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“A plague on both your houses” DARTMOUTH IN 1627


W


e know very little about the Black Death in Dartmouth, but more


about later outbreaks of “plague”. Plague today is a rodent disease, transmitted accidentally to humans by the bite of an infected flea. The disease still exists in Africa and South America and is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. Although there’s still debate, there’s growing consensus that Yersinia pestis caused the Black Death and later European plague epidemics. The rodent culprit was the black rat, which then habitually lived around humans. What triggers an outbreak?


Exactly why is unclear, but sometimes unusually large quantities of bacteria accumulate in a rat and multiply in its fleas. This causes a blockage in the flea’s stomach, so as it feeds it regurgitates high concentrations of bacteria into the rat, killing it. With no rats, hungry infected rat fleas bite humans. Fleas ride in clothes or goods and can survive by living off grain and grain debris if temperature and humidity are right. Plague thus spreads via trade and transport routes. Today plague is successfully


treated with antibiotics but untreated, about 60% of victims die. The most common form, bubonic plague, affects the lymph nodes to form swellings called buboes (hence the name). If bacteria enter the bloodstream, death follows rapidly, about eight days after the bite; but there is no human to human transmission. In a second form, bacteria reaching the lungs cause pneumonic plague; this is highly contagious, spreading


BY GAIL HAM FROM DARTMOUTH HISTORY RESEARCH GROUP


Perhaps, like me, you’ve been wondering what it was like to live through pandemics in past times. Whatever happens with Covid-19, it can’t be anything like the Black Death in the fourteenth century, perhaps the most notorious pandemic in western history. Even the 1918-19 influenza pandemic, which was truly global, didn’t approach anything like the same percentage mortality.


via droplets in the air. The third form, septicemic plague, occurs if bacteria are injected immediately into the bloodstream by the bite. Untreated, pneumonic and


OUTBREAKS WERE CONCENTRATED IN TOWNS, SPREADING


HAPHAZARDLY DEPENDING UPON MOVEMENT OF RATS OR FLEAS BY ROAD OR WATER.


septicemic plague are invariably fatal within 28-48 hours. Past outbreaks combined all three forms in varying proportions, depending on season and other environmental factors. Around 1600, plague was only


one of many infectious diseases. Typhus, dysentery and influenza killed many people; sudden large increases in mortality, doubling or more the usual number of deaths, were common, especially in towns. Sometimes such diseases coincided with plague, blurring diagnosis. But plague was recognised and feared as the most threatening cause of serious mortality; signs and symptoms were widely discussed. Plague usually peaked in the


warmer months of the year and declined in winter, so large numbers of deaths happened within a few months. Outbreaks were concentrated in towns, spreading haphazardly depending upon movement of rats or fleas by road or water. In Devon, the disease occurred in the more populous southern half of the county, often arriving by sea in Plymouth, Dartmouth or Exeter. In Dartmouth, we know most about the outbreak of 1627. Only St Saviour’s parish register survives


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