And Post-black Death
Each time Sharon DeWitte takes a 3-foot by 1-foot archival box off the shelf at the Museum of London she hopes it will be heavy. ?Heavy means you know you have a relatively complete skeleton,? said DeWitte, an anthropologist at the University of South...
- Researchers Discover Original Bacteria Of The Black Death
The bacteria responsible for causing the 1348 Black Death, identified as one of the most cataclysmic events in human history, has been identified by researchers from Canada and Germany. Using a novel method of DNA enrichment coupled with high-throughput...
- A 'black Death' Saga With More Than One Plague
The plague that decimated Europe's population in the 14th century provided plenty of support for the notion of a higher power ? and a lower one. God's wrath and the devil's malice seemed plausible explanations for such widespread loss of life....
- Black Death Came From China, Study Finds
An international team of scientists have concluded that the plague known as the Black Death originated in China over 2600 years ago. In the article, ?Yersinia pestis genome sequencing identifies patterns of global phylogenetic diversity?, which was published...
- Plague And Famine: An Interdisciplinary View
Plague and Famine: An Interdisciplinary View I am organizing a session for the 45th International Congress on Medieval Studies to be held from May 13-16, 2010 at Western Michigan University at Kalamazoo on the relationship between plague and famine. Famines...