The Complete History of the Black Death by Ole J. Benedictow (review)

IF 0.3 3区 历史学 0 MEDIEVAL & RENAISSANCE STUDIES
Andrew Fogleman
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In the spirit of the Annales tradition of “total history,” Benedictow provides the reader with a holistic study of the Black Death, synthesizing an impressive array of regional studies to establish the spread and mortality rates of the plague, providing demographic analysis with attention to source-specific problems, and guiding the reader through modern medical plague studies. Along the way, he argues that the Black Death is best understood as a rat-and-rat-flea-borne disease, that the outbreak of the Black Death happened in the Volga delta of southern Russia from which it spread west to Europe and east to China, and that the European mortality rates—factoring in source-critical reservations—were as high as sixty-five percent. The book is divided into five sections: a description of the Black Death containing its medical, clinical, and epidemiological features (pt. 1); a history of the plague before the Black Death (pt. 2); the outbreak and spread of the Black Death (pt. 3); the mortality of the Black Death with chapter profiles of mortality rates for six countries (pt. 4); and a final reflection that presents the Black Death as a turning point in history (pt. 5). The book also includes a helpful glossary of terms, twenty-three maps, seven figures, and sixty-four tables. At 1026 pages, this book will likely serve as a reference work for readers interested in specific questions, debates, or regional studies of the Black Death. The transmission of plague by the black rat flea was discovered in India and developed by the Indian Plague Research Commission (IPRC) in the early twentieth century. Benedictow draws extensively on their research in this portion of the book, arguing that only black rat fleas satisfy the various conditions needed to support the transmission of plague on an epidemic scale and that there “is not any empirically observed or realistically conceivable alternative of transmission” (34, 37). Benedictow shows that black rat fleas are uniquely suited for transmitting plague because they have developed a peculiar kind of blockage in the fore-gut of their stomach caused by the growth of a biofilm, which blocks infected blood from passing through the flea and causes plague bacteria to move back into bite wounds during feeding, thus infecting the host (33). Human plague cases, Benedictow notes, “do not have a role in the epidemiology of plague” because plague bacteria levels in humans are too low to cause human fleas or lice to transmit plague (31). Benedictow further demonstrates the improbability of human, human fleas, or human lice playing any significant role in plague transmission by proving an inverse correlation between population density and mortality and morbidity (ch. 44). This “defining feature” of bubonic plague, seen in mortality rates from twentieth-century India and China and medieval studies of the County of Savoy and of England, reveals that lower population concentrations suffer higher mortality rates (882, 883). Benedictow observes that these findings contradict the central tenet of modern scientific epidemiology (for human transmission of disease) that “an increased density of the susceptible population will facilitate its spread” (877). These findings corroborate the rat-and-rat-flea-basis [End Page 211] of bubonic plague transmission (885). Benedictow also observes that this feature of the bubonic plague helps to explain the devastation of the Black Death, because some ninety percent of Europe’s population lived in the countryside and were thus more susceptible to the plague than urban residents. The story of the outbreak and spread of the Black Death across Europe constitutes the book’s central section (509 pages), with chapters devoted to the spread of plague in four regions and sixteen different countries. 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Abstract

Reviewed by: The Complete History of the Black Death by Ole J. Benedictow Andrew Fogleman Ole J. Benedictow, The Complete History of the Black Death (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2021), xxxii + 1026 pp., 94 ills. The Complete History of the Black Death is ostensibly the second edition of Ole J. Benedictow’s 2004 work by a similar name. But given so much new content (593 more pages than the first edition), it might be considered a new work that builds upon and persistently defends the findings of his first edition. In the spirit of the Annales tradition of “total history,” Benedictow provides the reader with a holistic study of the Black Death, synthesizing an impressive array of regional studies to establish the spread and mortality rates of the plague, providing demographic analysis with attention to source-specific problems, and guiding the reader through modern medical plague studies. Along the way, he argues that the Black Death is best understood as a rat-and-rat-flea-borne disease, that the outbreak of the Black Death happened in the Volga delta of southern Russia from which it spread west to Europe and east to China, and that the European mortality rates—factoring in source-critical reservations—were as high as sixty-five percent. The book is divided into five sections: a description of the Black Death containing its medical, clinical, and epidemiological features (pt. 1); a history of the plague before the Black Death (pt. 2); the outbreak and spread of the Black Death (pt. 3); the mortality of the Black Death with chapter profiles of mortality rates for six countries (pt. 4); and a final reflection that presents the Black Death as a turning point in history (pt. 5). The book also includes a helpful glossary of terms, twenty-three maps, seven figures, and sixty-four tables. At 1026 pages, this book will likely serve as a reference work for readers interested in specific questions, debates, or regional studies of the Black Death. The transmission of plague by the black rat flea was discovered in India and developed by the Indian Plague Research Commission (IPRC) in the early twentieth century. Benedictow draws extensively on their research in this portion of the book, arguing that only black rat fleas satisfy the various conditions needed to support the transmission of plague on an epidemic scale and that there “is not any empirically observed or realistically conceivable alternative of transmission” (34, 37). Benedictow shows that black rat fleas are uniquely suited for transmitting plague because they have developed a peculiar kind of blockage in the fore-gut of their stomach caused by the growth of a biofilm, which blocks infected blood from passing through the flea and causes plague bacteria to move back into bite wounds during feeding, thus infecting the host (33). Human plague cases, Benedictow notes, “do not have a role in the epidemiology of plague” because plague bacteria levels in humans are too low to cause human fleas or lice to transmit plague (31). Benedictow further demonstrates the improbability of human, human fleas, or human lice playing any significant role in plague transmission by proving an inverse correlation between population density and mortality and morbidity (ch. 44). This “defining feature” of bubonic plague, seen in mortality rates from twentieth-century India and China and medieval studies of the County of Savoy and of England, reveals that lower population concentrations suffer higher mortality rates (882, 883). Benedictow observes that these findings contradict the central tenet of modern scientific epidemiology (for human transmission of disease) that “an increased density of the susceptible population will facilitate its spread” (877). These findings corroborate the rat-and-rat-flea-basis [End Page 211] of bubonic plague transmission (885). Benedictow also observes that this feature of the bubonic plague helps to explain the devastation of the Black Death, because some ninety percent of Europe’s population lived in the countryside and were thus more susceptible to the plague than urban residents. The story of the outbreak and spread of the Black Death across Europe constitutes the book’s central section (509 pages), with chapters devoted to the spread of plague in four regions and sixteen different countries. As in...
《黑死病全史》奥勒·j·本尼迪克托著(书评)
《黑死病全史》,作者:Ole J. Benedictow,《黑死病全史》(Woodbridge: Boydell, 2021), xxxii + 1026页,94页。《黑死病全史》表面上是奥勒·j·本尼迪克托2004年同名作品的第二版。但是考虑到如此多的新内容(比第一版多593页),它可能被认为是一部建立在第一版的基础上并坚持捍卫第一版发现的新作品。本着《年鉴》传统的“整体历史”精神,本尼迪克托为读者提供了对黑死病的全面研究,综合了一系列令人印象深刻的区域研究,以确定鼠疫的传播和死亡率,提供了关注来源特定问题的人口统计分析,并指导读者了解现代医学鼠疫研究。在此过程中,他认为黑死病最好被理解为一种由老鼠和老鼠跳蚤传播的疾病,黑死病的爆发发生在俄罗斯南部的伏尔加三角洲,它从那里向西传播到欧洲,向东传播到中国,而欧洲的死亡率——考虑到对资源至关重要的保留——高达65%。本书分为五个部分:对黑死病的描述,包括其医学、临床和流行病学特征(第1页);黑死病之前鼠疫的历史(第2集);黑死病的爆发和传播(第3页);黑死病的死亡率,附六个国家的死亡率概况(第4页);最后的反思将黑死病作为历史上的一个转折点(第5页)。这本书还包括一个有用的术语表,23张地图,7个数字和64张表格。这本1026页的书可能会成为对黑死病的具体问题、辩论或区域研究感兴趣的读者的参考作品。鼠疫通过黑鼠蚤传播是在印度发现的,并由印度鼠疫研究委员会(IPRC)于20世纪初发展起来。Benedictow在书的这一部分广泛引用了他们的研究,认为只有黑鼠蚤满足支持瘟疫大规模传播所需的各种条件,并且“没有任何经验观察到的或现实可行的替代传播方式”(34,37)。Benedictow表明,黑鼠蚤非常适合传播鼠疫,因为它们在胃的前肠中形成了一种特殊的堵塞,这种堵塞是由一种生物膜的生长引起的,这种生物膜阻止受感染的血液通过跳蚤,并导致鼠疫细菌在进食过程中回到被咬伤的地方,从而感染宿主(33)。Benedictow指出,人类鼠疫病例“在鼠疫流行病学中没有作用”,因为人类体内的鼠疫细菌水平太低,不足以导致人类跳蚤或虱子传播鼠疫(31)。Benedictow通过证明人口密度与死亡率和发病率呈负相关关系,进一步证明了人类、人类跳蚤或人类虱子不太可能在鼠疫传播中发挥任何重要作用(第44章)。从20世纪印度和中国的死亡率以及中世纪萨沃伊郡和英格兰的研究中可以看出,黑死病的这一“决定性特征”表明,人口密度越低,死亡率就越高(882,883)。Benedictow观察到,这些发现与现代科学流行病学(关于人类疾病传播)的中心原则相矛盾,即“易感人群密度的增加将促进其传播”(877)。这些发现证实了黑死病以老鼠和老鼠跳蚤为基础传播(885)。本尼迪克托还指出,黑死病的这一特征有助于解释黑死病造成的破坏,因为大约90%的欧洲人口生活在农村,因此比城市居民更容易受到鼠疫的影响。这本书的中心部分(509页)讲述了黑死病在欧洲爆发和传播的故事,其中的章节专门讲述了鼠疫在四个地区和16个不同国家的传播。就像在……
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期刊介绍: Comitatus: A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies publishes articles by graduate students and recent PhDs in any field of medieval and Renaissance studies. The journal maintains a tradition of gathering work from across disciplines, with a special interest in articles that have an interdisciplinary or cross-cultural scope.
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