In 1998 a team of French scientists published a study demonstrating that the epidemic of infectious disease that struck Marseille in 1720--2, widely held at the time and ever since to be plague, was indeed plague.1 Two years later, the same team made a similar claim about the so-called Black Death, which spread over Europe between 1347 and 1353.2 Articles of this sort by various authors have continued to come out almost annually since 2000, always of course in scientific journals, but usually with a follow-up version in the popular press recast for a general audience. Neither the technical nor the popular versions have been offering much in the way of context, for example by showing how any one of the studies might relate to those reported previously. Attentive readers could thus well wonder what is so important about proving that past episodes of what was thought to be plague turn out to have been caused by plague; and wonder, too, whether each new article is not just more déjà lu. As we might expect, the scientific articles adhere to the traditions of sobriety and brevity characteristic of their genre. Even so, there is a current of competitiveness that simmers just below the surface of some of them and occasionally boils over. In addition the entire enterprise has come under strong criticism by a few persons in outside yet related fields, and since most of the authors of the scientific articles in question have responded to their critics only sporadically, readers may also have been left wondering what lies behind the tensions they perceive. The appearance of two articles in the autumn of 2010 brought a welcome break from this pattern. The first is the work of twelve authors representing seven countries --- France, Germany, Ireand, Italy, Madagascar, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom --- and it does indeed claim to `demonstrate unambiguously' that the plague pathogen was what caused the Black Death.3 However, it also lays out clearly the issues that underlie all this research and acknowledges both those who have been carrying it out and their critics. The other recent article, which lists twenty-four authors (from China, France, Germany, Ireland, Madagascar, the UK and the USA), marks the first attempt to trace the outline of the entire genetic history of plague.4 Given this change of tone as well as the broad scope of both these studies, which may signal the dawning of consensus, the moment seems particularly opportune to take stock of these rapidly changing developments in our understanding of plague's lengthy history
...MoreDescription Review of two scientific journal articles that seek to demonstrate difinitively that the Black Death was caused by the plague pathogen.
Article
Kean, Sam;
(2012)
Retrodiagnoses: Investigating the Ills of Long-Dead Celebrities
(/isis/citation/CBB001320462/)
Book
Scott, Susan;
Duncan, Christopher J.;
(2004)
Return of the Black Death: The World's Greatest Serial Killer
(/isis/citation/CBB000630801/)
Book
Benedictow, Ole Jørgen;
(2010)
What Disease Was Plague? On the Controversy over the Microbiological Identity of Plague Epidemics of the Past
(/isis/citation/CBB001214558/)
Book
Scott, Susan;
Duncan, C J.;
(2001)
Biology of Plagues: Evidence from Historical Populations
(/isis/citation/CBB000101918/)
Article
García Ferrandis, Xavier;
(2013)
Epidemiological and Care Aspects of Tuberculosis in Valencia during the Spanish Civil War and the Immediate Postwar Period (1936-1941)
(/isis/citation/CBB001200191/)
Book
Snodgrass, Mary Ellen;
(2003)
World Epidemics: A Cultural Chronology of Disease from Prehistory to the Era of SARS
(/isis/citation/CBB000471046/)
Book
Luigi Ingaliso;
(2017)
L'epidemiologia di Giovan Filippo Ingrassia
(/isis/citation/CBB981280626/)
Article
Varlik, Nükhet;
(2013)
From “Bête Noire” to “le Mal de Constantinople”: Plagues, Medicine, and the Early Modern Ottoman State
(/isis/citation/CBB001201441/)
Book
Andrew Lakoff;
(2017)
Unprepared: Global Health in a Time of Emergency
(/isis/citation/CBB434578273/)
Book
Emanuele Stolfi;
(2022)
Come si racconta un'epidemia: Tucidide e altre storie
(/isis/citation/CBB569097952/)
Article
Wallis, Patrick;
(2006)
A Dreadful Heritage: Interpreting Epidemic Disease at Eyam, 1666--2000
(/isis/citation/CBB000670540/)
Book
Kohn, George Childs;
(2001)
Encyclopedia of Plague and Pestilence: From Ancient Times to the Present
(/isis/citation/CBB000101735/)
Book
Lukas Engelmann;
(2018)
Mapping AIDS: Visual Histories of an Enduring Epidemic
(/isis/citation/CBB145222575/)
Chapter
Dodier, Nicolas;
(2005)
L'infléchissement du travail politique autour des essais contrôlés: L'épidémie de SIDA à la fin du XXe siècle
(/isis/citation/CBB000772042/)
Thesis
Bowers, Neil Thomas;
(2006)
A Historical Discourse Analysis of the Cancerous and Non-Cancerous Body in Secondary Biology Textbooks
(/isis/citation/CBB001560997/)
Book
Maria Paola Zanoboni;
(2020)
La vita al tempo della peste. Misure restrittive, quarantena, crisi economica
(/isis/citation/CBB068961007/)
Book
Herring, Ann;
Swedlund, Alan C.;
(2010)
Plagues and Epidemics: Infected Spaces Past and Present
(/isis/citation/CBB001033467/)
Thesis
Bulmus, Birsen;
(2008)
The Plague in the Ottoman Empire, 1300--1838
(/isis/citation/CBB001561189/)
Book
Little, Lester K.;
(2007)
Plague and the End of Antiquity: The Pandemic of 541-750
(/isis/citation/CBB000771802/)
Book
Byrne, Joseph Patrick;
(2012)
Encyclopedia of the Black Death
(/isis/citation/CBB001251684/)
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