Sandip Majhi
B.A Student, , PG Department of English. Bhatter College, Dantan E-mail: sandipmajhi602@gmail.com
Special Issue on Diseases, Death and Disorder, 2020
Abstract:
Evolution, as it is commonly understood, is a change in the characteristics of a species over several generations and depends on the process of natural selection. This evolution not only develops the physical characteristics but also brings about changes in life cycles due to the genetic reforms of the species. Human evolution is not an exception to it. One thing which has largely been connected with this process is the intermittent outbreaks of infectious diseases that usually wipe out and make changes to the socio-cultural world order across civilizations. So, the impact of diseases that have profound effects in changing the social order is a space that has hardly been touched upon with greater care and concern. Whereas the epidemic has its long history, its records in human civilization are very minimal. A few chronicles and artistic representations show that such epidemics throughout history have steered up negative influences on human civilization and its culture, its health and economy. The most important phenomena are the change of social order due the epidemic induced situation. The three notorious examples in the European history are the Black Death, the Plague of Athens and the Plague of Justinian. This paper aims at exploring the aftereffects of epidemic and how it changes the social order.
[Keywords: Pandemic, infectious diseases, human civilization, Black Death, Plague of Athens and Plague of Justinian]
Very few phenomena throughout human history have shaped our socio-cultural order or pattern, the way outbreaks of infectious diseases have; yet, remarkably little attention has been given so far. It is with the emergence of a new discipline called “Health Humanities”; these explorations are coming unto the forefront. It has been suggested by a few well-known anthropologists and virologists that there has hardly been any society that has not affected by contagious or virulent disease in any period of time. Pandemic outbreaks have decimated societies, determined outcomes of wars, drained entire populations, but, paradoxically, cleared the way for innovations and advances in sciences (including medicine and public health), economy, and political systems.
Pandemic outbreaks, or plagues, have largely been presented in arts and literature but seldom we have analyzed them. Plague, as it is generally known, is an acute communicable disease caused by the bacillus Yersinia pestis and continues to be endemic among the populations of South America, Africa, and Central Asia and Europe. In epidemics, plague, as it is commonly understood, is dispatched from one to a different by the bite of the Eastern or Indian rat flea. These fleas are carried by black urban rat and also the brown Rattus norvegicus. Plague is transmitted from person to person when it’s in pneumonic form. Bacilli may be a pathogenic organism to both humans and animals.
There are three notorious events/occasions of plague induced pandemics (the plagues of 430BC, 542AD, 1346 AD) that had caused devastating aftereffects on the living organisms of the world. They are as follows:
- Black Death
- Plague of Athens
- Plague of Justinian
Black Death:
Black Death, alternatively known as the Pestilence or Plague spread across Europe during 1346-53. It was one of the worst pandemics in the European History killing about 75 to 200 million people in Europe and Eurasia. The plague, as most historians claim was the bubonic plague spread by expansion of globalism when the Mongol Empire and Italian merchants trading on the Silk Road. The bubonic plague first started in Asia then spread very quickly to the West. It made its way to Europe on Genoese trading ships. The ships arrived at Sicilian port of Messina. The occupants of the ship were affected by the plague and most of them died. It’s thought that the ships were from central Asia and there the rats and flies carry the Bacterium Yersinia Pastis. Authorities in Sicily ordered the ships out of the Harbor. But it was too late. The people were soon affected. Due to its contagious nature it spread very rapidly through coughing, touching others, sneezing and others. The disease later extended through the active trade routes that northern Italy and Flemish merchants had developed. A few smaller urban areas were hit by this plague and migrations had already been started where the urban people migrated to the countryside.
Nobody had certainly any idea about the disease and most of them were convinced that it was a sort of a God’s punishment. The general blame was on the traditional enemies, Jews. In the middle ages, Jews were blamed for poisoning into the wells as a result; thousands of Jews were targeted and killed. For example, in Strasbourg, more than hundred Jews were burned alive inside a wooden house. The physicians refused to treat the patients due to their own safety concern. The bodies remained unburied because no one dared to come forward to bury them.
The Black Death smashed the trade and postponed the manufacturing while many merchants and craftsmen died. As a result people started to depend on the agricultural economy in the countryside. Land lords became desperate for peasants and peasants increased the wages skyrocketed. The result was a sort of a ‘golden age’ for wage laborers, more prosperity and more class mobility and they are certainly challenging the traditional modes of Feudalism. On the other hand, the landlords and aristocrats grabbed the unclaimed lands. Women were given the rights of property ownership for the first time. Some historians also considered Black Death as a fuel of Renaissance.
Figure 1: Miniature from the folio of Antiquitates Flandriadepicting the Citizens of Tournai, Belgium during the Black Death
We can find its references in many of the then literary texts. One of the primary sources of the outbreak was the Italian writer and poet Giovanni Boccaccio. He was famous for his magnum opus The Decameron which tells the story of ten people who were busy in entertaining themselves while they were in isolation due to the plague. In the first chapter, he describes the plague, and how it devastated the Florence city.
Agnolo di Tura, whowas a chronicler from Siena, Italy discussed the plague situation very precisely in his writings. The intensity of the plague was so havoc that his wife Nicoluccia and his five children were died due to this devastating plague. He describes that:
The mortality of Siena began in May. It was cruel and horrible thing….. It is seemed that almost everyone became stupefied seeing this pain. It is impossible for the human tongue to recount the awful truth. Indeed, one who didnot see such horribleness can be called blessed. The victims died almost immediately. They would swell beneath the armpits and in the groin, fall over while talking. Father abandoned child, wife husband, one brother another; for this illness seemed to strike through breath and sight. And so they died. None could be found to bury the dead for money or friendship. Members of a household brought their dead to a ditch as best they could without priest, without divine offices. In many places in Siena great pits were dug and pilled deep with the multitude of dead. And they died by the hundreds, both day and night, and all were thrown in those ditches and covered with earth. And as soon as those ditches were filled more were dug….. I, Agnolo di Tura buried my five children with my own hands…. And so many died that all believed it was the end of the world.”
History of Western Civilization by F.L Skip Knox
The Plague of Athens:
In 430BC, the Plague struck the city Athens. It’s the second year of the Peloponnesian War between Delian League led by Athens and the Peloponnesian League led by Sparta. Spartans were the most fearful army in Greece on the other hand Athens had a navy. Athens army was led by Pericles, a great General of Athens. Athenians built strong walls around the city and ordered the people to move inside the walls. This action gave the plague a fruitful land for breeding. This disease killed somewhere between 75 thousand to a one hundred thousand people which was the 25% population of Athens at that time.
The Great Plague at Athens 1652-54
Thucydides, in his notable work History of the Peloponnesian War described the war and it’s associated Plague with which the larger parts of Greece were affected. According to Thucydides, the people of Athens started to blame Pericles, who had started the war and died in the first year of the war. Thucydides also recalled that people now accepted the interpretation of the divine oracle. They thought Apollo, the God of plague was in favour of the Spartans. On the other hand, Spartans did not invade Attica.
Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex is another example which opens up with plague. The tragedy starts with the common people of Thebes who were affected by plague, which was destined, as they believe by the oracle. This Theban Plague is synonymous with The Plague of Athens. For Thucydides the origin of the plague was in Ethiopia.
Whatever the occasion was, but this plague brought social changes to a large scale. People started to lead a lawless life. The rich who remained alive started to spend their money randomly. And the poor also became rich inheriting the fortunes from their dead relatives. Faith on God was in utter crisis. People avoided worshipping the gods. The people who were non-Athenians were tortured by the citizens. According to Thucydides, the people affected from this plague had to die in solitary. Most of them died due to the lack of medical privileges. For Thucydides, “…the catastrophe was so overwhelming that men, not knowing what would happen next to them, became indifferent to every rule of religion or law.”
(Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 2.52)
Plague of Justinian:
The plague of Justinian had been one of the worst pandemics in the world. It was one of the most devastating plagues that struck the Byzantine Empire especially the capital Constantinople (542 AD). During the crisis, like the commoners, the King Justinian I himself was affected by this plague and modern historians claimed that this plague was named after him. Justinian I was trying to ‘restore the western Rome’ by regaining the land saving its fallen glory. Trying to recover the West was not enough for him so he had many military campaigns heading over the sustaining Empire in Persia. But he did not know what kind of sinister was waiting for him.
Although many writers documented this period, there are three sources of The Plague of Justinian: 1.John of Ephesus, 2.Evagrius Scholastics and especially 3.Procopius. Procopius was famous for his two notable works one is History of the Wars another is The Secret Story. He himself was affected but luckily survived and gave a detailed explanation of this plague in his The Secret History.
North Africa was the grain house for the Roman Empire. Through sea trading and via land, the bacterium entered into North Africa from China and India. This bacterium was carried by black rats and fleas. Rats love to live in grains. The rats and fleas were there in the trading ships in which the grains were exported through the Pelusium port (port of Egypt) to Rome. According to Procopius the Plague of Justinian which apparently originated in Pelusium and which spread through Egypt in one direction and to Palestine in another and attacked the whole civilization. This plague was spread not only through food supplies but through military campaigns also. At that time Italy was going through an unusual climate. According to Procopius there were extreme cold which made people suffered because of unusual incidents of snow and frost in the midst of summer, below average temperatures and a decrease sunshine. This climate brought great damages to the crop fields. People migrated because of food crisis. This overcrowding situation and unusual climate gave way to The Plague of Justinian. The numbers of death was uncertain. According to Procopius, 10000 people died daily in Constantinople. The plague was lasted for 3 to 4 months. A few scholars claimed that an approx number of 2500000 to 100000000 died due this plague
A recent research tells that the Plague of Justinian and the Black Death both were caused by the same bacterium. Researchers found tiny bits of DNA in the teeth of two German victims killed by Justinian plague about 1500 years ago. They told that Justinian plague was caused by a strain of Yersinia pestis, the same pathogen responsible for the Black Death. According to the report published in the Journal Lancet Infectious Diseases:
Yersinia pestis has caused at least three human plague pandemics. The second(Black Death)and third plague (19th – 20th centuries) have been genetically characterized, butthere is only a limited understanding of the first Pandemic, the Plague of Justinian(6th-8th centuries)… teeth were removed from two individuals(known as A120 and A76) from the early medieval Aschheim-Bajuwarenring cemetery (Germany)….. Enriched the DNA…and then sequence it………… We conclude that Y pestis lineages that caused plague of Justinian and Black Death 800 years later were independent emergences from rodents into human beings. (Volume 14, Issue4, Apr1,2014)
Procopius, in his The Secret History, describes that the victims were suffering from delusions, nightmares, fevers, swellings in the groin. Those who were infected by the plague had three options: Home Remedies, Treatment from medical practitioner, Hospital Quarantine.Procopius gave a practical advice to maintain the social distance:
But later on they were unwilling even to give heed to their friends when they called to them and they shut themselves up in their rooms and pretended that they did not hear although their doors were being beaten down, fearing obviously that he who was calling was one of those demons.
A Plague Painting, painted by Josse Lieferinx
Most of the people died but those who survived were credited with “good fortune, strong underlying health and uncompromised immune system” (William Rosen in his Justinian Fleas). Before the outbreak of this plague, the economy of Rome was widespread on the high but after this both the economic and the administrative system were totally collapsed. The entire city turned into a mass graveyard. There was no place left in the city for the bodies to be buried. As a result dead bodies were taken by the ships to be burned at sea. The decrease of people not only impacted the empire’s defenses but also weakened the whole empire. No farmers were left for cultivation, no trade, all the going on building projects were suspended. But Justinian I increased the taxes and it made people suffered more. People declined to give this huge amount of taxes. The period was considered as the Dark Age in Roman History.
These three pandemics are the most epic pandemics throughout the world. A similar sort of crisis we are currently undergoing. In this 21st century a similar kind of disaster named COVID 19 is also hampering our daily life and till no vaccine exists. A new study suggests that Corona Virus Disease that has emerged from China’s Wuhan city is subject to evolution. Prof Kristian Anders suggests that:
By comparing the available genome sequence data for known corona virus strains, we can firmly determine that SARS-COV-2 originated through Natural Process.
Epidemics are, by their very nature divisive. The rituals of existence become opportunities for transmission; the authorities enforcing quarantine become agents of oppression. Time and time again throughout history, people have blamed outsiders for the outbreaks. Frank M Snowden in his book Epidemics and Society: From the to Black Death the Present recounts the story what happened to the Jews of Strasbourg during the Black Plague.
Conclusion:
Exploring the entire history of pandemic is a hard-hitting task in this short space of an article. The world has progressed in terms of the preventive measures need to be taken to combat such epidemics, but the crisis is still on. The contemporary scenario of Covid-19 infections around the world is an important example. I would like to end the argument with the observations that the pandemics or epidemics not only have its effects upon the living organisms, but alter the socio-political order. Thinking in terms, the study of these three grave phenomenons would help us to understand, analyse and to be aware from such disasters and diseases.
Work Cited:
Crawley, Richard. The History of Peloponnesian War by Thucydides. Longmans Green And Co. 1874.print.
McWilliam, G.H. “The Decameron, Giovanni Boccaccio”. Penguin Classics. 2003. Print.
Procopius. “The Secret History of the Court of the Justinian”.CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform . February 13, 2013.
Rosen, William. “Justinian Fleas”, Vintage publishing. 1st ed,2003
All the pictures/ images used in the article have been collected from Google Images www.google.com .