TSR Wiki > Study Help > Subjects and Revision > Revision Notes > History > The Plague-how was it eradicated in Britain?
No one actually knows!
There are several theories on this:
- People got more hygienic. This is unlikely, as the poor in 1800 were just as badly off as in 1600 yet didn't have plague in C19th.
- The black rat Rattus rattus, which spreads plague (if you believe the majority of historians) was replaced by the brown rat, Rattus Norvegius which doesn't spread plague. However, there is no actual proof about how plague is transmitted- the rat-flea-man model of transmission is being challenged.
- People developed an immunity. This is epidemiologically unlikely, as the plague tended to kill mostly healthy young men, hence the children were surviving and didn't have an immunity, it was just the profile of the disease.
- Brick and stone houses replaced lath and plaster and wood, thus making rats less common. This theory is hard to support for the reason that the poor's living conditions were still equally unsanitary as they were before, yet plague no longer broke out.
- The rats developed an immunity to plague- less rats dying means less transmission to humans. There is some merit to this theory, but as I mentioned before the dependence upon rats has never been proven and it would certainly not stop the septicaemic and pneumonic plague types and their independent vectors.
- The plague baccillus, Yersinia pestis, evolved and became less virulent. This is quite possible, as it seems unlikely that the single baccillus would exist unchanged from 1348 right up until modern times. It was already a variant of Yersinia pseudotuberculosis and several other variants have recently been found, hence it could well have become less virulent.
- Plague was no longer transmitted over inland trading routes from the middle east. However, this theory is not too supportable as plague could be and was still endemic on ships rounding the cape, and it also implies that plague came from the middle east which has not been proven. Also plague was endemic in Russia until the 20th century, yet despite their trade with neighbours was not spread by this method.
- That plague was in fact caused by some different virus or bacterium that no longer exists (such as that unidentified agent which caused the English Sweat of the 1500s) or exists in a different form, such as Anthrax, Ebola, Typhus and typhoid fever, influenza, etc etc. Seeing as we still can't prove for sure what the disease that caused the comparatively well documented 1918 "Spanish Flu" outbreak, we have little chance of knowing for sure what caused the end of endemic and epidemic (also presumably epizootic) plague.
The problem comes in that it could have been any, none, or even all of those reasons! We just don't completely know and are unlikely to ever know for certain.
Comments
These notes are aimed at A Level history students.
Originally written by FadeToBlackout on TSR Forums.
