tag:theconversation.com,2011:/id/topics/bubonic-plague-1652/articlesBubonic plague – The Conversation2024-03-07T21:28:26Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2218262024-03-07T21:28:26Z2024-03-07T21:28:26ZWhy ‘One Health’ needs more social sciences: Pandemic prevention depends on behaviour as well as biology<p>On March 11, 2024, <a href="https://www.who.int/director-general/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19---11-march-2020">it will be four years since the World Health Organization characterized the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak as a pandemic</a>. And while COVID-19 continues to impact people globally, it is only the most recent in a long history of pandemics with likely origins in animals. Examples include <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/plague/transmission/index.html">plague</a>, which usually spreads from rodents to humans via infected fleas, and the 2009 <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/general_info.htm">H1N1 flu</a>, also known as swine flu due to its <a href="https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.16777">origins in pigs</a>. </p>
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<img alt="Purple spikes covered with a mossy yellow-green substance" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580289/original/file-20240306-30-gmkzlc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580289/original/file-20240306-30-gmkzlc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580289/original/file-20240306-30-gmkzlc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580289/original/file-20240306-30-gmkzlc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580289/original/file-20240306-30-gmkzlc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580289/original/file-20240306-30-gmkzlc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580289/original/file-20240306-30-gmkzlc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Microscopic view of Yersinia pestis bacteria, which causes bubonic plague, in a flea.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(NIAID)</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Given the animal origins of past pandemics, as well as the many recent cases of disease in people linked to animals — such as <a href="https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease-outbreak-news/item/2023-DON497">anthrax</a>, <a href="https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease-outbreak-news/item/2024-DON506">Middle East respiratory syndrome</a> and <a href="https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease-outbreak-news/item/2024-DON504">avian influenza virus</a> — it is very likely that the next pandemic will again originate in animals. </p>
<p>In fact, <a href="https://doi.org/10.3390%2Fmicroorganisms8091405">over 60 per cent of emerging infectious diseases in people originate in animals. Among these, more than 70 per cent are associated with wildlife</a>. Our close interactions with animals and our shared environment is a major factor for why and how these pathogens spill over. </p>
<h2>Pandemic prevention</h2>
<p>Recognizing our interconnected health, there have been increased calls for <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(24)00066-7">primary pandemic prevention</a>, which focuses on reducing the chance of an outbreak occurring by preventing the spread of pathogens from animals to people.</p>
<p>One framework for primary pandemic prevention is called “One Health.” One Health recognizes the close links among human, animal and environmental health, whereby promoting health in one part of this triad promotes the health of all. </p>
<p>While this concept of interconnected health has gained awareness in western science in the past century, it is not new. Instead, it is a reflection of what <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abe2401">Indigenous Peoples have known and practised for millennia</a>. </p>
<h2>One Health</h2>
<p>Global recognition of One Health has been steadily increasing. For example, the formation of the <a href="https://globalohc.org/what-is-one-health">Quadripartite</a> — which consists of global organizations including the <a href="https://www.fao.org/home/en">Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations</a>, the <a href="https://www.unep.org/">United Nations Environment Programme</a>, the World Health Organization, and the <a href="https://www.woah.org/en/home/">World Organisation for Animal Health</a> — has been focused on mobilizing One Health. The Quadripartite is advised by the <a href="https://www.who.int/groups/one-health-high-level-expert-panel/members">One Health High Level Expert Panel</a>. </p>
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<img alt="Gloved hands injecting a cow" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580291/original/file-20240306-20-9ocphi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580291/original/file-20240306-20-9ocphi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580291/original/file-20240306-20-9ocphi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580291/original/file-20240306-20-9ocphi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580291/original/file-20240306-20-9ocphi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580291/original/file-20240306-20-9ocphi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580291/original/file-20240306-20-9ocphi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">A veterinarian vaccinates cattle against disease. Understanding farmers’ barriers to vaccinating livestock is key to successful disease prevention.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Yet despite the interdisciplinary nature of One Health, many initiatives are still falling short. Discussions and decisions about One Health issues are often dominated by veterinary and human health sciences, sidelining the social sciences <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2014.09.048">despite the crucial role</a> of disciplines like psychology, sociology, and communications in understanding human behaviour. </p>
<p>Social science researchers aim to understand people — their perceptions and concerns, their histories, their socio-political, cultural and environmental contexts, and their knowledge — with a view to understanding how structural disparities affect personal and societal behaviour, health and political power.</p>
<p>In interdisciplinary fields such as One Health, this understanding is paramount. One Health interventions include measures such as the vaccination of livestock to prevent spillover events to people, such as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41541-023-00769-w">Rift Valley fever</a>, which can affect both animals and humans. </p>
<p>The success of these interventions hinges not only on vaccine efficacy, but also on societal factors. For example, social scientists uncover <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0256684">barriers faced by farmers in accessing livestock vaccination services</a>. This ultimately improves access and ensures widespread livestock immunization, and therefore contributes to the primary prevention of future pandemics.</p>
<h2>Recognizing intersections</h2>
<p>Another key factor contributing to the successful implementation of One Health interventions is understanding gender dynamics in society. Often women bear the disproportionate caregiving burden, which impacts their access to health care for themselves and their livestock. Gender roles and responsibilities may also decide who interacts closely with animals, affecting possible disease exposure risks as well as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13552074.2015.1096041">narrowing down the target group for educational efforts</a>. </p>
<p>Recognizing these intersections is crucial for developing inclusive and effective interventions.</p>
<p>And while animals may be the potential source of a future pandemic, it is also important to recognize the important positive contributions wildlife have made to our health and well-being, including their roles in the economy and <a href="https://www.indigenousfoodsystems.org/food-sovereignty">food security</a>, as well as their cultural significance. </p>
<p>The perception that animals are a threat to humans can lead to heightened public fears and apprehensions about wildlife, potentially reducing <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/ilar.51.3.255">support for wildlife conservation</a>. </p>
<p>Addressing this issue requires a deeper understanding of public perceptions, values, priorities and behaviours — emphasizing the <a href="https://doi.org/10.7589/2014-01-004">necessity of integrating social science</a> in the development of informed, relevant and sustainable surveillance of potential infectious disease in wildlife and conservation programs. </p>
<h2>An interdisciplinary approach to pandemic prevention</h2>
<p>Even beyond the role of social science in understanding the complex systems in which health risks occur, social science can also bridge communication gaps between researchers, policymakers and communities. By integrating social science into One Health approaches, we ensure that initiatives are not only scientifically sound, but also socially and culturally acceptable, appropriate and equitable for all rights holders involved.</p>
<p>A movement towards a true, interdisciplinary and holistic approach to primary pandemic prevention will need a proactive approach to health and well-being instead of a reactive one. It will also require us to critically examine our current health systems to identify innovative solutions to ensure its resilience. </p>
<p>We need to mobilize information and understanding across knowledge systems and elevate the critical role of social sciences to meaningfully integrate One Health into primary pandemic prevention in Canada.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221826/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kaylee Byers receives funding from the Public Health Agency of Canada to strengthen communications and knowledge mobilization of One Health issues. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sarah Robinson receives funding from the Public Health Agency of Canada to strengthen communications and knowledge mobilization of One Health issues.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lara Hollmann and Salome A. Bukachi do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Pandemics often have animal origins, so prevention is often dominated by health and veterinary sciences. However, social sciences’ role in understanding human behaviour is also crucial to prevention.Kaylee Byers, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Health Sciences; Senior Scientist, Pacific Institute on Pathogens, Pandemics and Society, Simon Fraser UniversityLara Hollmann, Research Fellow, Pacific Institute on Pathogens, Pandemics and Society, Simon Fraser UniversitySalome A. Bukachi, Associate professor, Institute of Anthropology, Gender and African Studies, University of NairobiSarah Robinson, Postdoctoral Fellow, Pacific Institute on Pathogens, Pandemics and Society, Simon Fraser UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2192742023-12-29T11:42:50Z2023-12-29T11:42:50ZWhat COVID diaries have in common with Samuel Pepys’ 17th-century plague diaries<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564815/original/file-20231211-21-68cd8r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=319%2C275%2C5432%2C3328&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/halloween-holidays-leisure-concept-close-young-2023057376">Ground Picture/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>People keep diaries for all sorts of reasons – to record events, work through difficult situations, or manage <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1994-38706-001">stress</a> and <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/19783166_Disclosure_of_Traumas_and_Immune_Function_Health_Implications_for_Psychotherapy">trauma</a>. The ongoing COVID inquiry shows diaries also have important political and historic significance. The UK’s former chief scientific adviser Patrick Vallance’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/nov/20/how-patrick-vallance-explosive-diaries-exposed-covid-chaos-inside-no-10">diaries</a> have been a key source of evidence, exposing the chaos within government at the time. </p>
<p>In my PhD research, I’ve been exploring the COVID diaries of ordinary people, as well as diaries kept during the Great Plague of London in 1665-66. Though centuries apart, these diaries are full of insight into how people react to crises, and have surprising similarities. </p>
<p>From the first lockdown in March 2020, media outlets, archive centres and researchers encouraged people to record their pandemic experiences. Even BBC children’s entertainer <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000jsf3/at-home-with-mr-tumble-series-1-6-diary">Mr Tumble</a> urged young viewers to start a diary. </p>
<p>This has resulted in a large number of COVID diaries being made available in archive collections around the UK, plus many more online in the form of blogs or social media. I’ve been looking specifically at 13 COVID diaries donated to the Borthwick Institute for Archives and the East Riding Archives, both in Yorkshire. Most were originally private documents, offering a more spontaneous, honest and intimate portrayal of pandemic experiences than their online counterparts. </p>
<p>Diaries written during the Great Plague are not so numerous. Of the few available, the most valuable is that of naval administrator Samuel Pepys (1633-1703), whose exceptionally detailed and candid journals form by far the most comprehensive firsthand account of plague-stricken London.</p>
<p>I have been reading Pepys’s diaries alongside the modern COVID diaries, and have been struck by the common themes in how people navigated their pandemic experiences. </p>
<h2>Recording statistics</h2>
<p>Throughout the COVID pandemic, statistics of cases and deaths were everywhere, and were key to how we judged the impact of the virus. As diarist JF wrote on June 5 2020:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It was time to watch the Corona Virus update and I was shocked to find that over 40,000 people have now died from the disease in this country and it’s not over yet!</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Relatively accurate information was also widely circulated in 17th-century London via the “bills of mortality” – weekly lists of deaths according to cause and location. Pepys wrote on September 7 1665:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Sent for the Weekely Bill and find 8252 dead in all, and of them, 6978 of the plague - which is a most dreadful Number - and shows reason to fear that the plague hath got that hold that it will yet continue among us.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>All of the modern and historical diaries I have looked at include these statistics – some sparingly, others with meticulous regularity.</p>
<h2>The blame game</h2>
<p>As cases rose, restrictions were enforced and the effects of plague and COVID loomed large in the lives of our diarists, narratives shifted to confusion and blame. Pepys was largely sympathetic to the government’s handling of the plague and, in February 1666, criticised those who flouted the rules and endangered others: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>In the heighth of it, how bold people there were to go in sport to one another’s burials. And in spite to well people, would breathe in the faces … of well people going by.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>COVID diarists reacted to those who didn’t follow guidelines in a very similar way, as DR wrote in March 2020: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Not everyone is playing it very well, though, with panic-buying, one last night at the pub and a mass exodus to the coast. Stupid and selfish in equal measure.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The response and actions of the UK government, and individual members of parliament, also afforded much attention. An anonymous diarist wrote in May 2020:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>People are being allowed out more but the illness is still out there & there’s no treatment or vaccine yet … There are fewer deaths because of social distancing. If they let everyone get on with the ‘new normal’ surely more people will get sick?</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Staying positive</h2>
<p>A more optimistic theme to emerge in the diaries was the ability to find positivity amid the chaos. Pepys and modern diarists were thankful for the blessings of health, family and security. They praised those who went the extra mile to mitigate the impact of the pandemic on those around them, despite the risk to their own health. An entry from New Year’s Eve in 1665 reads:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>My whole family hath been well all this while, and all my friends I know of, saving my aunt Bell, who is dead, and some children of my cozen Sarah’s, of the plague … yet, to our great joy, the town fills apace, and shops begin to open again. Pray God continue the plague’s decrease!</p>
</blockquote>
<p>DW’s diary from April 2020 expressed appreciation for time out in nature, as well as sympathy for others living in more difficult situations:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It was lovely walking through the wood. The air was filled with birdsong. It made me realise how lucky I am to live in a village where I can walk from my front door into fields and woods along defined paths. It must be awful to live ten floors up in a high rise block with two children, and not be allowed out except for once per day. </p>
</blockquote>
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<img alt="A young man sits on the ground in a forest writing in a journal" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564817/original/file-20231211-29-uswlqj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564817/original/file-20231211-29-uswlqj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564817/original/file-20231211-29-uswlqj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564817/original/file-20231211-29-uswlqj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564817/original/file-20231211-29-uswlqj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564817/original/file-20231211-29-uswlqj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564817/original/file-20231211-29-uswlqj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Keeping a diary can be good for wellbeing, as well as recording history.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/focused-man-writing-journal-ideas-enjoying-2240364251">Vergani Fotografia/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>Comparing COVID with historical events such as <a href="https://www.sciencenews.org/article/coronavirus-covid-19-ancient-plagues-pandemics-lessons-society">plague</a>, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200302-coronavirus-what-can-we-learn-from-the-spanish-flu">the Spanish flu epidemic</a> and the <a href="https://www.kent.ac.uk/news/society/25315/expert-comment-the-reality-of-blitz-spirit-during-covid-19">second world war</a> was a core element of the pandemic narrative, and for good reason. History connects.</p>
<p>It is easy to look around us and see the vast differences between the world we live in now, and that which Pepys traversed almost 400 years ago.</p>
<p>But by exploring the innermost thoughts of people with an element of shared experience, we see that fundamental aspects of the human condition endure. When faced with uncertainty and upheaval, our instincts are to record, find answers, and reclaim joy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219274/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mary Rehman receives funding from University of Hull Doctoral College</span></em></p>Keeping a diary has been a common pandemic pastime throughout history.Mary Rehman, PhD Researcher, School of Humanities, University of HullLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2160752023-10-31T03:16:34Z2023-10-31T03:16:34Z‘What can we afford to lose?’ Charlotte Wood’s new novel poses big questions about goodness, purpose and sacrifice<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556040/original/file-20231026-17-36y33w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C11%2C3988%2C1982&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.pexels.com/photo/monochrome-photo-of-statue-1431114/">Alain Frechett/Pexels; Rodolfo Clix/Pexels</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Charlotte Wood’s Stone Yard Devotional tells the story of a woman who abandons her city life to live in a rural religious compound. In the vein of her award-winning <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Charlotte-Wood-Natural-Way-of-Things-9781760111236">The Natural Way of Things</a>, Wood continues to explore relationships between women in isolated groups, and more broadly, tensions between the individual and the collective. </p>
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<p><em>Review: Stone Yard Devotional – Charlotte Wood (Allen & Unwin)</em></p>
<hr>
<p>The narrator has left her job and her marriage, choosing to live a simple existence with reclusive nuns. The reader is left to wonder: what has compelled her into this life of quiet? Our unnamed protagonist is sceptical about religion, yet takes her place in the community seriously, focusing on daily tasks with repetition and care, as if devotion is about attention rather than belief. </p>
<p>Wood’s novel is set against the backdrop of COVID. Despite the narrator’s focus on daily life in the compound, the outside world infiltrates. The characters wear masks when making the pilgrimage to town for supplies, and the narrator remembers the external landscape when visitors arrive. Bushfire season begins and a sense of menace “out there” creeps ever closer. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556041/original/file-20231026-17-39d2cn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556041/original/file-20231026-17-39d2cn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556041/original/file-20231026-17-39d2cn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556041/original/file-20231026-17-39d2cn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556041/original/file-20231026-17-39d2cn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556041/original/file-20231026-17-39d2cn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556041/original/file-20231026-17-39d2cn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556041/original/file-20231026-17-39d2cn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Charlotte Wood’s new novel continues to explore relationships between women in isolated groups.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Carly Earl</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And then, a plague of mice descends. Of all the arrivals, this is the most visceral – the descriptions are brutal in their exquisite detail. The sisters contemplate </p>
<blockquote>
<p>what a plague might mean. What would happen if we did nothing? What can we afford to lose, and what must be protected?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The post-COVID reader (if such a thing exists) is reminded that inaction can be another form of action. And even though the nuns set traps, emptying them every hour as the plague grows, they have trouble digging holes big enough to bury all the mice. </p>
<p>The tiny creatures eat through electrical equipment and plastic, into food rations and stores, enforcing a squeamish patience on both narrator and reader. The oven, and then the dishwasher and washing machine, become unusable. “All those [washing] tasks are now to be done by hand: there’s no point replacing the parts until the plague is over.” </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/woods-decision-to-keep-all-her-prize-money-reflects-the-values-of-the-stella-58131">Wood's decision to keep all her prize money reflects the values of the Stella</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<h2>Grief, legacy and suspicion</h2>
<p>At times, I thought this was a book about grief and legacy – how we remember our parents, how they shape us, how we live for and against their values. </p>
<p>Within two paragraphs of the narrator arriving at the compound, we flash back to her car journey there, stopping at her parents’ graves along the way. The narrator remembers her mother’s gardening, her ancestral hands in the earth. </p>
<p>Further flashbacks emphasise the support and intergenerational trust between the narrator and her mother: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>As I grew into my twenties, then thirties […] I began to understand how rare such a simple and powerful trust had been. I wished again that I had been able to say any of this to her when she lived.</p>
</blockquote>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555539/original/file-20231024-25-a074ma.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555539/original/file-20231024-25-a074ma.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555539/original/file-20231024-25-a074ma.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555539/original/file-20231024-25-a074ma.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555539/original/file-20231024-25-a074ma.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555539/original/file-20231024-25-a074ma.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555539/original/file-20231024-25-a074ma.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555539/original/file-20231024-25-a074ma.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>This first-person storyteller recounts how her mother was described as a humanitarian, a woman who never ridiculed others’ beliefs. “No matter how outlandish or foolish she may privately have thought it, my mother was a person who respected the fact of belief in and of itself.” </p>
<p>This mother also stood up against prejudice and protected the vulnerable, sometimes to her own detriment. This kind of idea reverberates throughout the book: doing what is “right”, the tension between the self and the group, and how this plays out specifically for women – whether in their relationships with each other or their positions in a community.</p>
<p>Ideas of “rightness”, “risk” and “belonging” are further explored when the skeletal remains of a murdered nun are returned to the compound from Thailand, where she had moved to work with battered women. </p>
<p>Sister Jenny, a dear friend to some of the compound residents, was the victim of gender-based violence. This proves striking within the context of Stone Yard Devotional. The narrator claims to be unconcerned with fostering friendships with the nuns she lives with, even as she identifies with them. The implication is that female friendship itself is something to be wary of. </p>
<p>As she says about one of the nuns, Sister Carmel, when she senses her disapproval, “I used to care about what she and the others thought of me … but I don’t anymore.”</p>
<p>Yet, as a figure from the narrator’s past arrives, escorting Sister Jenny’s bones across international borders – amid COVID travel restrictions – we begin to understand why the narrator might feel suspicious of social groups, female friendship and her own role in past events. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-grey-haired-and-radiant-reimagining-ageing-for-women-182336">Friday essay: grey-haired and radiant – reimagining ageing for women</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A novel of questions</h2>
<p>Despite the declarative nature of the text, the aloof, first-person narration does not invite the reader into the narrator’s head. There is a lack of intimacy to the voice, as though the quiet of living a monastic life has settled into the narrator’s brain. The reader sits with her, observing as the story unfolds. We are watching someone ponder, not confess.</p>
<p>Many of the chapters’ introductory sentences don’t have subjects; they begin with verbs: “Arrive finally at about three”. Or: “Slept poorly”. The reader is witnessing the solitary act of an individual taking notes, or writing in a journal. This is confirmed when the narrator says: “Nobody will read this but me. Even so, I imagine there are things I’m leaving out.” </p>
<p>And it’s further emphasised by a lack of dialogue within the book. We are forced to trust our quiet narrator, because few other characters are allowed to speak for themselves. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555546/original/file-20231024-25-qmqabw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555546/original/file-20231024-25-qmqabw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555546/original/file-20231024-25-qmqabw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=929&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555546/original/file-20231024-25-qmqabw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=929&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555546/original/file-20231024-25-qmqabw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=929&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555546/original/file-20231024-25-qmqabw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1167&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555546/original/file-20231024-25-qmqabw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1167&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555546/original/file-20231024-25-qmqabw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1167&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>Like The Natural Way of Things, this is not a fast-moving page-turner. It’s a text that invites introspection and pondering. Wood writes novels that are important to read. I think about the world in different ways after her characters have entered my consciousness. But her books won’t be hurried – they take their time. </p>
<p>Stone Yard Devotional offers line-by-line writing that haunts, and descriptions and ways of seeing the world that linger. The novel’s ideas and questions have made me consider the complicated nature of belonging as a woman in a patriarchal order where women are frequently pitted against each other, and how complicated female relationships can be. </p>
<p>The narrator remembers her social network in high school: how she took part in bullying a young woman, and how it escalated into assault. In Wood’s novel, we learn girls and women who bully may also feel remorse and try to make amends. We watch the bullied outsider, fearlessly committed to being herself, achieve national fame. We see another outsider-friend become the unfortunate victim of terrifying violence as she pursues her life purpose. </p>
<p>This is a novel of questions. How does the past ripple into the present? How do we live with our past actions? What is the nature of forgiveness? What is the nature of religious belief? How might we understand experiences of the spiritual? </p>
<p>I think, ultimately, it’s a story of memory and sacrifice. It asks what we do and don’t remember of our pasts. And it asks: what are we willing to give up in the name of our life’s purpose?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216075/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shady Cosgrove does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The narrator of Charlotte Wood’s new novel has shed her life to live with nuns. The world intrudes in the form of COVID, a mouse plague and recovered bones, delivered by someone from her past.Shady Cosgrove, Associate Professor, Creative Writing, University of WollongongLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2041832023-04-27T20:17:48Z2023-04-27T20:17:48ZFriday essay: Stan Grant on how tyrants use the language of germ warfare – and COVID has enabled them<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522488/original/file-20230424-22-d7xzj9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C9%2C3020%2C2269&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A Uighur woman protests before a group of paramilitary police in western China's Xinjiang region.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ng Han Guan/AP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It is 2019. There is a virus lurking in China. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is warning that if it is not contained, it could infect the entire country. It could turn the country upside down. Tear at the social fabric. The CCP’s dream of harmony cannot withstand this. So they tell their people: this must be wiped out. Memories are too fresh in China of what happens when things spiral out of control.</p>
<p>China is a nation that barely hangs together. Throughout time, empires have risen and fallen. Bloodshed beyond imagining – on a scale almost unseen in human history – marks each turn in China’s fate. </p>
<p>The hundred years between the mid-19th century and the Communist Revolution in 1949 were brutal. The Opium Wars with Britain, the fall of the Qing, the Taiping Rebellion, the Boxer Rebellion, the civil war between nationalists and communists, the Japanese occupation – tens of millions were slaughtered.</p>
<p>The CCP knows it should fear its own. It knows what happens when people rise up. The party seeks stability, but stability can only come with force and threats. Nothing can be tolerated that strays too far from the reach of the party.</p>
<p>Now, a virus is loose. In 2019, the world is not watching. Not really. Some warn of what is happening, what is to come. But who listens? It is too far away. We are trading with China and we grow rich as China grows rich.</p>
<p>So, the Communist Party goes to work in secret. It is rounding up people infected with the virus. It is locking them away in secret facilities. Prisons. Isolating them. Choking off the virus at its source. Nothing short of elimination will do.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-who-are-the-uyghurs-and-why-is-the-chinese-government-detaining-them-111843">Explainer: who are the Uyghurs and why is the Chinese government detaining them?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>An ideological virus</h2>
<p>This virus has a name. Uighur. Many, if not most, in the West cannot spell it. Nor can they pronounce it. Uighurs. Muslims. A people in the outer western regions of this vast country. People who have been yearning to be free. Who speak their own language. Practise their culture. Pray to their god.</p>
<p>They are a virus. At least, that’s what the CCP calls them.</p>
<p>The Communist Party transmits “health warnings”. As reported by Sigal Samuel <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/%2008/china-pathologizing-uighur-muslims-mental-illness/568525/">in The Atlantic</a>, and <a href="https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/infected-08082018173807.html">translated</a> by Radio Free Asia, it aims them at Uighurs via WeChat, a popular social media platform in China:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Members of the public who have been chosen for re-education have been infected by an ideological illness. They have been infected with religious extremism and violent terrorist ideology, and therefore they must seek treatment from a hospital as an inpatient […] The religious extremist ideology is a type of poisonous medicine, which confuses the mind of the people […] If we do not eradicate religious extremism at its roots, the violent terrorist incidents will grow and spread all over like an incurable malignant tumour. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In 2018, Human Rights Watch released a report, titled <a href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2018/09/10/eradicating-ideological-viruses/chinas-campaign-repression-against-xinjiangs">Eradicating Ideological Viruses</a>. The warnings are there. Even if the world is slow to wake to them. The report says:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Perhaps the most innovative – and disturbing – of the repressive measures in Xinjiang is the government’s use of high-tech mass surveillance systems. Xinjiang authorities conduct compulsory mass collection of biometric data, such as voice samples and DNA, and use artificial intelligence and big data to identify, profile and track everyone in Xinjiang. <br></p>
<p>The authorities have envisioned these systems as a series of “filters”, picking out people with certain behaviour or characteristics that they believe indicate a threat to the Communist Party’s rule in Xinjiang. These systems have also enabled authorities to implement fine-grained control, subjecting people to differentiated restrictions depending on their perceived levels of “trustworthiness”. </p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522492/original/file-20230424-14-d7xzj9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522492/original/file-20230424-14-d7xzj9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522492/original/file-20230424-14-d7xzj9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522492/original/file-20230424-14-d7xzj9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522492/original/file-20230424-14-d7xzj9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522492/original/file-20230424-14-d7xzj9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522492/original/file-20230424-14-d7xzj9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522492/original/file-20230424-14-d7xzj9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Uighur Abudwaris Ablimit points to a photo of his brother during a gathering to raise awareness about loved ones who have disappeared in China’s far west.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Christina Larson/AP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Note the language. Biometric data. Voice sampling. DNA. This is ideological and it is biological. People are treated as viruses that transmit illness. If not stopped, they will threaten us all, is the message.</p>
<p>Human Rights Watch says in the name of stability and security, authorities will “strike at” those deemed terrorists and extremists, to rid the country of the “problematic ideas” of Turkic Muslims. Not just Muslims, but anyone not expressing the majority ethnic Han identity. As Human Rights Watch says: “Authorities insist that such beliefs and affinities must be ‘corrected’ or ‘eradicated’.”</p>
<p>This is not new. What the CCP is doing is what other tyrannical regimes have done. They seek to create what’s been called a “harmony of souls”. They want nothing less than to produce the perfect, subdued, sublimated human. Compliant. Passive. </p>
<p>In the words of Joseph Stalin: “The production of souls is more important than the production of tanks.” Historian Timothy Snyder says the Nazi and Soviet regimes turned people into numbers. And tyrants everywhere have used the language of germ warfare. They define their enemies as diseases or infections and they seek to inoculate their own societies.</p>
<p>Authoritarian regimes seek to sterilise and “purify” society. Listen to them.</p>
<p>Stalin’s henchman <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Vyacheslav-Molotov">Vyacheslav Molotov</a> spoke of purging or assassinating people who “had to be isolated” or, he said, they “would spread all kinds of complaints, and society would have been infected”.</p>
<p>The architect of Hitler’s Holocaust, Heinrich Himmler, in sending millions to the gas chambers, <a href="https://www.museumoftolerance.com/education/teacher-resources/holocaust-resources/what-is-holocaust-denial.html">said</a> he was exterminating “a bacterium because we do not want in the end to be infected by a bacterium and die of it”. He said: “I will not see so much as a small area of sepsis appear here or gain a hold. Wherever it may form, we will cauterise it.”</p>
<p>And then there is Adolf Hitler, who compared himself to the famed German microbiologist <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1905/koch/biographical/">Robert Koch</a> who found the bacillus of tuberculosis. Hitler said, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I discovered the Jews as the <a href="https://academic.oup.com/book/27387/chapter-abstract/197176732">bacillus and ferment</a> of all social decomposition. And I have proved one thing: that a state can live without Jews.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>To Hitler, Jewish people were “no longer human beings”. He described the Holocaust as a “surgical task”, “otherwise Europe will perish through the Jewish disease”.</p>
<p>It is no mistake these regimes use the language of virus, disease and contamination. Just as a virus is to be eradicated, so too people are to be removed, eliminated or exterminated. These attitudes do not belong to a time past. There are leaders today who exploit the same fears, who focus on difference and create division using the same language of disease.</p>
<p>Remember what Donald Trump <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jul/06/donald-trump-mexican-immigrants-tremendous-infectious-disease">said</a> of Mexican immigrants? That they are responsible for “tremendous infectious diseases pouring across the border”.</p>
<p>And in China, the Communist Party <a href="https://theconversation.com/leaked-documents-on-uighur-detention-camps-in-china-an-expert-explains-the-key-revelations-127221">has locked up</a> a million Uighur Muslims in “re-education camps”, where human rights groups say they are brainwashed with Communist Party ideology. A virus to be eradicated.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/un-report-on-chinas-abuse-of-uyghurs-is-stronger-than-expected-but-missing-a-vital-word-genocide-189917">UN report on China's abuse of Uyghurs is stronger than expected but missing a vital word: genocide</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Virus of tyranny</h2>
<p>The virus of tyranny has haunted our world. Albert Camus warned us of this in his novel <a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-albert-camus-the-plague-134244">The Plague</a>: the story of a rat-borne disease that overruns an entire city. His was a bleak vision of death and fear, of a city sealed off and a people locked down, then shot when they tried to escape. </p>
<p>Written in 1947, just two years after World War II, when the West was still celebrating the victory of freedom, Camus’s plague is an allegory of authoritarianism.</p>
<p>Camus wanted to tell us of the courage that swells within us, that when the plague was at its worst, brave people fought against it. But he cautioned us, too, that the plague can return. It is “a bacillus that never dies or disappears for good”, but bides its time “slumbering in furniture and linen”. It waits patiently “in bedrooms, cellars; trunks, handkerchiefs, old papers”, until one day it will rouse again. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522493/original/file-20230424-16-u9uicp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522493/original/file-20230424-16-u9uicp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522493/original/file-20230424-16-u9uicp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522493/original/file-20230424-16-u9uicp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522493/original/file-20230424-16-u9uicp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522493/original/file-20230424-16-u9uicp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1056&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522493/original/file-20230424-16-u9uicp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1056&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522493/original/file-20230424-16-u9uicp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1056&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Engraving of a plague doctor in 17th-century Rome.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Paul Furst/Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In coronavirus, tyranny may have found the perfect host: a fearful population and all-powerful government. French philosopher Michel Foucault long ago made the link between the plagues of the 17th century and authoritarian control. </p>
<p>Behind state-imposed discipline, <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/discipline-and-punish-9780241386019">he wrote</a>, “can be read the haunting memory of contagions”: not just the memory of a virus but of rebellion, crime, all forms of social disorder, where people “appear and disappear, live and die”. It is the state that brings order to the fear: “everyone locked up in his cage, everyone at his window, answering to his name and showing himself when asked”. </p>
<p>In the response to the plague, Foucault saw the forerunner of the modern prison: the panopticon; the all-seeing eye.</p>
<p>The plague-stricken village, <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/discipline-and-punish-9780241386019">wrote Foucault</a>, is </p>
<blockquote>
<p>traversed throughout with hierarchy, surveillance, observation, writing; the town immobilised by the functioning of an extensive power that bears in a distinct way over all individual bodies – this is the utopia of the perfectly governed city.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The coronavirus shutdowns remind us freedom is the province of the state. The crisis has centralised government control. Around the world, governments have used physical and biological surveillance to control the pandemic. To eradicate the virus.</p>
<p>We have all become, to varying degrees, a little bit like China.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-albert-camus-the-plague-134244">Guide to the Classics: Albert Camus' The Plague</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A strange illness in Wuhan</h2>
<p>Coronavirus emerges out of China in the dying months of 2019. I remember reporting on it. A strange illness is being detected in the city of Wuhan. Dozens of people are being treated for pneumonia-like symptoms. In January 2020, there is the <a href="https://www.who.int/news/item/27-04-2020-who-timeline---covid-19">first reported death</a>. Then quickly, deaths in Europe, the United States, South Korea, Japan, Thailand.</p>
<p>We are still so blasé. It feels so far away. We have seen this before, haven’t we? SARS, swine flu, Ebola. They come and they go. Life goes on. We go to the beach. We get on planes. We have parties. And if we have a cough or feel a bit under the weather, we most likely still go to work.</p>
<p>We don’t realise what is happening. I am <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/qanda/2020-24-02/11983216">on ABC’s Q+A program</a> in February 2020. Footage is shown of lockdown in Wuhan. People are barricaded in their apartments while police forcibly remove and restrain. The audience is appalled.</p>
<p>It couldn’t happen here, could it? An epidemiologist on the panel says, actually, yes. We have laws to allow for just these extreme emergency measures. Surely though, we agree, it isn’t likely.</p>
<p>On the same program is China’s deputy ambassador to Australia, Wang Xining. Minister Wang, as he is known, is an old acquaintance. A sparring partner. When I was based in China for CNN, he was my minder. He was appointed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to watch everything that I did.</p>
<p>In China I was arrested and detained, taken to Chinese police cells for doing stories the authorities did not approve of. I was, on several occasions, physically attacked and beaten. My family was under constant surveillance. Now the man responsible was sitting next to me in an ABC studio.</p>
<p>In the audience, a Uighur man asks a question. He was separated from his wife and child. He had come to Australia ahead of them, hoping to settle and secure visas so they could follow. He didn’t know where they were. He had family in the Chinese “re-education” camps. He was clearly worried.</p>
<p>Minster Wang defends the China COVID lockdown. And he defends the lockdown – soon to be called the genocide – of the Uighurs.</p>
<p>In this moment were twinned the two crises – the two “viruses” – threatening our world. COVID-19 threatened our health. Soon, we would indeed follow China’s lead and introduce lockdowns. And the virus of tyranny was spreading.</p>
<p>In 2020, as COVID crossed borders, so, too, did tyranny. Liberal democracy was in retreat. Freedom House, which measures the health of democracy, <a href="https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2021/democracy-under-siege">now counted</a> 15 straight years of democratic decline. From the post–Cold War boom, freedom was now being crushed.</p>
<p>Within democracies, too, people were falling under the sway of autocrats and demagogues. This had been a slow burn. Growing inequality, war-fuelled refugee crises and a blowback against globalisation had eroded trust. The poor and left-behind felt abandoned.</p>
<p>The devil dances in empty pockets. From the early 2000s, anti-immigration attitudes grew. Racial division became even more stark. Far-right parties made a comeback in Europe as barbed wire went back up on borders. People wanted their countries back and they were primed for populists. Türkiye’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-20-year-rule-of-recep-tayyip-erdogan-has-transformed-turkey-188211">Recep Tayyip Erdoğan</a>, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, India’s
<a href="https://theconversation.com/as-pressure-builds-on-indias-narendra-modi-is-his-government-trying-to-silence-its-critics-159799">Narendra Modi</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-philippines-is-set-for-a-fiery-election-even-without-any-dutertes-at-least-for-now-169535">Rodrigo Duterte</a> in the Philippines, Brazil’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-now-for-brazil-president-lula-strengthened-but-bolsonaro-supporters-wont-go-quietly-197530">Jair Bolsonaro</a> – all would come to power. Each spouted easy solutions to complex problems. Each divided to conquer.</p>
<p>Into the picture came a political circus act. A Manhattan real estate billionaire and reality television star. Donald Trump styled himself as the anti-politician. He promised to “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-drain-the-swamp/2020/10/24/52c7682c-0a5a-11eb-9be6-cf25fb429f1a_story.html">drain the swamp</a>” and “make America great again”. Eight years of the first Black president of the United States, Barack Obama, ended in 2016 <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-trumps-victory-will-mean-the-end-of-us-soft-power-68654">with the election</a> of a man who exploited racism.</p>
<p>To populists, COVID-19 initially was a boon. They seized on it to strengthen their grip on their countries. This was the state of the world in 2020, when the virus took hold. This was a perfect storm. A virus that robbed us of our freedom just as democracy was imploding and freedom was in retreat. And China was proudly boasting that its authoritarianism was ascendant.</p>
<p>If the 20th century was a triumph of democracy, the 21st century, to China’s Xi Jinping, would crown the China dream.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/kafkaesque-true-stories-of-ordinary-people-inside-the-first-days-of-covid-19-in-wuhan-china-180039">'Kafkaesque' true stories of ordinary people: inside the first days of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Plagues, political repression and violence</h2>
<p>Plagues have historically been a harbinger of political repression and violence. The Spanish flu after World War I <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/06/1918-flu-pandemic-boosted-support-for-the-nazis-fed-study-claims.html">contributed to</a> the rise of the extreme right in Germany. The Black Death in the 14th century <a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-black-death">unleashed violence</a> against Jews.</p>
<p>Sydney University Professor of Jurisprudence Wojciech Sadurski, in his book <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/pandemic-of-populists/E75407A3309F868636BBA65F9F1ED783">A Pandemic of Populists</a>, says COVID has been a “powerful accelerator of many of the pre-existing trends, both negative and positive, in business, culture and politics”. </p>
<p>Populist leaders declared states of emergency and, as Sadurski writes, pushed them “well beyond the limits of the necessary”. Viktor Orbán <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-europe/how-viktor-orban-used-the-coronavirus-to-seize-more-power">set aside parliament</a>. He was a one-man government. People critical of him could be arrested. In <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_misinformation_in_the_Philippines">the Philippines</a>, as <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/04/17/fake-news-real-arrests/">in India</a>, police were given powers to detain anyone “spreading misinformation” or inciting mistrust.</p>
<p>Sadurski points out that, in most cases, these authoritarian leaders used militaristic language. Fighting COVID was a war. The people were conscripted.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522499/original/file-20230424-20-u9uicp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522499/original/file-20230424-20-u9uicp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522499/original/file-20230424-20-u9uicp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522499/original/file-20230424-20-u9uicp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522499/original/file-20230424-20-u9uicp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522499/original/file-20230424-20-u9uicp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522499/original/file-20230424-20-u9uicp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522499/original/file-20230424-20-u9uicp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán set aside parliament and became a one-man government during COVID. He’s pictured here with medical supplies flown from China.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tomas Kovacs/AP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Xi Jinping is not a populist leader. He doesn’t seek legitimacy at the ballot box. He is an authoritarian. And he believes his system is better. To Xi, the battle against coronavirus is <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/02/13/805760466/china-declares-peoples-war-on-covid-19-including-reporting-family-and-friends">also a war</a>: a “people’s war”.</p>
<p>It has been a war without end. Xi cannot allow the virus to win. Long after lockdowns passed elsewhere, Xi continued to keep a stranglehold on COVID flares. It has weakened the economy. It is straining nerves. People are angry. There have been <a href="https://theconversation.com/protests-against-strict-covid-zero-policy-are-sweeping-china-its-anyones-guess-what-happens-now-195442">protests</a>. Some are even calling for Xi to go.</p>
<p>But Xi has strengthened his grip. By <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2018/02/26/asia/china-xi-jinping-president-intl/index.html">altering the constitution</a> and scrapping two-term presidential limits, he is now leader for life. Under cover of fighting COVID, he has used <a href="https://melbourneasiareview.edu.au/covid-19-and-the-rise-of-the-surveillance-state-in-china/">enhanced surveillance</a> and tracking technology to peer into every part of people’s lives. The COVID crackdown <a href="https://www.nippon.com/en/in-depth/d00829/">coincided</a> with crushing democracy in Hong Kong. He has arrested dissidents. Silenced rivals. He is <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/International/china-ready-fight-after-3-days-large-scale/story?id=98494152#:%7E:text=TAIPEI%2C%20Taiwan%20%2D%2D%20China's,McCarthy%20in%20the%20United%20States.">threatening</a> war on Taiwan.</p>
<p>And Uighurs remain a target. Still a “virus” to be eliminated.</p>
<h2>A hinge point of history</h2>
<p>We are at a hinge point of history. Thirty years after the end of the Cold War, there is <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/03/06/sliding-toward-a-new-cold-war">talk</a> of Cold War 2.0. The United States is staring down a new rival: China. We are witnessing a return of great power rivalry. It is a supercharged great power rivalry. </p>
<p>China is <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-soviet-union-containment-polarization-foreign-policy-11639526097">more powerful</a> today than the Soviet Union was then, and the United States is unquestionably diminished. America is politically fractured, it is deeply divided along racial and class lines; it has <a href="https://theconversation.com/american-exceptionalism-the-poison-that-cannot-protect-its-children-from-violent-death-184045">an epidemic</a> of gun violence and it has been devastated by coronavirus.</p>
<p>Donald Trump thought he was bigger than COVID. He was slow to act, he was dismissive and his populism was eventually revealed as reckless. Yes, he fast-tracked vaccine research and production. But he was a master of mixed messaging and so much damage was done. At the time of writing, in the United States there have been more than <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/28/us-records-100-million-covid-cases-but-more-than-200-million-americans-have-probably-had-it.html#:%7E:text=The%20U.S.%20has%20officially%20recorded,even%20more%20difficult%20to%20control.">100 million cases</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/15/1-million-us-covid-deaths-effects">one million deaths</a>. The only country to reach that number. Trump lost office.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522501/original/file-20230424-22-paq5g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522501/original/file-20230424-22-paq5g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522501/original/file-20230424-22-paq5g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522501/original/file-20230424-22-paq5g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522501/original/file-20230424-22-paq5g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522501/original/file-20230424-22-paq5g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522501/original/file-20230424-22-paq5g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522501/original/file-20230424-22-paq5g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Donald Trump thought he was bigger than COVID – and lost office.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">zz/Dennis Van Tine/STAR MAX/IPx/AP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>By contrast, Xi Jinping is entrenched in power. The country where COVID first emerged is the world’s biggest engine of economic growth. It is on track <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2022/12/06/china-and-india-will-overtake-us-economically-by-2075-goldman-sachs-economists-say/?sh=3f8d5a358ea9">to usurp the United States</a> as the single biggest economy in the world. It is extending its influence and economic reach via the <a href="https://www.oecd.org/finance/Chinas-Belt-and-Road-Initiative-in-the-global-trade-investment-and-finance-landscape.pdf">Belt and Road Initiative</a>, the biggest investment and infrastructure program the world has ever seen.</p>
<p>Xi is building an army to match his economic might. And he is leading the way on artificial intelligence research. The numbers tell the story. In the 20 years between 1997 and 2017, China’s global share of research papers <a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/china-rises-first-place-most-cited-papers">increased</a> from just over 4 per cent to nearly 28 per cent. And what is it focusing on? Speech and image recognition. The Chinese Communist Party can track anyone, anywhere, anytime.</p>
<p>Technology was meant to liberate us. Some saw the death knell for authoritarian regimes. How can you control the internet? But China has. Cyberspace has become a tool of tyranny. China has taken the digital age and put it in service of genocide.</p>
<p>There are lessons here for journalists. Our job is not to simply report events, it is to connect them. To join the dots. To reveal the big forces at play in our world. We missed this opportunity.</p>
<p>We cannot understand the COVID pandemic and its impact without understanding the currents shaping our world. COVID emerged out of China at a time when Xi Jinping had his eyes on global supremacy. He had shown how far he would be prepared to go to “harmonise” the nation. He had trialled his lockdown measures on what he callously called the “virus” of the Uighurs. </p>
<p>Around the world, democracy was in retreat and authoritarianism on the march. And now a virus was spreading that would attack the liberal democratic West where it believed it was strongest: its freedom.</p>
<p>Media can so easily be overwhelmed by events. One of the most common failings – particularly of television – is to report what we see, not what it means. Images can drive coverage. And images of people in white suits locking down entire cities obscured what was even more important. COVID was a 21st-century virus; a virus of a globalised world, of high-speed travel and borderless trade. It was also a virus of an increasingly authoritarian world.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522533/original/file-20230424-20-ydq9i6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522533/original/file-20230424-20-ydq9i6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522533/original/file-20230424-20-ydq9i6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522533/original/file-20230424-20-ydq9i6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522533/original/file-20230424-20-ydq9i6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522533/original/file-20230424-20-ydq9i6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522533/original/file-20230424-20-ydq9i6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522533/original/file-20230424-20-ydq9i6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>The COVID-19 pandemic was a stress test. It revealed and accelerated fault lines already there. Populists were stripped bare. Their slogans, easy answers and arrogance meant they were slow to act. Millions died who might otherwise have lived. In strong democracies where there is trust in science and authority, countries emerged stronger. Yet they, too, walked a fine line between surrendering liberty and saving lives.</p>
<p>In China, Xi Jinping believes the People’s War is <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/china-declares-victory-over-both-the-coronavirus-and-critics-of-the-communist-party-at-the-biggest-political-event-of-the-year">a victory</a> for the Communist Party. The Party – the all-seeing eye – can control everything. It sits at the heart of everything. Xi believes he is the fulfilment of prophecy. The man who follows the great leaders, Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. The one who delivers on China’s greatness.</p>
<p>Xi walks a tightrope, too. He has strained the nation to breaking point. The relentless, cruel lockdowns have slowed the economy and crushed the spirit of Chinese people. And they are angry and rising. China, like the rest of the world, is also reaching a tipping point.</p>
<p>In December 2022, Xi felt the pressure from the Chinese people, following mass demonstrations and unrest, and lifted the lockdowns abruptly. COVID quickly ran rampant. However, though the COVID lockdowns have ended, the Uighurs continue to suffer.</p>
<p>The virus of tyranny sleeps within democracy, too. It has always been in our bloodstream. China has edged us, the democracies, closer to what political scientist Vladimir Tismaneanu <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520282209/the-devil-in-history">has called</a> “the age of total administration and inescapable alienation”.</p>
<p>The COVID pandemic has passed, at least as a political crisis. Our minds are turned now to <a href="https://theconversation.com/essentialising-russia-wont-end-the-war-against-ukraine-might-real-and-credible-force-be-the-answer-195938">war in Ukraine</a> and economic strife. But journalists must remember that, as in contagions past, COVID will shape us. It leaves behind the trace of tyranny. And that is the true virus. The virus that will not die.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This is an edited extract from <a href="https://publishing.monash.edu/product/pandemedia/">Panemedia: How Covid Changed Journalism</a> (Monash University Press).</em></p>
<p><em>This essay was originally written in November 2022.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204183/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stan Grant does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>China’s Xi Xinping had trialled his COVID lockdown measures on what he callously called the ‘virus’ of the Uighurs, writes Stan Grant. COVID lockdowns are now over, but the trace of tyranny remains.Stan Grant, Vice Chancellors Chair Australian/Indigenous Belonging, Charles Sturt UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2015692023-04-18T20:01:07Z2023-04-18T20:01:07ZDiseases gave us the rise of Christianity, the end of the Aztecs and public sanitation. How might future plagues change human history?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517613/original/file-20230327-27-ualse4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C6%2C4439%2C3183&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Elena Mozhvilo/Unsplash</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>“Every once in a while a book lands on your desk that changes the way you perceive the world you live in, a book that fundamentally challenges your understanding of human history.” So began the blurb that came with this book. Aha! I thought. The usual advertising hyperbole, a gross exaggeration. </p>
<p>Yet <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/pathogenesis-9781911709053">Pathogenesis</a> <em>did</em> challenge much of my understanding of world history. Who knew that if it wasn’t for an Ebola-like pandemic in the 2nd century CE, Christianity would never have become a world religion? Or that if it weren’t for retroviruses, women would be laying eggs rather than having live births? (According to the book’s author, a retrovirus inserted DNA into our ancestor’s genome that caused the placenta to develop.)</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Book review: Pathogenesis: How germs made history – by Jonathan Kennedy (Torva)</em></p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517614/original/file-20230327-20-1geds5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517614/original/file-20230327-20-1geds5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517614/original/file-20230327-20-1geds5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517614/original/file-20230327-20-1geds5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517614/original/file-20230327-20-1geds5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517614/original/file-20230327-20-1geds5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1160&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517614/original/file-20230327-20-1geds5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1160&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517614/original/file-20230327-20-1geds5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1160&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>However, this is not another book of Amazing Facts: it is a work of scholarship, with nearly 700 references and notes. At the same time, it is very readable, and even amusing at times. </p>
<p>Many books have been written about the impact of disease on civilisation. I have even written my own modest <a href="https://medium.com/@adrian.esterman/infectious-diseases-and-their-impact-on-civilisation-4eb8ac72cc5b">essay</a> on the topic. However,
Pathogenesis delves deeply into the social history of the world. </p>
<p>Jonathan Kennedy has a PhD in sociology from the University of Cambridge, and his sociological bent comes through strongly. In eight chapters, and some 350 pages, Kennedy takes us on a whirlwind tour of social history, describing how infectious diseases have shaped humanity at every stage. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/viruses-are-both-the-villains-and-heroes-of-life-as-we-know-it-169131">Viruses are both the villains and heroes of life as we know it</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>‘It’s a bacterial world’</h2>
<p>Kennedy starts by describing the three great branches of living organisms, <a href="https://theconversation.com/from-peaceful-coexistence-to-potential-peril-the-bacteria-that-live-in-and-on-us-104110">bacteria</a>, <a href="https://microbiologysociety.org/why-microbiology-matters/what-is-microbiology/archaea.html">archaea</a>, and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/eukaryote">eukaryotes</a> – it is the latter that contains all complex life forms, including humans. However, fewer than 0.001% of all species are eukaryotes. </p>
<p>Bacteria, on the other hand, are the dominant life form on this planet. As Kennedy puts it, “it’s a bacterial world, and we’re just squatting here”. </p>
<p>Our own species, <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/rethinking-homo-sapiens-the-story-of-our-origins-gets-dizzyingly-complicated-99760">Homo sapiens</a></em>, arose some 315,000 years ago, living for the most part in Africa. At the same time, human species such as Neanderthals and <a href="https://theconversation.com/dna-from-elusive-human-relatives-the-denisovans-has-left-a-curious-mark-on-modern-people-in-new-guinea-196113">Denisovans</a> spread out into Europe. However, about 50,000 years ago, <em>Homo sapiens</em> burst out of Africa and spread across the world, while all other human species simply vanished. There are many <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-homo-sapiens-became-the-ultimate-invasive-species/">theories</a> as to why and how this occurred – for example, perhaps <em>Homo sapiens</em> were just smarter. </p>
<p>However, Kennedy proposes his own theory. Because <em>Homo sapiens</em> lived primarily in Africa, they were exposed to many pathogens, and eventually acquired genetic changes that gave them some protection. The exodus out of Africa exposed other species to these pathogens, causing their demise. </p>
<p>He describes the <a href="https://theconversation.com/who-were-the-mysterious-neolithic-people-that-enabled-the-rise-of-ancient-egypt-heres-what-weve-learned-on-our-digs-121070">Neolithic</a> revolution, which took place about 12,000 years ago and which saw the change from hunter-gatherers to farmers. Because of their nomadic existence in small groups, hunter-gatherers tended to be relatively healthy, with an average lifespan of 72 - better than the average lifespan in some countries today! </p>
<p>It has always been assumed that this revolution was a good thing, bringing better nutrition and more leisure time. However, in Kennedy’s view, the Neolithic revolution led to the emergence of despotism, inequality, poverty and backbreaking work. He describes how settlement and the farming of domestic animals led to the emergence of zoonotic diseases – that is, <a href="https://theconversation.com/preventing-future-pandemics-starts-with-recognizing-links-between-human-and-animal-health-167617">diseases spread by animals</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517617/original/file-20230327-24-pz4erz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517617/original/file-20230327-24-pz4erz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517617/original/file-20230327-24-pz4erz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517617/original/file-20230327-24-pz4erz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517617/original/file-20230327-24-pz4erz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517617/original/file-20230327-24-pz4erz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517617/original/file-20230327-24-pz4erz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517617/original/file-20230327-24-pz4erz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Settlement and the farming of domestic animals led to the emergence of diseases spread by animals.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">kallerna/Wikimedia Commons</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/disease-evolution-our-long-history-of-fighting-viruses-54569">Disease evolution: our long history of fighting viruses</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Plagues and social upheavals</h2>
<p>In a chapter on ancient plagues, Kennedy quotes from Monty Python’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/life-of-brian-at-40-an-assertion-of-individual-freedom-that-still-resonates-114743">The Life of Brian</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>He points out that Roman cities were, in fact, “filthy, stinking and disease-ridden”, and goes on to describe the great plagues <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-3-prior-pandemics-triggered-massive-societal-shifts-146467">that weakened the Roman Empire</a>. The first was the Antonine Plague, possibly caused by smallpox. This was followed some 70 years later by the Plague of Cyprian from AD 249-262, which led to the splitting of the Roman Empire and the rise of Christianity. </p>
<p>Kennedy completes this chapter with a description of the Plague of Justinian, caused by bubonic plague. The massive deaths caused by this epidemic led to the demise of the Roman Empire, and the Muslim conquest of the Middle East. </p>
<p>In the period 1346–53, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/did-the-black-death-give-birth-to-modern-plagues-3820">Black Death</a> tore through North Africa and Europe, killing an <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death">estimated</a> 75 million to 200 million people. Kennedy describes the devastation and huge social upheavals that resulted from this pandemic. Until then, the Roman Catholic Church dominated society. But:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>During the Black Death and subsequent plague outbreaks, people looked to the Church for comfort. All too often they didn’t find it. </p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517616/original/file-20230327-22-23ih7j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517616/original/file-20230327-22-23ih7j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517616/original/file-20230327-22-23ih7j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517616/original/file-20230327-22-23ih7j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517616/original/file-20230327-22-23ih7j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517616/original/file-20230327-22-23ih7j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=611&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517616/original/file-20230327-22-23ih7j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=611&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517616/original/file-20230327-22-23ih7j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=611&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Black Death killed an estimated 75–200 million people in Europe and North Africa. Hugo Simberg Black Death.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This led to the rise of Protestantism, aided by the invention of the printing press - a shortage of labour encouraged the development of such labour-saving devices. Over the next 200 years, waves of plague repeatedly hit Europe. A quarantine system was developed in Venice, and <em>cordon sanitaires</em> established, to prevent movement of people between cities - ring any bells? </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/did-the-black-death-give-birth-to-modern-plagues-3820">Did the Black Death give birth to modern plagues?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Pathogens as New World killers</h2>
<p>In the period from 1500 onwards, white colonialists nearly wiped out indigenous people by infecting them. Kennedy starts with the early 16th century, when Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés led an expedition to Mexico. His arrival <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-smallpox-devastated-the-aztecs-and-helped-spain-conquer-an-american-civilization-500-years-ago-111579">introduced smallpox</a>, which resulted in the total destruction of the Aztec Empire within just two years. However, this was just the start. </p>
<p>In the early 1530s, Mexico was hit by an epidemic of <a href="https://theconversation.com/measles-new-efforts-needed-to-stop-an-old-disease-13706">measles</a> that killed 80% of its population, making it the deadliest epidemic in recorded history. Over the following decades, across the whole of the Americas, the introduction of infectious diseases from Europe resulted in a 90% fall in the population. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517624/original/file-20230327-15-s0x2ks.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517624/original/file-20230327-15-s0x2ks.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517624/original/file-20230327-15-s0x2ks.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517624/original/file-20230327-15-s0x2ks.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517624/original/file-20230327-15-s0x2ks.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517624/original/file-20230327-15-s0x2ks.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=554&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517624/original/file-20230327-15-s0x2ks.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=554&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517624/original/file-20230327-15-s0x2ks.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=554&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hernán Cortés brought smallpox to Mexico, resulting in the total destruction of the Aztec Empire within two years, as illustrated in this 16th-century drawing of Aztec smallpox victims.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>However, during this period, it wasn’t just the New World that was profoundly affected by pathogens. On the west coast of Africa, explorers and would-be colonialists died in droves from <a href="https://theconversation.com/worlds-first-mass-malaria-vaccine-rollout-could-prevent-thousands-of-children-dying-169457">malaria</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/zika-dengue-yellow-fever-what-are-flaviviruses-53969">yellow fever</a>. </p>
<p>Interestingly, Kennedy starts his chapter on revolutionary plagues with the murder of <a href="https://theconversation.com/george-floyd-deserved-a-better-life-a-new-book-charts-his-trajectory-from-poverty-to-the-us-prison-industrial-complex-and-the-impact-of-his-death-182947">George Floyd</a> and the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-black-lives-matter-movement-has-provoked-a-cultural-reckoning-about-how-black-stories-are-told-149544">Black Lives Matter</a> movement, before delving deep into the history of slavery. He describes slavery in Greek and Roman times, and the booming trade in slaves in the medieval Mediterranean. </p>
<p>The association between black Africans and <a href="https://theconversation.com/slavery-is-not-a-crime-in-almost-half-the-countries-of-the-world-new-research-115596">slavery</a> only began in the 15th century. In fact, only 3% of the 12.5 million humans trafficked across the Atlantic ended up in the United States. The most common destinations of the slave ships were the European colonies in the Caribbean, where African slave labour was first used more than a century before their shipment to North America. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, in the Caribbean, slave labour from tropical West Africa toiled on sugar plantations owned by the English, Spanish, French and Dutch. Yellow fever carried by mosquitoes wiped out many of the Europeans, including military garrisons, leading to slave revolts.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-a-slave-state-how-blackbirding-in-colonial-australia-created-a-legacy-of-racism-187782">Friday essay: a slave state - how blackbirding in colonial Australia created a legacy of racism</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Diseases ‘thrived’ in Dickensian habitats</h2>
<p>When Kennedy switches his focus to Britain, and the industrial revolution, he describes it as the change from a Thomas Hardy novel to one by <a href="https://theconversation.com/great-expectations-by-charles-dickens-class-prejudices-the-convict-stain-and-a-corpse-bride-159816">Charles Dickens</a>. The crowded and unsanitary conditions in working-class urban districts created new habitats, in which pathogens thrived. </p>
<p>Kennedy again evokes Monty Python to invoke the scenery of those days, reminding readers of the famous four Yorkshiremen sketch. The scene made me think of a different quote from the same sketch:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>You were lucky to have a house! We used to live in one room, all hundred and twenty-six of us, no furniture. Half the floor was missing; we were all huddled together in one corner for fear of falling!</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Every Epidemiology 101 course covers the story of <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/people/john-snow/">John Snow</a> (no – not the “Winter is coming” one!). <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/csels/dsepd/ss1978/lesson1/section2.html">Two decades</a> before the development of the microscope, Snow examined cholera outbreaks to discover the cause of disease and how to prevent it. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517625/original/file-20230327-14-jix57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517625/original/file-20230327-14-jix57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517625/original/file-20230327-14-jix57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=619&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517625/original/file-20230327-14-jix57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=619&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517625/original/file-20230327-14-jix57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=619&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517625/original/file-20230327-14-jix57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=778&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517625/original/file-20230327-14-jix57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=778&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517625/original/file-20230327-14-jix57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=778&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">John Snow proved in 1854 that cholera is a waterborne disease: a London pub is named for him.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.geograph.org.uk/profile/6699">ceridwen/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>During the third UK cholera outbreak in 1854, Snow famously removed London’s Broad Street water pump, to demonstrate that cholera was a waterborne disease. For those interested, there is a <a href="https://londonspubswherehistoryreallyhappened.wordpress.com/2019/03/05/john-snow/">John Snow</a> pub in London. Kennedy, of course, includes this story in his book.</p>
<p>Kennedy points out that 3.5 billion people – half of the world’s population – have no access to proper toilets, while a billion don’t have clean drinking water and 1.5 million people, mainly children, die every year from waterborne diarrhoeal diseases. </p>
<p>We still have massive <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-why-cholera-remains-a-public-health-threat-74444">cholera outbreaks</a>, especially in areas where normal life has been disrupted by war or natural disasters. <a href="https://theconversation.com/tuberculosis-kills-as-many-people-each-year-as-covid-19-its-time-we-found-a-better-vaccine-151590">Tuberculosis</a> still kills 1.2 million people a year, despite the availability of antibiotics. Malaria kills another 600,000. </p>
<p>Finally in this section, he briefly covers <a href="https://theconversation.com/covid-hospitalisations-and-deaths-are-rising-faster-than-cases-but-that-doesnt-mean-more-severe-disease-187163">COVID</a>. He points out that not everyone in the world benefited from the medical advances that came about because of COVID, and the self-interested actions of high-income countries have deprived the poorer countries. As he puts it, “pathogens thrive on inequality and injustice”. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/fleas-to-flu-to-coronavirus-how-death-ships-spread-disease-through-the-ages-137061">Fleas to flu to coronavirus: how 'death ships' spread disease through the ages</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Future plagues</h2>
<p>Kennedy concludes by looking at future plagues. He points out humanity’s precarious position: we live on a planet dominated by bacteria and viruses. He believes our best chance of surviving the threat posed by pathogens will come from working collaboratively and reducing inequality both within and between countries. </p>
<p>Based on its title, I assumed this book would be about the role of pathogens in shaping civilisation. Instead, I found a social history of the world, with the odd foray into diseases and their influence on society. Nonetheless, I thoroughly enjoyed the book, and can highly recommend it to those with an interest in history, sociology and epidemiology.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/201569/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adrian Esterman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>This whirlwind tour of social history describes how infectious diseases have shaped humanity at every stage. It suggests reducing inequality will give us our best chance of surviving future plagues.Adrian Esterman, Professor of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, University of South AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1965212023-01-18T06:10:52Z2023-01-18T06:10:52ZThe Black Death may not have been spread by rats after all<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/500834/original/file-20221213-20582-djm1ng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The black rat, or ship rat, was thought to have helped transmit the Black Death</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/black-rat-rattus-known-ship-roof-1607279755">Shutterstock / Carlos Aranguiz</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Black Death ravaged Europe between 1347 and 1353, killing millions. Plague outbreaks in Europe then continued until the 19th century. </p>
<p>One of the most commonly recited facts about plague in Europe was that it was spread by rats. In some parts of the world, the bacterium that causes plague, <em>Yersinia pestis</em>, maintains a long-term <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33264458/">presence in wild rodents and their fleas</a>. This is called an animal “reservoir”. </p>
<p>While plague begins in rodents, it sometimes spills over to humans. Europe may have once hosted animal reservoirs that sparked plague pandemics. But plague could have also been repeatedly reintroduced from Asia. Which of these scenarios was present remains a topic of scientific controversy.</p>
<p>Our recent research, <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.2209816119">published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)</a>, has shown that environmental conditions in Europe would have prevented plague from surviving in persistent, long-term animal reservoirs. How, then, did plague persevere in Europe for so long? </p>
<p>Our study offers two possibilities. One, the plague was being reintroduced from Asian reservoirs. Second, there could have been short- or medium-term temporary reservoirs in Europe. In addition, the two scenarios might have been mutually supportive.</p>
<p>However, the rapid spread of the Black Death and subsequent outbreaks of the next few centuries also suggest slow-moving rats may not have played the critical role in transmitting the disease that is often portrayed.</p>
<h2>European climate</h2>
<p>To work out whether plague could survive in long-term animal reservoirs in Europe, we examined factors such as soil characteristics, climatic conditions, terrain types and rodent varieties. These all seem to affect whether plague can hold on in reservoirs.</p>
<p>For example, high concentrations of some elements in soil, including copper, iron, magnesium, as well as a high soil pH (whether it is acidic or alkaline), cooler temperatures, higher altitudes and lower rainfall appear to favour the development of persistent reservoirs, though it is not entirely clear why, at this stage.</p>
<p>Based on our comparative analysis, centuries-long wild rodent plague reservoirs were even less likely to have existed from the Black Death of 1348 to the early 19th century than today, when comprehensive research <a href="https://cdn.who.int/media/docs/default-source/documents/emergencies/health-topics---plague/who_hse_epr_2008_3w.pdf">rules out any such reservoirs within Europe.</a> </p>
<p>This contrasts sharply with regions across China and the western US, where <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.2209816119">all the above conditions</a> for persistent <em>Yersinia pestis</em> reservoirs in wild rodents are found.</p>
<p>In central Asia, long-term and persistent rodent reservoirs may have existed for millennia. <a href="https://academic.oup.com/past/article-abstract/252/1/3/6120066">As ancient DNA and textual evidence hints</a>, once plague crossed into Europe from central Asia, it appears to have seeded a short- or medium-term reservoir or reservoirs in European wild rodents. The most likely place for this to have been was in central Europe.</p>
<p>However, as local soil and climatic conditions did not favour long-term and persistent reservoirs, the disease had to be re-imported, <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1001134">at least in some instances</a>. Importantly, the two scenarios are not mutually exclusive. </p>
<h2>Radical difference</h2>
<p>To go deeper into the role of rats in spreading plague in Europe, we can compare different outbreaks of the disease.</p>
<p>The first plague pandemic began in the early sixth century and lasted until the later eighth century. The second pandemic (which included the Black Death) began in the 1330s and lasted five centuries. A third pandemic began in 1894 and remains with us today in places such as Madagascar and <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/california-confirms-first-human-case-bubonic-plague-5-years-what-n1237306">California</a>.</p>
<p>These pandemics overwhelmingly involved the bubonic form of plague, where the bacteria infect the human lymphatic system (which is part of the body’s immune defences). In pneumonic plague, the bacteria infect the lungs.</p>
<p>The plagues of the second pandemic differed radically in their character and transmission from more recent outbreaks. First, there were strikingly different levels of mortality, with some second pandemic outbreaks reaching 50%, while those of the third pandemic rarely exceeded 1%. <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2018.2429">In Europe, figures for the third pandemic were even lower.</a></p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Steppe marmot or Bobak marmot" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/500836/original/file-20221213-23347-moof54.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/500836/original/file-20221213-23347-moof54.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500836/original/file-20221213-23347-moof54.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500836/original/file-20221213-23347-moof54.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500836/original/file-20221213-23347-moof54.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500836/original/file-20221213-23347-moof54.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500836/original/file-20221213-23347-moof54.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Outside Europe, rodents such as this steppe marmot act as long-term reservoirs for the bacterium that causes plague.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/bobak-marmot-marmota-known-steppe-species-1935805306">Roman Rys / Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Second, there were different rates and patterns of transmission between these two plague epochs. There were massive differences in the frequency and speed of transporting goods, animals, and people between the late middle ages and today (or the late 19th century). Yet the Black Death and many of its subsequent waves spread with astonishing speed. Over land, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2630035/">it raced almost as fast each day</a> as the modern outbreaks do over a year. </p>
<p>As described by contemporary chroniclers, physicians, and others – and as reconstructed quantitatively from archival documents – the plagues of the second pandemic <a href="https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/31/6/1280/939560">spread faster and more widely than any other disease during the middle ages.</a> Indeed they were faster than in any period until the <a href="https://academic.oup.com/book/7179">cholera outbreaks from 1830 or the great influenza of 1918-20.</a></p>
<p>Regardless of how the various European waves of the second pandemic began, both wild and non-wild rodents – rats, first and foremost – move much slower than the pace of transmission around the continent.</p>
<p>Third, the seasonality of plague also shows wide discrepancies. Plagues of the third pandemic (except for the rare ones, principally of pneumonic plague) have closely followed the fertility cycles of rat fleas. These rise with relatively humid conditions (although lower rainfall is important for plague reservoirs to first become established) <a href="https://parasitesandvectors.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1756-3305-4-191">and within a temperature band between 10°C and 25°C.</a></p>
<p>By contrast, plagues of the second pandemic could cross winter months in bubonic form, as seen across the Baltic regions from 1709-13. But in Mediterranean climes, plague from 1348 through the 15th century was a summer contagion that peaked in June or July – <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2630035/">during the hottest and driest months.</a> </p>
<p>This deviates strikingly from plague seasons <a href="https://royalsociety.org/blog/2019/04/third-plague-pandemic-europe/">in these regions in the 20th century.</a> Because of the low relative humidity and high temperatures, these months were then the least likely times for plague to break out among rats or humans.</p>
<p>These differences raise a crucial question about whether the bubonic form of the plague depended on slow-moving rodents for its transmission when instead it could <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/01/09/1715640115">spread much more efficiently directly, from person to person</a>. Scientists have speculated that this could have occurred because of ectoparasites (fleas and possibly lice), or through people’s respiratory systems and through touch.</p>
<p>Questions such as the precise roles played by humans and rats in past plague pandemics need further work to resolve. But as shown by this study, and others, major steps forward can be made when scientists and historians work together.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/196521/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Recent research suggests rats may not have played the critical role in keeping plague going in Europe.Samuel Cohn, Professor of History, University of GlasgowPhilip Slavin, Associate Professor of History, University of StirlingLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1926072022-10-18T19:03:22Z2022-10-18T19:03:22ZCurfews, quarantine, fake news, insurrection: Orhan Pamuk’s Nights of Plague feels eerily prescient<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490250/original/file-20221017-17274-t138gn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=57%2C0%2C5406%2C3637&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Workers disinfect Istanbul's Suleymaniye Mosque in 2020.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tolga Bozoglu/EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Nobel prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk spent five years working on Nights of Plague, well before the onset of the current pandemic. Perhaps he foresaw history repeating itself; the political fallout from the outbreak of the bubonic plague on his make-believe island of Mingheria in 1901 resonates eerily with our world today.</p>
<p>Whether Pamuk was intentionally writing an allegory, the audacity of the narrative action has opened him up to attack. Last year Pamuk was “under investigation” for <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/nov/16/orhan-pamuk-charged-again-with-insulting-turkishness-nights-of-the-plague?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other">“insulting the founder of modern Turkey and for ridiculing the Turkish flag”</a> in the book – not the first time he has been censored. (He recently <a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/94884655.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst">told The Times of India</a>, “anyway, they’re not pursuing it, my case is lost in the labyrinths of Ankara”.)</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: Nights of Plague – Orhan Pamuk (Penguin Random House)</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Pamuk, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006, does not shy away from the representation of sensitive cultural and political attitudes, as we witness throughout Nights of Plague. The novel provokes in other ways too. At 683 pages it is a good choice for a long journey, a sleepless night or even a period of COVID isolation. </p>
<p>There are two narrative voices whom the reader suspects might not be completely reliable. We are invited in a “preface” to trust the account of a Mina Mingher, writing from Istanbul in 2017. Mina becomes “we” – a pair? a group? – of apparently credible historians, who interject regularly to commentate events. Mina’s primary source is a body of letters written by Princess Pakize, the daughter of a deposed sultan, to her sister during the period of the plague outbreak on the island. </p>
<p>The dissonance created by the use of this ambiguous narrative never quite leaves the reader. We don’t quite know whom to trust. Perhaps this too is deliberate; if Pamuk wanted to evoke an atmosphere of suspicion, mistrust and unreality, he has succeeded.</p>
<p>The reader nonetheless slips effortlessly into Pamuk’s fantastical world, at the turn of the 20th century, with the Ottoman empire, frequently characterised as “the sick man of Europe”, in decline. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490246/original/file-20221017-15171-67rk2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490246/original/file-20221017-15171-67rk2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490246/original/file-20221017-15171-67rk2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490246/original/file-20221017-15171-67rk2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490246/original/file-20221017-15171-67rk2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490246/original/file-20221017-15171-67rk2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=647&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490246/original/file-20221017-15171-67rk2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=647&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490246/original/file-20221017-15171-67rk2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=647&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A 1900s portrait of Ottoman soldiers. The novel portrays the Ottoman empire as ‘the sick man of Europe.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The action</h2>
<p>The novel opens with the steamship Aziziye about to make a stopover on the island of Mingheria. Onboard is an important delegation of high-status passengers: newlyweds Princess Pakize, niece of the tyrannical Sultan Abdul Habib, and her husband, the Prince Consort and esteemed quarantine doctor, Nuri Bey.</p>
<p>About to disembark on the island is the Ottoman empire’s Chief Inspector of Public Health and Sanitation, Bonkowski Pasha, tasked with addressing the suspected outbreak of plague on the island. When he meets an unfortunate end 67 pages into the novel, Dr Nuri is called upon to take over his impossible mission. As the back cover warns: “plague is not the only killer”. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490237/original/file-20221017-6604-rc3tmp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490237/original/file-20221017-6604-rc3tmp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490237/original/file-20221017-6604-rc3tmp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=876&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490237/original/file-20221017-6604-rc3tmp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=876&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490237/original/file-20221017-6604-rc3tmp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=876&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490237/original/file-20221017-6604-rc3tmp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1101&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490237/original/file-20221017-6604-rc3tmp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1101&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490237/original/file-20221017-6604-rc3tmp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1101&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
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<p>What follows in this sprawling, multi-faceted novel is the monumental struggle to contain the spread of disease and the rising death toll, as well as the fear and suspicion surrounding it. It is a battle to maintain law and order. The island’s populace comprises warring Christians, Muslims, Greeks, Ottoman Turks, locally born Mingherians, and rebels and rogues from Crete and other nearby regions.</p>
<p>In the 600 pages to follow there is no shortage of action. The “historians” promise to “faithfully describe” the “horrors” citizens are about to face, and this is only a third of the way into the novel! We take a deep breath and plunge in.</p>
<p>The attempt to enforce quarantine measures triggers widespread panic and rebellion. There are poisoning murders of those who would use medical science to back up public health restrictions. There are uprisings and vengeful, bloody retribution (much flaying of the feet of insubordinates). </p>
<p>The vocabulary of the novel is uncomfortably familiar: spray pumps, disinfection of corpses, escalating death tolls, incineration of contaminated effects. People are isolated in the Maiden’s tower or thrown into the Arkaz castle prison without evidence of plague infection and denied their rights. Most die from mistreatment if not the plague. Such injustices are hardly fictional, given the historical era.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/from-black-death-to-covid-19-pandemics-have-always-pushed-people-to-honor-death-and-celebrate-life-170517">From Black Death to COVID-19, pandemics have always pushed people to honor death and celebrate life</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>‘The state will sort everything out’</h2>
<p>The control and manipulation of information is one of the most pervasive threads of the novel. With constant “infelicitous news”, the post office is closed by Major Kâmil, the princess’s erstwhile protector (but a man with higher ambitions). </p>
<p>The solution to the threat of receiving unpopular orders from Istanbul is simply to cut off the telegraph lines. The new queen of Mingheria complains about unfavourable reports in the French and Greek presses and seeks to suppress their publication. If you don’t like the message, cut off the source. Sound familiar?</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490239/original/file-20221017-15124-yzaca1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490239/original/file-20221017-15124-yzaca1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490239/original/file-20221017-15124-yzaca1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490239/original/file-20221017-15124-yzaca1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490239/original/file-20221017-15124-yzaca1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490239/original/file-20221017-15124-yzaca1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490239/original/file-20221017-15124-yzaca1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490239/original/file-20221017-15124-yzaca1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pamuk pictured in 2009.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ed Oudenaarden/EPA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Mingheria’s governor and major player Sami Pasha claims at first “there is absolutely no epidemic in our city”. Paranoid and incompetent, we do not trust him now, nor later when he reluctantly admits to the presence of plague. “You mustn’t despair! The state will sort everything out.” </p>
<p>But the state has to reconcile the polarised beliefs and customs of the warring factions. The governor knows that quarantine is seen by the Muslim population as a “diabolically European invention designed to punish and kill”. In his defence, Sami Pasha does have their interests at heart. </p>
<p>“Compared with the island’s Christian population,” he claims, “the local Muslim community was poorer, less educated, and more disengaged from the rest of the world”. Sami Pasha tries but fails to influence them to take up protective quarantine measures “for their own self-preservation”. </p>
<p>But ultimately and perhaps predictably (history repeating itself) he decides “it can be more useful to frighten people than to win their hearts” and the much feared Quarantine Brigade is brought in to shoot anyone who breaks curfew.</p>
<p>In the vacuum of governance that ensues, rumour, superstition, conspiracy, riot and rebellion sweep in. By turns, the governor, the major and the sheik dispose of rebels and traitors on their way to self-appointed and highly promoted positions of power. We witness their ugly corruption, hubris and vanity. The new (self-appointed) president’s main concern is “to see his own likeness” on postage stamps. Top secret documents are seized from the state chambers to be hidden in a private residence. </p>
<p>The exhausted reader starts to feel a sense that “nothing actually means anything anymore” (to steal a phrase from Stephen Colbert). There is a strong January 6th atmosphere to the events of the novel – whether insurrection and the propaganda that paves its way represent an intentional portrayal of history repeating itself.</p>
<p>Wariness towards the West is ever-present. The governor has a watch “with two dials, one showing the European way, and the other the Ottoman way”, revealing his jealous admiration of European fashion, technology, medicine, science and culture, while, to curry popularity, he must be seen as rejecting these. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490243/original/file-20221017-15359-bjcv6b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490243/original/file-20221017-15359-bjcv6b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490243/original/file-20221017-15359-bjcv6b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=783&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490243/original/file-20221017-15359-bjcv6b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=783&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490243/original/file-20221017-15359-bjcv6b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=783&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490243/original/file-20221017-15359-bjcv6b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=983&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490243/original/file-20221017-15359-bjcv6b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=983&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490243/original/file-20221017-15359-bjcv6b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=983&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes: a recurring motif.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“If the state collapses,” Dr Nuri warns, “it will definitely be the British who take over”. Pasha too fears that the island “would go back to being slave and colony to some other great power”. </p>
<p>Sherlock Holmes – so admired by the sultan – is a reoccurring motif symbolising Westernised deductive reasoning that is the hope for solving both the murder mystery of Bonkowski Pasha and the end of the plague.</p>
<h2>Disappointing female characters</h2>
<p>While accessible to the general reader, Nights of Plague is more likely to appeal to fans of historical fiction, particularly those interested in the fascinating and geographically spectacular region including Istanbul and the islands of Crete, Rhodes and mainland Greece. </p>
<p>The downside of so much diversion and detail is the loss of narrative momentum. There are a few too many convenient deaths. While omniscient narration is common in world-building historical and fantasy novels, here the interrupting narrative voice can unsettle and confuse. The characterisation is at times barely believable – and yet despotic sultans, scheming governors and self-serving heroic revolutionaries did exist during the Ottoman era. </p>
<p>No one character truly wins our confidence, with the possible exception of the dedicated Doctor Nuri, on whom we pin our hopes for a way out of the devastation. The female characters – protesting princesses, beautiful weeping maidens, long-suffering mistresses – will disappoint in having no real agency. </p>
<p>What are we to make of Nights of Plague? Is it an allegory of the fall of empire and rise of the modern Turkish state; a grand contemplation on the unending tensions between East and West and power, corruption and revolution; or a giant farce of murder and mayhem? </p>
<p>Perhaps, quoting Major Kâmil, Pamuk is prompting us to consider more deeply this question: has the plague really made everyone “more cowardly, more stupid, and more selfish” than they really are?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/192607/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jane Turner Goldsmith does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Nights of Plague is set on a fictional island in the early 20th century. Is it an allegory of empire’s fall; a contemplation on corruption and East-West tension or a reflection on pandemic life?Jane Turner Goldsmith, PhD candidate, Creative Writing, University of AdelaideLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1854232022-06-20T11:47:34Z2022-06-20T11:47:34ZBlack death: how we solved the centuries-old mystery of its origins<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469771/original/file-20220620-20-iz4org.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=25%2C0%2C1362%2C1051&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tombstones investigated in new research, most from 1338.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source"> P.-G. Borbone/Nature</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It is not an exaggeration to say that the question of where and when the Black Death, the deadliest pandemic ever, originated is one of the biggest mysteries in human history. After all, the Black Death was the first wave of the second plague pandemic of the 14th to early 19th centuries. It killed some 50-60% of the population in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa and an unaccountable number of people in Central Asia. </p>
<p>Different proposals, based on competing theories, have been put forward. But in 2017, I came across some records describing an intriguing medieval cemetery in Kara-Djigach, Chüy Valley, northern Kyrgyzstan, which I suspected may hold the key. As part of a multidisciplinary team co-led by Maria Spyrou at University of Tubingen, we have now investigated several specimens from individuals buried at that site – and <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04800-3">come up with an answer</a>. </p>
<p>The idea that the Black Death originated in the east – territories overlapping, roughly speaking, Central Asia, Mongolia and China – dates back to the contemporaries of the pandemic in Europe and the Islamic world. The modern, academic Chinese origin theory dates back to at least to in 1756-8 and a <a href="https://www.rct.uk/collection/1028372/histoire-generale-des-huns-des-turcs-des-mogols-et-des-autres-tartares">publication about the history of Central Asia</a> by French scholar Joseph de Guignes. </p>
<p>Other plague historians see Central Asia in general, and the Tian-Shan region, a mountain area on the border between China and Kyrgyzstan, as the Black Death’s cradle. But some scholars have argued for <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/44450388">alternative regions</a> as diverse as northern Iraq, the Caucasus, Russia’s Volga, western Urals or western Siberia, the Gobi desert and India. One historian even suggested that the Black Death beginnings was associated with <a href="https://books.google.ie/books/about/New_Light_on_the_Black_Death.html?id=vx4eAQAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y">some unknown cosmic event</a>. </p>
<p>Similarly, the chronological origins of the pandemic have been disputed too. In a <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1205750110">2013 study</a>, a team of microbiologists identified a major evolutionary event in which the main plague lineage (Branch 0) mutated and split into four new plague lineages: Branches 1-4. Dubbed the “Great Polytomy” or “Big Bang”, the researchers found that this event created the strain (on Branch 1), associated with the Black Death. The research, which was based on probability computations, dated this event to a period between 1142 and 1339. They also inferred that <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/plague/index.html"><em>Y. pestis</em></a> – plague bacterium - may have originated in the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Plateau-of-Tibet">Tibetan-Qinghai Plateau</a> in Asia. </p>
<p>Drawing on this work, it has been suggested that that the pandemic may have spread widely in the 13th century, thanks to the expansion of the emerging Mongol Empire. </p>
<h2>Genetics to the rescue</h2>
<p>Without securely dated ancient DNA from Central Asia, however, the question would ultimately remain unsolved. </p>
<p>This changed when I came across records of the Kara-Djigach cemetery – excavated by the Russian archaeologist Nikolai Pantusov in 1885 and 1886 and analysed by the Russian scholar Daniel Chwolson (1819-1911). Of the total 467 stones, covering the period 1248-1345, 118 are dated to 1338 – a suspiciously large proportion of deaths. Most of the stones have little detail about the person they commemorate, just bearing the names and death dates, but there are ten longer inscriptions from those years, stating “pestilence” (mawtānā in Syriac, the language of ancient Syria) as a cause of death. </p>
<p>It was intriguing. Not only that “pestilence” was mentioned, but that the associated tombstones were all dated to 1338-9 - just seven to eight years before the arrival of the Black Death in Crimea, and its subsequent spread all over west Eurasia and north Africa. I had a strong gut feeling about the likely connection.</p>
<p>We therefore decided to genetically sequence the remains from several specimens from these plague year burials, and managed to get results from the teeth of seven different individuals. Our analysis detected the presence of <em>Y. pestis</em> in three specimens, thus confirming that pestilence was indeed caused by this bacterium. We also noted that the strain (on Branch 0) seemed to have just preceded the Great Polytomy, out of which the Black Death strain emerged shortly after. The study therefore indicates that the Black Death commenced shortly after (or possibly even during) this 1338-9 outbreak. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Image of the Tian Shan region." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469763/original/file-20220620-15-4f5e85.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=79%2C61%2C2869%2C1874&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469763/original/file-20220620-15-4f5e85.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469763/original/file-20220620-15-4f5e85.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469763/original/file-20220620-15-4f5e85.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469763/original/file-20220620-15-4f5e85.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469763/original/file-20220620-15-4f5e85.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469763/original/file-20220620-15-4f5e85.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tian Shan region.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lyazzat Musralina,</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Of course, there is nothing to suggest that that Kara-Djigach was the specific source of the pandemic. Rather, we believe that the disaster started somewhere in the wider Tian Shan area, perhaps not too far from that site. It is important to bear in mind that <em>Y. pestis</em> is a bacterium that lives among wild rodent populations. We often associate plague with rats. But in Tian Shan, the prevalent rodent carriers of plague are marmots. It is therefore likely that it was their colonies that were the ultimate source of the 1338-9 outbreak.</p>
<p>Importantly, ancient plague strains found today in marmot colonies in Tian Shan plague reservoirs are evolutionarily even older than the Kara-Djigach strain. Therefore, we conclude that the Kara-Djigach strain must have evolved locally in marmot colonies within the extended Tian Shan region, rather than being introduced into the Kara-Djigach community from some faraway origin. At some point, the bacteria simply crossed over to human inhabitants of the region.</p>
<p>The publication in question has ended the centuries-old debate regarding the spatio-temporal origins of the Black Death. But what else do we take from it? To understand the phenomenon of emerging epidemic diseases, it is essential to have a big evolutionary picture. It is important to see how these diseases develop evolutionary and historically, and avoid treating different strains as isolated phenomena. To understand how the diseases develop and get transmitted, it is also crucial to consider the environmental and socioeconomic contexts.</p>
<p>We also hope that our study will set an example to other historians and scientists that hope to answer such big questions – showing that a collaborative approach involving colleagues from different fields and bringing together different skills, methods, experiences and talents, is the future of historical and paleaogenetic research.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/185423/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Philip Slavin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Black Death evolved around Kyrgyzstan, according to new research.Philip Slavin, Associate Professor of History, University of StirlingLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1843642022-06-06T12:50:13Z2022-06-06T12:50:13ZTallying the dead is one thing, giving them names would take an ‘inexhaustible voice,’ as the ancient Greeks knew<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/466988/original/file-20220603-9439-v1ds5y.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C4%2C1491%2C1129&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">'Antigone leads Oedipus out of Thebes' painting by Charles Francois Jalabert.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b0/The_Plague_of_Thebes.jpg">Collection Musée des Beaux-Arts de Marseille via Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The official count of Americans lost to COVID-19 <a href="https://apnews.com/article/one-million-dead-US-COVID-ea745d462d47a65029a8c507c94e679e">has surpassed 1 million</a>. It is the latest grim milestone that has marked the progression of deaths and infections since the virus took hold in the U.S. in March 2020. </p>
<p>Such numbers make it hard to memorialize individuals – a problem that has existed throughout the ages.</p>
<p>As a scholar who studies Greek myth and has written a <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501752346/the-many-minded-man/">book about psychology and Homer’s epic poem, the “Odyssey</a>,” I keep trying to understand what we have experienced in the U.S. during the COVID-19 era through my research.</p>
<p>Greek texts cannot name all their countless fallen heroes, but they show how to honor the lives of those lost to war or plague, and the significance of doing so.</p>
<h2>Moral tales and the countless dead</h2>
<p>Some of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/plagues-follow-bad-leadership-in-ancient-greek-tales-133139">earliest texts about deaths in plagues and war</a> from ancient Greece emphasize the difference between the individuals who lead their citizens into disasters and the masses of people who suffer and die because of them. </p>
<p>Homer’s other epic, the “Iliad,” set in the conflict between the Greeks and the city of Troy, starts out by lamenting the “<a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0134">myriad Greeks sent to their doom</a>” not by the war itself but the superhuman rage of Achilles, son of the goddess Thetis, and the most powerful of the Greek warriors. Achilles’ rage during the war against his commanding officer, Agamemnon, leads to the deaths of his own people.</p>
<p>Nameless victims also haunt Sophocles’ Athenian tragedy, “Oedipus Tyrannus,” or “Oedipus the King,” when a plague afflicts the city of Thebes. An oracle says the plague will not end until the killer of Oedipus’ father Laius is brought to justice. Oedipus struggles to realize that he is the killer and cause of the plague, as the one who murdered his father and married his mother, not knowing who they are. </p>
<p>Probably the most famous account of a plague from ancient Greece comes from Thucydides’ “History of the Peloponnesian War,” a generation-long war between the city-states of Athens and Sparta from 432 to 404 B.C. Thucydides describes how a plague overtook Athens in 430 B.C.</p>
<p>Thucydides’ first-person account <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0200%3Abook%3D2%3Achapter%3D51">describes fevers and boils and frustrated doctors</a>, but little sense of the individuals who suffered from it. Instead, he focuses on the breakdown of social order, how people abandoned their neighbors and loved ones, and how, shockingly, traditional <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0200%3Abook%3D2%3Achapter%3D52">burial rites were abandoned</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19787658/#:%7E:text=In%20430%20BC%2C%20a%20plague,of%20the%20city's%20population%2C%20died.">Modern estimates put the Athenian losses in this plague at 25%</a> of the population, perhaps over 75,000 people. </p>
<h2>Can we even conceive of the numbers?</h2>
<p>Homer and Sophocles do not give names to individuals among the dead masses. As the narrator in the Iliad announces, someone would need “<a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0134%3Abook%3D2%3Acard%3D459">ten mouths and an inexhaustible voice</a>” to name all those who fought at Troy. The contrast between the large numbers of undifferentiated dead and the heroes or leaders responsible for them helps the readers think about culpability. But this might also be a reflection of the limits of human cognition.</p>
<p>Our brains are not well suited to comprehending large numbers: We are good at comparing sums, but the larger a number gets, the harder it is for us to attach concrete meaning to it. This is in part why the milestone COVID-19 <a href="https://theconversation.com/brains-are-bad-at-big-numbers-making-it-impossible-to-grasp-what-a-million-covid-19-deaths-really-means-179081">death tolls of 100,000 and 1,000,000</a> may mean as much to us as the “myriad deaths of Greeks” at the beginning of the “Iliad.” </p>
<p>Our ability to identify with and feel compassion for victims of violence decreases as the number lost increases, <a href="https://www.apa.org/science/about/psa/2007/11/slovic">leaving us numb</a>. We are also psychologically better suited at mourning our near and dear ones, <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/this-is-not-just-a-number-these-are-real-people">or a handful of people, than a group</a>. This is, lamentably, why mass killings and genocides are so difficult for many people to process emotionally. </p>
<h2>Burial and rhetoric</h2>
<p>Our inability to comprehend large numbers of the dead render them faceless and nameless. This can create a tension with practices for honoring those we have lost. Greek myth centers burial <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-the-greek-classics-tell-us-about-grief-and-the-importance-of-mourning-the-dead-145827">rites as the honor due to the dead</a>. Their practices included caring for the body through cremation or burial, but also through lamentation and the creation of memory.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/466998/original/file-20220603-15396-vvhzdh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A painting showing the corpse of a dead man being held by wailing men and women while some warriors look on." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/466998/original/file-20220603-15396-vvhzdh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/466998/original/file-20220603-15396-vvhzdh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466998/original/file-20220603-15396-vvhzdh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466998/original/file-20220603-15396-vvhzdh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466998/original/file-20220603-15396-vvhzdh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466998/original/file-20220603-15396-vvhzdh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466998/original/file-20220603-15396-vvhzdh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Achilles lamenting the death of his friend Patroclus. Painting by artist Gavin Hamilton (1723 - 1798).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/5009">Scottish National Gallery</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Indeed, the final two books of Homer’s “Iliad” are lessons in how to memorialize the dead. First, Achilles holds a funeral and <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0134%3Abook%3D23%3Acard%3D1">games in honor of his friend Patroclus</a>, and then the Trojans retrieve and mourn their fallen defender, Hektor.</p>
<p>The eulogies of modern funerals function in part to help create a shared memory of a lost loved one. COVID-19, however, has not only exhausted people’s capacity to grieve through sheer numbers, <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-the-greek-classics-tell-us-about-grief-and-the-importance-of-mourning-the-dead-145827">it has also disrupted memorial practices</a>.</p>
<p>In ancient Athens, there was a practice of providing an <a href="https://oxfordre.com/classics/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199381135.001.0001/acrefore-9780199381135-e-2461">annual funeral speech</a> for those who had died in service to the city. The speech was a sacred occasion that provided honor to the dead as a group. These speeches connected their sacrifice to civic survival and the glory of the state, situating their deaths in a story that connected their survivors’ past with future endeavors.</p>
<p>One of the most famous examples of ancient rhetoric comes from this practice. Thucydides places the <a href="http://hrlibrary.umn.edu/education/thucydides.html">funeral speech of Pericles</a>, the leader of Athens and architect of its war with Sparta, at the end of the first year of the conflict, right before the onset of the plague. Pericles rallies his people not to mourn their losses but to praise their sacrifice. </p>
<h2>The politics of counting</h2>
<p>Nations can choose to memorialize the dead through a monument or a holiday. Such memorialization arises from a public and political will. But the number of lives lost are subject to selection.</p>
<p>U.S. COVID-19 deaths, for example, may be <a href="https://www.bu.edu/sph/news/articles/2020/us-covid-deaths-may-be-undercounted-by-36-percent/">undercounted by a third</a> because of local and national decisions on record keeping and classification. The impact of these losses is impossible to estimate. Worldwide, COVID-19 has become a <a href="https://www.capradio.org/articles/2022/03/27/an-enormous-disabling-event-long-covid-could-have-inequitable-impact-on-californians/">long-term disabling event for millions</a>. In the United States alone, <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-one-million-covid-dead-mean-for-the-u-s-s-future/">a quarter of a million children</a> have lost a caregiver to the pandemic.</p>
<p>It is important to count the numbers and to tell their stories, because what countries officially count in part communicates who they think matters. Consider, for instance, that the <a href="https://web.mit.edu/humancostiraq/">the number of Iraqis and Afghans</a> killed during America’s wars in those regions is not known. By contrast, the <a href="http://apps.washingtonpost.com/national/fallen/">number of American servicemen killed is well known</a>.</p>
<p>The contrast between what is countable and what is felt brings tension to the stories of the Iliad, Oedipus and Thucydides’ “History of the Peloponnesian War.” Poorly read, these narratives glorify their failed leaders, but careful consideration can help readers see how many were lost to preserve a handful of names.</p>
<p>Who our nations count today will go a long way in telling future generations the story of the COVID-19 era. And it will also help define those who lived through it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/184364/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joel Christensen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A scholar of Greek classics revisits the texts to bring lessons on how to honor the lives lost to the COVID-19 pandemic.Joel Christensen, Professor of Classical Studies, Brandeis UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1771932022-04-11T12:09:52Z2022-04-11T12:09:52ZPenance and plague: How the Black Death changed one of Christianity’s most important rituals<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/456189/original/file-20220404-15-nwkbnu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=13%2C4%2C1008%2C623&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Confession, circa 1460/1470. Artist unknown.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/confession-1460-1470-artist-unknown-news-photo/1314769661?adppopup=true">Photo by Heritage Art/Heritage Images via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The 14th century is known for catastrophe. By midcentury, the first wave of plague spread through a Europe already weakened by successive <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691058917/the-great-famine">famines</a> and the <a href="https://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/1862.html">Hundred Years War</a> between England and France. And crises just kept coming. After the first wave, which has come to be called the <a href="https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/tmg/vol1/iss1/">Black Death</a>, the disease returned at least four more times before 1400. All the while, fresh conflicts kept erupting, fueled in part by <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-ae/Medieval+Mercenaries%2C+Volume+I%2C+The+Great+Companies-p-9780631158868">the rising number</a> of soldiers available for hire.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://www.libarts.colostate.edu/people/nambeau/">a medieval historian</a>, I study ways that community leaders used Catholic practices and institutions to respond to war and plague. But amid the uncertainty of the 14th century, some Catholic institutions stopped working the way they were supposed to, <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300108286/stripping-altars">fueling frustration</a>. In particular, the unrelenting crises prompted anxiety about the sacrament of penance, often referred to as “confession.”</p>
<p>This uncertainty helped spark critics like <a href="https://theconversation.com/on-the-reformations-500th-anniversary-remembering-martin-luthers-contribution-to-literacy-77540">Martin Luther</a> to ultimately <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-lasting-impact-of-luthers-reformation-4-essential-reads-105953">break from</a> the Catholic Church.</p>
<h2>Saints and sacraments</h2>
<p>During this era, European Christians experienced their faith predominantly through saints and sacraments.</p>
<p>In art, <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691169682/why-can-the-dead-do-such-great-things">saints</a> were depicted as standing near God’s throne or even speaking into his ear, illustrating their special relationships with him. Pious Christians considered saints active members of their communities who could help God hear their prayers for <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/V/bo3622188.html">healing and protection</a>. Throughout Europe, saints’ feast days were celebrated with processions, displays of candles, <a href="https://broadviewpress.com/product/the-york-corpus-christi-play-selected-pageants/#tab-description">and even street theater</a>.</p>
<p>Fourteenth-century Christians also experienced their faith through Catholicism’s most important rituals, the <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Medieval_Church/8FtcAgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=the+medieval+church&printsec=frontcover">seven sacraments</a>. Some occurred <a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-Medieval-Church-A-Brief-History/Lynch/p/book/9780582772984">once in most people’s lives</a>, including baptism, confirmation, marriage and <a href="https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/1438sacraments.asp">extreme unction</a> – a set of rituals for people who are near death.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A medieval manuscript with colorful illustrations depicts rites for people who are dying." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457016/original/file-20220407-24242-o5bt9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457016/original/file-20220407-24242-o5bt9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=879&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457016/original/file-20220407-24242-o5bt9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=879&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457016/original/file-20220407-24242-o5bt9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=879&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457016/original/file-20220407-24242-o5bt9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1105&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457016/original/file-20220407-24242-o5bt9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1105&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457016/original/file-20220407-24242-o5bt9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1105&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A 15th-century manuscript depicts deathbed scenes: doctor’s visit; confession; Communion; extreme unction; and burial. From the Bedford Hours of John, Duke of Bedford.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/hours-of-the-dead-1414-1423-vignettes-representing-deathbed-news-photo/463979445?adppopup=true">British Museum/Print Collector/Hulton Archive via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There were two sacraments, however, that Catholics could experience multiple times. The first was the Eucharist, also known as <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-communion-matters-in-catholic-life-and-what-it-means-to-be-denied-the-eucharist-163560#:%7E:text=One%20of%20the%20seven%20sacraments,and%20divinity%20of%20Jesus%20Christ.">Holy Communion</a> – the reenactment of Christ’s Last Supper with his apostles before his crucifixion. The second was penance.</p>
<p>Catholic doctrine taught that priests’ prayers over bread and wine <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022046900016419">turned those substances into the body and blood of Christ</a>, and that this sacrament creates communion between God and believers. The Eucharist was the core of the Mass, a service which also included processions, singing, prayers and reading from the Scriptures.</p>
<p>Religious Christians also encountered the sacrament of penance throughout their lives. By the 14th century, penance was a private sacrament that each person was supposed to do <a href="https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/basis/lateran4.asp">at least once a year</a>.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691643823/sin-and-confession-on-the-eve-of-the-reformation">ideal penance</a> was hard work, however. People had to recall all the sins they had committed since the “age of reason,” which started when they were roughly 7 years old. They were supposed to feel sorry that they had offended God, and not just be afraid that they would go to hell for their sins. They had to speak their sins aloud to <a href="https://www.cuapress.org/9780813218694/handbook-for-curates/">their parish priest</a>, who had the authority to absolve them. Finally, they had to intend to never commit those sins again. </p>
<p>After confession, they performed the prayers, fasting or pilgrimage that the priest assigned them, which was called “satisfaction.” The whole process was <a href="https://www.academia.edu/44651890/Leonard_E_Boyle_The_Summa_for_Confessors_as_a_Genre_and_Its_Religious_Intent_in_Charles_Trinkaus_and_Heiko_A_Oberman_ed_The_Pursuit_of_Holiness_in_Late_Medieval_and_Renaissance_Religion_Leiden_Brill_1974_126_130">meant to heal the soul</a> as a kind of spiritual medicine.</p>
<h2>Broken up by Black Death</h2>
<p>Waves of plague and warfare, however, could disrupt every aspect of the ideal confession. Rapid illness could make it impossible to travel to one’s parish priest, remember one’s sins or speak them aloud. When parish priests died and were not immediately replaced, people had to seek out other confessors. Some people had to confess without anyone to absolve them.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A manuscript depicts people burying victims of the Black Death plague." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/456196/original/file-20220404-11-e6xmww.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/456196/original/file-20220404-11-e6xmww.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/456196/original/file-20220404-11-e6xmww.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/456196/original/file-20220404-11-e6xmww.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/456196/original/file-20220404-11-e6xmww.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/456196/original/file-20220404-11-e6xmww.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/456196/original/file-20220404-11-e6xmww.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An illustration in the Annales of Gilles de Muisit, from the 14th century, depicts people burying victims of the Black Death.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-annales-of-gilles-de-muisit-the-plague-in-tournai-news-photo/535795241?adppopup=true">Photo by Photo12/Universal Images Group via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Meanwhile, Europe’s frequent wars posed other spiritual dangers. Soldiers, for example, were hired to fight wherever war took them and were often paid with the spoils of war. They <a href="https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/3343/john-hawkwood">lived with the constant weight of the commandments not to kill or steal</a>. They could never perform a complete confession, because they could <a href="https://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/historical-reflections/41/3/hrrh410302.xml">never intend not to sin this way again</a>.</p>
<p>These problems caused despair and anxiety. In response, people turned to doctors and saints for help and healing. For example, some Christians in Provence, in present-day France, turned to a local holy woman, <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501753664/souls-under-siege/">Countess Delphine de Puimichel</a>, to help them remember their sins, protect them from sudden death, and even leave warfare to become penitents. So many people described feeling consoled by her voice that a medical doctor who lived near the holy woman set up meetings so people could hear her speak. </p>
<p>But most people in Europe did not have a local saint like Delphine to turn to. They looked for other solutions to their uncertainties about the sacrament of penance.</p>
<p>Indulgences and Masses for the dead proved the most popular, but also problematic. <a href="https://www.septentrion.com/fr/livre/?GCOI=27574100385140">Indulgences</a> were papal documents that could forgive the sins of the holder. They were supposed to be given out only by the pope, and in very specific situations, such as completing certain pilgrimages, <a href="https://ignatius.com/what-were-the-crusades-4th-edition-wwc4p/">serving in a crusade</a>, or doing particularly pious acts. </p>
<p>During the 15th century, however, demand for indulgences was high, and they <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.14315/arg-1984-jg08/html">became common</a>. Some traveling confessors who had received religious authorities’ approval to hear confessions sold indulgences – some authentic, <a href="https://chaucer.fas.harvard.edu/pages/pardoners-prologue-introduction-and-tale">some fake</a> – to anyone with money. </p>
<p>Catholics also believed that Masses conducted in their name could absolve their sins after their death. By the 14th century, most Christians understood the afterlife as a journey that started in a place called <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/B/bo5972676.html">Purgatory</a>, where residual sins would be burned away through suffering before souls entered heaven. In their wills, Christians left money for <a href="https://undpress.nd.edu/9780268104948/rituals-for-the-dead/">Masses for their souls</a>, so that they could spend less time in Purgatory. There were so many requests that some churches performed multiple Masses per day, sometimes for many souls at a time, which became an unsustainable burden on the clergy.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="An eagle's-eye photograph shows a graveyard being exhumed." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457018/original/file-20220407-25034-arv88i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457018/original/file-20220407-25034-arv88i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457018/original/file-20220407-25034-arv88i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457018/original/file-20220407-25034-arv88i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457018/original/file-20220407-25034-arv88i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457018/original/file-20220407-25034-arv88i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457018/original/file-20220407-25034-arv88i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Black Death burial trench under excavation between rows of individual graves and the later concrete foundations of the Royal Mint in East Smithfield, London.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/black-death-burial-trench-under-excavation-between-rows-of-news-photo/467189953?adppopup=true">MOLA/Hulton Archive via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The popularity of indulgences and Masses for the dead helps scholars today understand <a href="https://boydellandbrewer.com/9781903153413/sin-in-medieval-and-early-modern-culture/">people’s challenges</a> during the Black Death. But both practices were ripe for corruption, and frustration mounted as a sacrament meant to console and prepare the faithful for the afterlife left them anxious and uncertain. </p>
<p>Criticisms of indulgences and penance were a focus of <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-martin-luthers-reformation-tells-us-about-history-and-memory-85058">reformer Martin Luther’s</a> famous “95 Theses,” written in 1517. Though the young priest did not originally intend to separate from the Catholic Church, his critiques launched the Protestant Reformation. </p>
<p>But Luther’s challenges to the papacy were not ultimately about money, but theology. Despair over the idea of <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315246819-5/anxious-penitents-appeal-reformation-ozment-historiography-confession-ronald-rittgers">never being able</a> to perform an ideal confession led him and others to <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691643823/sin-and-confession-on-the-eve-of-the-reformation">redefine the sacrament</a>. In Luther’s view, a penitent <a href="https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=8OEUAAAAIAAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=martin+luther+95+theses+translation&ots=MwCHZjaBMT&sig=O0_frZBH_On3iTefmQAu1emmDak#v=onepage&q=martin%20luther%2095%20theses%20translation&f=false">could do nothing</a> to make satisfaction for sin, but had to rely on God’s grace alone.</p>
<p>[<em>Over 150,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletters to understand the world.</em> <a href="https://memberservices.theconversation.com/newsletters/?source=inline-150ksignup">Sign up today</a>.]</p>
<p>For Catholics, on the other hand, the sacrament of penance stayed much the same for centuries, although there were some changes. The most visible was the creation of the <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.7591/9781501744709/html">confessional</a>, an enclosed space within the church building where the priest and the penitent could speak more privately. The experience of penance, especially absolution, <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501753664/souls-under-siege/">remained a central</a> ritual meant to heal Catholics’ souls in times of trouble, from the Black Death <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/pubmed/fdab193">to the COVID-19 pandemic today</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/177193/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicole Archambeau does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Churches’ struggles to respond to the plague and constant warfare in the 14th and 15th centuries helped shape the kinds of Christianity in the world today.Nicole Archambeau, Associate Professor of History, Colorado State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1782842022-03-23T19:53:49Z2022-03-23T19:53:49ZThe importance of Indigenous storytelling in tales of post-apocalyptic survival<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/453754/original/file-20220323-23-14c2mc3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C75%2C8441%2C5707&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In Blood Quantum, Indigenous survivors are immune to a plague that transforms others into zombies.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.elevationpictures.com/catalogue">(Elevation Pictures)</a></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/the-importance-of-indigenous-storytelling-in-tales-of-post-apocalyptic-survival" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>With many provinces across <a href="https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/the-time-is-absolutely-right-for-pandemic-measures-to-lift-experts-say-1.5785151">Canada lifting vaccine and mask mandates</a>, <a href="https://www.healthline.com/health-news/how-to-cope-with-no-mask-anxiety">anxieties are high</a>. If COVID-19 is <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/18/heres-how-covid-19-transitions-from-a-pandemic-to-endemic.html">becoming endemic</a>, we must search for what philosopher Jonathan Lear calls “<a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674027466">radical hope</a>.” </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/radical-hope-what-young-dreamers-in-literature-can-teach-us-about-covid-19-142528">Radical hope: What young dreamers in literature can teach us about COVID-19</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>However, alongside trauma and <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/middle-ages/pandemics-timeline">particularly in times of pandemics throughout history</a>, hope can take the form of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkDsIcAXETY">stories about resilience</a>. And for Indigenous people in particular, <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/corporate/publications/chief-public-health-officer-reports-state-public-health-canada/from-risk-resilience-equity-approach-covid-19/indigenous-peoples-covid-19-report.html">who have disproportionately experienced the effects of the pandemic</a>, what better way to find hope than to turn to Indigenous survivors in post-apocalyptic narratives?</p>
<h2>Survival stories</h2>
<p>Métis author Cherie Dimaline provides us the opportunity to do just this. Dimaline is best known for <em>The Marrow Thieves</em>, which won the <a href="https://ggbooks.ca/about">Governor General’s Literary Award</a> and the <a href="https://www.kirkusreviews.com/prize/">Kirkus Prize</a>. <em>The Marrow Thieves</em> is listed as one of <a href="https://time.com/collection/100-best-ya-books/6084702/the-marrow-thieves/"><em>TIME</em> magazine’s Best YA Books of All Time</a>. </p>
<p>The novel was written in response to the <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/5448390/first-nations-suicide-rate-statscan/">suicide epidemic</a> within Indigenous communities. During her work with Indigenous youth, Dimaline wanted to show them a viable future where they could be <a href="https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/2017/11/06/cherie-dimaline-hopes-and-dreams-in-the-apocalypse.html">the heroes</a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZWYrmrAi8ow?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Cherie Dimaline at The Walrus Talks in 2019.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p><em><a href="https://www.dcbyoungreaders.com/the-marrow-thieves">The Marrow Thieves</a></em> and its sequel, <em><a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/651691/hunting-by-stars-by-cherie-dimaline/9780735269651">Hunting by Stars</a></em>, follow Métis protagonist Frenchie and his found family of other Indigenous survivors as they roam a post-apocalyptic wasteland ravaged by climate change. In this new world, everyone except Indigenous people have lost the ability to dream. <a href="https://herizons.ca/archives/cover/cherie-dimaline-the-importance-of-dreams">Without dreams, people go mad</a> — killing others and committing suicide. </p>
<p>Governments respond by establishing schools inspired by the residential school system, and characters called “recruiters” search for Indigenous survivors to bring back to the schools to be “harvested.” The marrow within the bones of Indigenous people contains dreams, and by harvesting and consuming the marrow, non-Indigenous survivors can finally dream. </p>
<p><em>Hunting by Stars</em> reflects contemporary concerns about residential schools as well as contagion:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“…medical masks hanging from their ears like hand-me-down jewelry. They had the plague. Trash cans at the end of each driveway were heaped with syringes, so many vaccinations and cures thrown out because none would work. The people stumbled into one another, knocking over cans and crunching through needles. They had that look, the one that let you know they were dreamless.”</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Story and hope</h2>
<p>In Dimaline’s novels, there is <em>the</em> Story: as Indigenous survivors tell their stories, the overarching Story changes slightly to include these new voices. Story, with a capital “s,” is comprised of a “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1353/ail.2020.0023">shared oral history</a>,” produced by the various characters’ narratives.</p>
<p>Miigwans, the Elder figure in the novel is responsible for telling Story to ensure the younger Indigenous survivors in the novel remember their history. Therefore, his telling of Story ensures that it will never be forgotten. However, Story is not just the history of the Indigenous characters in the novel; <a href="https://quillandquire.com/review/the-marrow-thieves/">Story is the history</a> of everyone living in Canada, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples.</p>
<p>Story includes climate change, pipelines, colonialism, Treaties and the residential school system. </p>
<p>Dimaline admits that stories are how she <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/14/books/indigenous-native-american-sci-fi-horror.html">understands herself and her community</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/453750/original/file-20220323-17-1taksgr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="a book cover HUNTING BY STARS showing an illustration of a silhouetted forest beneath a starry night sky" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/453750/original/file-20220323-17-1taksgr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/453750/original/file-20220323-17-1taksgr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453750/original/file-20220323-17-1taksgr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453750/original/file-20220323-17-1taksgr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453750/original/file-20220323-17-1taksgr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453750/original/file-20220323-17-1taksgr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453750/original/file-20220323-17-1taksgr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The book cover for Cherie Dimaline’s 2021 novel, <em>Hunting by Stars</em>.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/651691/hunting-by-stars-by-cherie-dimaline/9780735269651">(Penguin Random House)</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Given that Dimaline’s original inspiration was to <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/books/the-message-ya-novelist-cherie-dimaline-has-for-young-indigenous-readers-1.4195036">bring hope to Indigenous youth</a> amidst rising suicide rates, the relationship between Story and hope cannot be overlooked.</p>
<p>Dimaline’s novels resonate in today’s world. The re-introduction of residential schools in the world of Dimaline’s novels is timely, given recent confirmations of <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3/1/canada-169-potential-graves-found-at-former-residential-school">unmarked burial sites</a> at former residential school locations throughout Canada.</p>
<h2>Plagues and zombies</h2>
<p>Story plays a similar role in Mi'kmaq director Jeff Barnaby’s 2019 zombie film, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7394674/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0"><em>Blood Quantum</em></a>. In <em>Blood Quantum</em>, a zombie-producing plague has ravaged the world, but Indigenous people find themselves immune to the virus. They establish a safe zone on the fictional Red Crow Reservation and protect both Indigenous and non-Indigenous survivors. However, the inclusion of the latter is a point of contention for some characters.</p>
<p>In the film, there are a few animated scenes that represent Story. In the final animated scene, an elder named Gisigu appears to perish beneath a mass of zombies. However, the scene changes to animation, and Gisigu emerges victorious. Gisigu may have perished in the material world, but in Story, he lives on. When animated Gisigu emerges from beneath the mass, he vows never to let the zombies pass, protecting the future of his surviving Indigenous family.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/453748/original/file-20220323-17-1qb0kio.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="a man stands over a pile of zombies in a room with blood-stained walls" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/453748/original/file-20220323-17-1qb0kio.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/453748/original/file-20220323-17-1qb0kio.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453748/original/file-20220323-17-1qb0kio.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453748/original/file-20220323-17-1qb0kio.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453748/original/file-20220323-17-1qb0kio.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453748/original/file-20220323-17-1qb0kio.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453748/original/file-20220323-17-1qb0kio.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A still from the Indigenous zombie horror movie, <em>Blood Quantum</em> (2019).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Elevation Pictures)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Understanding through Story</h2>
<p>For many Indigenous people, storytelling is a form of reclamation — what Anishnaabe writer Gerald Vizenor would call “<a href="https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska-paperback/9780803210837/">survivance</a>,” a portmanteau of survival and resistance. The concept relies on the use of stories to ensure the continued <a href="https://politicaltheology.com/survivance/">presence of Indigenous people</a>.</p>
<p>In response to the recent confirmations of unmarked burial sites at residential schools, <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2021/11/21/canadas-crying-shame-the-fields-full-of-childrens-bones">survivors are recounting stories about those who unfortunately did not survive</a>. Doing so is survivance — these stories bring lost Indigenous children into the present and give those who survived as well as those who unfortunately did not, <a href="https://theconversation.com/residential-school-literature-can-teach-the-colonial-present-and-imagine-better-futures-120383">voice and agency</a>.</p>
<p>As a third-generation residential school survivor, I cannot possibly understand what my grandmother experienced inside the schools. I can, however, <a href="https://epl.bibliocommons.com/list/share/69643431/675287927">read Story and begin to understand my own part in Story</a>. Therefore, we can all learn a little something about ourselves and our world from Indigenous survival stories.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/178284/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Krista Collier-Jarvis does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Indigenous stories of survival in fictional post-apocalyptic landscapes draw from actual events and experiences. These stories preserve histories and the possibility of hope.Krista Collier-Jarvis, PhD Candidate in English, Dalhousie UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1765012022-02-17T13:08:20Z2022-02-17T13:08:20ZAnti-Asian violence spiked in the US during the pandemic, especially in blue-state cities<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446364/original/file-20220214-23-1q4gzh5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=26%2C0%2C2970%2C1969&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Anti-Asian attacks killed nine people in 2021, including 84-year-old Vicha Ratanapakdee, seen in a photo held by his daughter Monthanus Ratanapakdee.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/AntiAsianAttacks/e99ab10373b54120963eb93769acb07f/photo">AP Photo/Terry Chea</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s widely known that Asian Americans felt – and were – <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/04/21/one-third-of-asian-americans-fear-threats-physical-attacks-and-most-say-violence-against-them-is-rising/">persecuted</a> <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-01-13/san-gabriel-valley-anti-asian-hate">during the pandemic</a>. But the extent of this violence, and its uneven geographic distribution across the U.S., is now much clearer, thanks to <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=xBQYKHwAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">research I conducted</a> with collaborators at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and the independent research firm Development Services Group.</p>
<p>The Asian American-Pacific Islander Equity Alliance, a nonprofit based in California, has collected reports of <a href="https://stopaapihate.org/national-report-through-september-2021/">10,370 “hate incidents”</a> from March 2020 through September 2021. The <a href="https://stopaapihate.org/">categories of those incidents</a> include verbal harassment, refusal of service at a business and online abuse, as well as assaults and property damage.</p>
<p>My collaborators and I looked more specifically at <a href="https://dsgonline.com/2022/AntiAsianViolence_PerligerAnastasio_Feb2022.pdf">violent attacks against Asian Americans or their property from 1990 to 2021</a>. In the 30 years before the pandemic, we identified public reports of 210 anti-Asian violent attacks in total, an average of 8.1 per year. But during 2020 and 2021, there were 163 attacks, averaging out to 81.5 a year – or more than 11 times the previous average.</p>
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<h2>Pandemic sparks violence</h2>
<p>Minorities and other vulnerable groups have been targeted for persecution during public health crises throughout history. In 14th-century Europe, <a href="https://www.montana.edu/historybug/yersiniaessays/pariera-dinkins.html">Jews were blamed for the bubonic plague</a>. In 1900, <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/03/26/980480882/why-pandemics-give-birth-to-hate-from-black-death-to-covid-19">Chinese people were unfairly blamed</a> for a plague outbreak in San Francisco’s Chinatown. And in the 1980s, <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/03/26/980480882/why-pandemics-give-birth-to-hate-from-black-death-to-covid-19">Haitians were wrongly blamed</a> for bringing HIV/AIDS to the U.S.</p>
<p>Our data found that before 2020, the average number of Asian Americans killed or injured in anti-Asian attacks was just over eight per year. In 2020 and 2021, however, 49 were physically harmed, an average of almost 25 per year.</p>
<p>We found that almost half of the anti-Asian attacks in 2020 and 2021 were motivated, at least partially, by anger and animosity associated with COVID-19, a disease <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.4269%2Fajtmh.20-0849">first identified in Asia</a>. For instance, in June 2020, an <a href="https://abc7ny.com/hate-crime-new-gourmet-garden-chinese-restaurant-graffiti/6252183/">Asian restaurant in New Jersey was vandalized</a> with graffiti reading “coronavirus” and “COVID-19.” And in February 2021, Denny Kim, a 27-year-old Korean American veteran of the U.S. Air Force, was <a href="https://ktla.com/news/local-news/koreatown-attack-against-27-year-old-asian-american-air-force-veteran-being-investigated-as-hate-crime/">beaten by two men</a> who shouted anti-Asian slurs at him and called him “Chinese virus.”</p>
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<h2>Continuing previous trends of violence</h2>
<p>The additional anti-Asian attacks in 2020 and 2021 tended to be in the same places that had seen high levels of anti-Asian violence before the pandemic. </p>
<p>Before 2020, about half of these attacks happened in the New York City metropolitan area and in urban centers in California. During the pandemic, almost 60% of the attacks happened in those same regions. With higher numbers of Asian American residents, those might seem more likely places for anti-Asian violence to happen, but they aren’t home to 60% of Americans of Asian descent, so the level of anti-Asian violence is still disproportionately high.</p>
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<p>Most anti-Asian violence, both before and during the pandemic, happened in <a href="https://medium.com/3streams/why-hate-crimes-proliferate-in-progressive-blue-state-72483b2d72a7">urban and suburban areas in typically progressive states</a>. </p>
<p>Regardless of when they happened, the attacks were of similar types as well. Before the pandemic, more than 70% of anti-Asian hate crimes targeted people of Asian descent personally, such as a <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3460293/White-supremacist-59-attacked-18-year-old-Chinese-girl-hatchet-act-ethnic-cleansing.html">2016 attack on a Chinese exchange student</a> by an alleged white supremacist.</p>
<p>About 20% of attacks were aimed against property owned or regularly used by Asian Americans, such as in 2008 when <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/hate-incidents?state=All&page=110">someone painted racist graffiti</a> on a trash can behind an Asian market in St. Paul, Minnesota, and in a nearby park.</p>
<p>During the pandemic, the proportions were similar: About 60% of anti-Asian attacks were against people, and about one-third were against their property.</p>
<h2>Some changes in trends, too</h2>
<p>During the pandemic, more of the violence was spontaneous, rather than preplanned, than it had been before 2020, according to our analysis. Most <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/26544643">other hate crimes are unplanned</a>.</p>
<p>We also found that a higher proportion of attacks were carried out by a single person than had been normal before the pandemic. </p>
<p>Overall, our findings support and confirm the experiences of Asian Americans who reported being targeted by violence more often during the pandemic.</p>
<p>[<em>More than 150,000 readers get one of The Conversation’s informative newsletters.</em> <a href="https://memberservices.theconversation.com/newsletters/?source=inline-140K">Join the list today</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/176501/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Arie Perliger receives funding from the National Institute of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security. He is affiliated with the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism, where he serves as a research fellow. </span></em></p>A new analysis of crime data shows that anti-Asian violence, targeting people of Asian descent and their property, rose sharply during the pandemic.Arie Perliger, Director of Security Studies and Professor of Criminology and Justice Studies, UMass LowellLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1761822022-02-16T13:17:11Z2022-02-16T13:17:11ZThe Ancient Greeks also lived through a plague, and they too blamed their leaders for their suffering<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446365/original/file-20220214-25-8vvcch.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=145%2C5%2C3687%2C2636&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A painting by Nicolas Poussin titled 'The Athenian Plague' shows people dying of the plague.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/painting-by-nicolas-poussin-entitled-the-athenian-plague-news-photo/517398440?adppopup=true">Bettmann / Contributor via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, as <a href="https://www.brandeis.edu/facultyguide/person.html?emplid=1be7ee967d45605afddf7da9ad4ca2c049a26c0b">a scholar of ancient Greek literature</a>, I have returned again and again to the Greek historian Thucydides to try understand the historical parallels to the American response to the health crisis. </p>
<p>Thucydides – a onetime general and historian of the Peloponnesian War, a generationlong struggle between Athens and Sparta – presents one of the most famous accounts of a plague from antiquity. </p>
<p>Then, as now, the story forms the backdrop for tragedy and conflict as Thucydides focuses on the emotional impact of living through a plague.</p>
<h2>Parallels with plague</h2>
<p>At the beginning of its conflict with its historical adversary, Sparta, Athens pulled its people and forces within <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/499185">the long walls</a> that protected the central city’s access to the sea. With Athens’ maritime and economic supremacy, its leader Pericles believed that with such a strategy, the city-state would be impossible to conquer. </p>
<p>An unintended consequence of this strategy, however, was that the crowded confines of the city made it a fertile ground for a novel pathogen. The emergence of plague led to a temporary suspension of Athenian life, but it did not change the policy on the war or its strategy, despite the death toll.</p>
<p>Thucydides’ account <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0200%3Abook%3D2%3Achapter%3D49">records vividly</a> the onset and progress of the disease as it fell on Athens. Some of what he wrote might sound familiar today: The <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/msj.20137">symptoms of what was then an unidentified disease</a> included chest pain, a cough, fever and diarrhea; if the disease was not fatal, it often left scars and a loss of memory.</p>
<p>Just as the spread of COVID-19 across the world led to a heightened focus on its origins, Thucydides tracked how the plague <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/history-and-civilisation/2021/05/the-plague-of-athens-killed-tens-of-thousands-but-its-cause-remains-a-mystery">allegedly moved </a> from <a href="https://sententiaeantiquae.com/2020/03/13/an-eyewitness-to-useless-prayers/">Egypt through the Persian Empire and into Greece</a>. </p>
<p>Thucydides also noted another fallout – despair. He described despair as the “<a href="https://sententiaeantiquae.com/2022/01/12/the-worst-part-of-a-plague-despair-2/">most terrible feature of the sickness</a>” and recorded that depression and fear were common. Like today, families lost their loved ones to the disease, and any kind of social order dissipated.</p>
<h2>The despair of disease</h2>
<p>I have also been deeply affected by Thucydides’ ability to talk about the plague from his own experience. As he notes at the beginning of his narrative of the disease, he <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0200%3Abook%3D2%3Achapter%3D48">became sick himself</a> and watched others suffer. </p>
<p>Few people I know made it through 2020 and 2021 without anxiety about their own or their loved ones’ health. But the despair of actually contracting the disease and the feeling of utter powerlessness of watching one’s family getting it as well was something I personally evaded until January 2022.</p>
<p>Even though my spouse, my two older children and I were all vaccinated, we all contracted the virus. Our “mild” COVID experience left me winded going up stairs for weeks. And over a month later there is no one who can say what the long-term effects will be for us or our children.</p>
<p>Thucydides describes not just the despair of getting sick but the danger faced in “caring for one another.” My wife and I considered ourselves lucky that our fevers peaked at different times, leaving one of us to comfort our 9-month-old through four days of fever and a worrisome cough. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446372/original/file-20220214-19-1hu7ueh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="People dressed in coats holding burning candles for a memorial." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446372/original/file-20220214-19-1hu7ueh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446372/original/file-20220214-19-1hu7ueh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446372/original/file-20220214-19-1hu7ueh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446372/original/file-20220214-19-1hu7ueh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446372/original/file-20220214-19-1hu7ueh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446372/original/file-20220214-19-1hu7ueh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446372/original/file-20220214-19-1hu7ueh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Friends and family light candles for COVID-19 victims during a memorial and vigil in Wilkes-Barre, Pa.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/friends-and-family-of-victims-holding-burning-candles-news-photo/1231564876?adppopup=true">Aimee Dilger/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>While we were sick, an average of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html">3,000 people died a day</a> in the United States. Local and federal officials in many areas have pushed for a return to normal by planning to <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/10/health/mask-mandates-best-practices-wellness/index.html">drop mask mandates</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/08/us/politics/new-york-mask-mandate.html">other restrictions</a>. <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/leaving-poorer-countries-unvaccinated-reckless-approach-public/">Experts have cautioned</a> about the risk of new variants emerging as a large number of people in low-income countries <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/covid-vaccine-tracker-global-distribution/">remain unvaccinated</a>.</p>
<h2>Plague and leadership</h2>
<p>The stories we tell and don’t tell about COVID-19 follow a pattern familiar to those who have spent time with ancient literature. <a href="https://theconversation.com/plagues-follow-bad-leadership-in-ancient-greek-tales-133139">Greek plague narratives</a> take little interest in the nameless suffering masses and instead focus on the leaders who allow it to happen. </p>
<p>In Homer’s “Iliad,” the Greeks suffer a plague because their leader Agamemnon refuses the divinely sanctioned custom of accepting a ransom in exchange for a prisoner; the plague is sent as a <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0134%3Abook%3D1%3Acard%3D33">punishment</a>. Sophocles’ famous tragedy puts an Oedipus on stage. He wants to save his people <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0192%3Acard%3D58">but can’t see that he is the main cause</a> for the spread of the disease. </p>
<p>Faulty public policies in the <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-the-u-s-pandemic-response-went-wrong-and-what-went-right-during-a-year-of-covid/">U.S.</a>, the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/oct/12/covid-response-one-of-uks-worst-ever-public-health-failures">U.K.</a>, <a href="https://reliefweb.int/report/brazil/toll-bolsonaro-s-disastrous-covid-19-response-enpt">Brazil</a> and elsewhere have <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/02/01/science/covid-deaths-united-states.html">led to a large number of deaths</a> that many experts considered preventable. The virus is only the beginning of the problem. </p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/plagues-follow-bad-leadership-in-ancient-greek-tales-133139">Plague stories provide settings</a> in which fate pushes human organization to the limit. Leaders almost always play a pivotal role, as Zeus observes in <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0136">Homer’s “Odyssey,”</a> saying, “Humans are always blaming the gods for their suffering / but they experience pain beyond their fate because of their own recklessness.” </p>
<h2>Leading for the public good</h2>
<p>The Athenians lost the war with Sparta not because of the plague, but the plague did reveal the fault lines beneath the surface of Athenian culture. As Katherine Kelaidis, a scholar at the National Hellenic Museum, frames it, the disease was a <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/great-plague-athens-has-eerie-parallels-today/608545/">moral test of the physical and political structures of Athens</a>. </p>
<p>The Athenians lost tens of thousands of their citizens and soldiers and uncounted numbers of enslaved peoples and resident aliens, but they continued to fight for another 20 years. In the end, political factions and civil strife undermined their efforts to defend their state.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446369/original/file-20220214-13-nr3467.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two young scientists wearing protective masks and caps working on their computers that have an image of the coronavirus." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446369/original/file-20220214-13-nr3467.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446369/original/file-20220214-13-nr3467.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446369/original/file-20220214-13-nr3467.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446369/original/file-20220214-13-nr3467.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446369/original/file-20220214-13-nr3467.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446369/original/file-20220214-13-nr3467.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446369/original/file-20220214-13-nr3467.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Amid despair, the pandemic has shown the remarkable work of scientists.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/laboratory-team-working-on-coronavirus-vaccine-royalty-free-image/1251892829?adppopup=true">janiecbros/Collection E+ via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>COVID-19 has shown the deep divisions among Americans, the lack of concern many of our neighbors show for one another, the fragility of the public health system and the limits of the leadership to meet collective challenges. But it has also shown the <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03626-1">remarkable speed and creativity of scientists</a> and <a href="https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/guide-global-covid-19-vaccine-efforts">the benefits of collaboration across international boundaries</a> in helping us meet the unexpected. </p>
<p>Ancient Greek history and literature can help us understand the long-term social impacts of disease. They also show how fractious politics can undermine even heroic responses to public health challenges.</p>
<p>[<em>This Week in Religion, a global roundup each Thursday.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/this-week-in-religion-76/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=religion-global-roundup">Sign up.</a>]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/176182/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joel Christensen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A scholar of ancient Greek literature goes back to the account of Greek historian Thucydides on the spread of plague and finds parallels in the American response to the health crisis today.Joel Christensen, Professor of Classical Studies, Brandeis UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1749842022-02-14T11:50:47Z2022-02-14T11:50:47ZHow we made a video game based on medieval records<p>The year is 1498. The town of Aberdeen in north-east Scotland has fallen prey to a “strange sickness” that is the deadly <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20503689/">plague</a>. Disease is spreading in Europe, and people are afraid, but how can the sickness be stopped? </p>
<p>An aspiring young councillor called Robert Collison decides he must devise a way to protect the town, persuade the local governors to adopt his strategies and prevent more deaths. Can you help him succeed in slowing the strange pandemic that threatens to engulf the region?</p>
<p>This is the premise of a video game we created recently called Strange Sickness. But we are not computer game experts or designers: we are historians who based the game on our collaborative <a href="https://www.abdn.ac.uk/aro">research</a> into Aberdeen’s rich historical archive of medieval <a href="https://www.abdn.ac.uk/riiss/projects/aberdeen-burgh-records-project-97.php">burgh records</a>. </p>
<p>Setting up this experiment in merging historical records with digital storytelling, we enlisted the help of a video game designer and an artist. We learned a lot about computer games and the gaming industry, but most of all, we wanted to show that historians can offer a different type of authenticity than that marketed by popular video games seeking to transport people into recreations of the past.</p>
<p>Much of the conversation around popular historical games, such as <a href="https://www.ubisoft.com/en-gb/game/assassins-creed">Assassin’s Creed</a> and <a href="https://www.callofduty.com/uk/en/">Call of Duty</a>, is about issues of <a href="https://theconversation.com/even-in-the-colourful-world-of-video-games-most-players-demand-historical-accuracy-172307">accuracy and authenticity</a>. These games present a marketable illusion of being transported into a facsimile of the past – a facsimile which is impossible.</p>
<p>Of course we could say that of all ways of presenting history. None can recover the past, only interpret it through surviving sources. The difference with games is their promise of interactivity and immersion, to transport the player from the everyday into another world which they can shape through their choices and actions.</p>
<p>Often the approach to accuracy in games is a little ridiculous. Call of Duty games set in WWII emphasise the historical accuracy of details such as <a href="https://www.thegamer.com/call-of-duty-things-historically-accurate/">weapon design</a> while players navigate through Hollywood-style set pieces and kill hundreds of enemies. It is a peculiar form of accuracy which recreates equipment in exacting detail while allowing players, like ultra-violent superheroes, to transcend the historical setting of WWII. </p>
<p>History is not a window into the past, but something made by people looking at the past through whatever evidence survives. Rather than hiding this process behind a distracting – and potentially harmful – veneer of claims to historical accuracy, we wanted historical sources and the historian’s research process to be front and centre in Strange Sickness. We aimed for the game, as a form of history, to be perceived as our creation as historians.</p>
<p>We believed this would fit well with the culture of independent game development, with its focus on games made by smaller teams. This allows a greater focus on the style and authorship of individual creators than is normally possible in big-budget games made by huge teams of people.</p>
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<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/676265592" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="" mozallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>Game on</h2>
<p>We approached the development process with the goal of bringing players face-to-face with historical sources, rare in video games. Working with game designer Katharine Neil and artist Alana Bell, our immediate focus had to be on the practicalities of getting the game made.</p>
<p>With her experience in the games industry to the project, Katharine helped shape our ideas in relation to the mechanics, characters, locations and themes that make a narrative game work. In conversations with Alana we identified the key historical criteria for the game’s visuals while leaving space for creative freedom and the demands of the game’s design.</p>
<p>Some of our original ideas had to go. For instance, the early idea to have all text in the game linked back to an explanation of its historical provenance proved unworkable from both a technical and game design standpoint.</p>
<p>But the foundation of our approach remained. The game that emerged kept historical sources at its core. It emphasised history as something authored rather than something simply found and revealed. To offer transparency on the game’s adaptation of historical materials we created a separate <a href="https://strangesickness.com/">game website</a>, linked at the start and end of the game. This provides a historian’s commentary about how key elements of the game were adapted from historical evidence, with links to primary and secondary sources online.</p>
<p>This offers a clear pathway from the game to the underlying research and sources for players who choose to follow it. Another way to emphasise how history is created is depicted within the game itself, where the town clerk writes down what ultimately become the <a href="https://www.aberdeencity.gov.uk/services/libraries-and-archives/aberdeen-city-and-aberdeenshire-archives/collaborative-projects#1868">records which survive today</a> in Aberdeen’s city archives.</p>
<p>For us, as long as the game offered a clear link to historical research and sources, emphasising the authored nature of history, we felt free to develop a fictionalised narrative and work to the needs of game design.</p>
<p>Presenting history in this way – as a transparent process of construction from the traces of the past – is more authentic than any attempt to create or claim a facsimile of the past, no matter how much time, money and explosions are involved.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/174984/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>At the University of Aberdeen William Hepburn works on a project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. He is a director of Common Profyt Games Ltd.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>At the University of Aberdeen Jackson Armstrong receives research funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. He is a director of Common Profyt Games Ltd.</span></em></p>Authentic use of history in games is not about claims to accuracy, but about transparency.William Hepburn, Research Fellow, Department of Divinity, History, Philosophy & Art History, University of AberdeenJackson Armstrong, Senior Lecturer in History, University of AberdeenLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1754612022-02-10T16:03:10Z2022-02-10T16:03:10ZThe Black Death was not as widespread or catastrophic as long thought – new study<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/442457/original/file-20220125-15-wg6fjz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Burying Black Death Victims in Tournai, Belgium. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Blackdeath,_tourmai.jpg#/media/File:Doutielt3.jpg">Gilles Li Muisis, Annales, Bibliothèque Royal de Belgique, MS 13076-77, f. 24v.</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In popular imagination, the Black Death is the most devastating pandemic to have ever hit Europe. Between 1346 and 1353, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41576-019-0119-1">plague</a> is believed to have reached nearly, if not every, corner of the continent, <a href="https://boydellandbrewer.com/9781783275168/the-complete-history-of-the-black-death/">killing 30%-50% of the population</a>. This account is based on texts and documents written by state or church officials and other literate witnesses. </p>
<p>But, as with all medieval sources, the geographical coverage of this documentation is uneven. While some countries, like <a href="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/711596">Italy</a> or <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/great-transition/08A11B44816A641AC07B6BE36A557FD8">England</a>, can be studied in detail, only vague clues exist for others, like <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2111.02714">Poland</a>. Unsurprisingly, researchers have worked to correct this imbalance and <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvh1dr32">uncover different ways</a> for working out the extent of the Black Death’s mortality. </p>
<p>In our <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-021-01652-4">new study</a>, we used 1,634 samples of fossil pollen from 261 lakes and wetlands in 19 European countries. This vast amount of material enabled us to compare the Black Death’s demographic impact across the continent. The result? The pandemic’s toll was not as universal as currently claimed, nor was it always catastrophic. </p>
<h2>Natural archives</h2>
<p>Lakes and wetlands are wonderful archives of nature. They continuously accumulate remains of living organisms, soil, rocks and dust. These (often “muddy”) deposits can record hundreds or thousands of years of environmental change. We can tap these archives by coring them and analysing samples taken from the cores at regular intervals, from the top (present) to the bottom (past). </p>
<p>We relied on pollen analysis in our study. Because pollen grains are built of durable polymer and differ in shape between plants, they can be counted and identified in each sediment sample. These grains allow us to reconstruct the local landscape and changes over time. They shine a light on human land use and the history of agriculture. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Black and white magnified image of pollen." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/442331/original/file-20220124-13-1bc5v40.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/442331/original/file-20220124-13-1bc5v40.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442331/original/file-20220124-13-1bc5v40.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442331/original/file-20220124-13-1bc5v40.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442331/original/file-20220124-13-1bc5v40.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442331/original/file-20220124-13-1bc5v40.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442331/original/file-20220124-13-1bc5v40.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A pollen slide under the microscope at 40x magnification. By Lucrezia Masci.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For more than a century, paleoecologists – people who study past ecosystems – have been amassing data. In several world regions, the quantity of evidence available is overwhelming and certainly enough to ask questions about big historical events, like the Black Death. Did its mortality affect land use? Were arable fields turned into pasture or deserted and left to rewild? </p>
<p>If a third or half of Europe’s population died within a few years, one might expect a near collapse of the medieval cultivated landscape. By applying advanced statistical techniques to available pollen data, we tested this scenario, region by region.</p>
<p><strong>Palaeoecology and past demography</strong></p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/442253/original/file-20220124-23335-1799rzx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/442253/original/file-20220124-23335-1799rzx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=351&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442253/original/file-20220124-23335-1799rzx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=351&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442253/original/file-20220124-23335-1799rzx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=351&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442253/original/file-20220124-23335-1799rzx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442253/original/file-20220124-23335-1799rzx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442253/original/file-20220124-23335-1799rzx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Palaeoecology approach to verifying Black Death mortality.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The ecology of the Black Death</h2>
<p>We discovered that there were indeed parts of Europe where the human landscape contracted dramatically after the Black Death arrived. This was the case, for instance, in southern Sweden, central Italy and Greece. In other regions, like Catalonia or Czechia, however, there was no discernible decrease in human pressure on the landscape. In others yet, such as Poland, the Baltic countries and central Spain, labour-intensive cultivation even increased, as colonisation and agricultural expansion continued uninterrupted throughout the late Middle Ages. This means the Black Death’s mortality was neither universal nor universally catastrophic. Had it been, sediment records of Europe’s landscape would say so. </p>
<p><strong>Black Death’s demographic impact</strong></p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/442240/original/file-20220124-21-175jmlp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/442240/original/file-20220124-21-175jmlp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442240/original/file-20220124-21-175jmlp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442240/original/file-20220124-21-175jmlp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442240/original/file-20220124-21-175jmlp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=652&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442240/original/file-20220124-21-175jmlp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=652&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442240/original/file-20220124-21-175jmlp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=652&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Different scenarios of Black Death demographic impact. Colours reflect centennial-scale changes in the cereal pollen. Background map with political borders of 14th-c. Europe.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Izdebski et al., Nature Ecology & Evolution 2022</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This new narrative of a regionally variable Black Death fits well with what we know about how plague can spread to and between people, and how it can circulate in urban and wild rodents and their fleas. That plague did not equally devastate every European region should not surprise us. Not only will societies be affected and be able to respond differently, but we should not expect plague to always spread in the same way or for plague pandemics to be easily sustained. </p>
<p>Plague is a disease of <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-94-024-0890-4_5">wild rodents and their fleas</a>. Humans are accidental hosts, who are generally thought to be incapable of long sustaining the disease. Although how plague outbreaks spill out of wild rodent reservoirs and spread to and within human populations is a subject of ongoing study, in human societies we know it can spread via several means. </p>
<p>People may most often contract it through <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/plague/transmission/index.html">flea bites</a>, but once successful spillovers occur, multiple means of transmission can play a role, and so human behaviour, as well as living conditions, lifestyle and the local environment, will affect plague’s capacity to disseminate.</p>
<p>While plague transmission in the Black Death remains to be untangled, historians have tended to focus on <a href="https://direct.mit.edu/jinh/article/34/1/1/47717/Rats-Communications-and-Plague-Toward-an">rats</a> and their fleas since the early <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315654157-15/blind-men-elephant-imperial-medicine-medieval-historians-role-rats-historiography-plague-katherine-royer">20th century</a>, and to expect plague to have behaved in the Black Death in very similar ways in many places. </p>
<p>But as scholars have <a href="https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/tmg/vol1/iss1/4/">rethought</a> the pandemic’s <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/afriques/2228">map</a> and <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/new-perspectives-on-turkey/article/plague-that-never-left-restoring-the-second-pandemic-to-ottoman-and-turkish-history-in-the-time-of-covid19/AE81F48AD6FEB71C42AAA2115A0307A9">timeline</a>, we must also rethink how it spread. Local conditions would have influenced plague’s diffusion through a region and thereby its mortality and effect on the landscape. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Magnified flea" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/442461/original/file-20220125-19-r5j24s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/442461/original/file-20220125-19-r5j24s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442461/original/file-20220125-19-r5j24s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442461/original/file-20220125-19-r5j24s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442461/original/file-20220125-19-r5j24s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442461/original/file-20220125-19-r5j24s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442461/original/file-20220125-19-r5j24s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Plague-infected <em>Xenopsylla cheopis</em>.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Content Providers(s): CDC/Dr. Pratt Creation Date: 1948 (!?)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>How people lived - 75%-90% of Europeans lived in the countryside - or how much, how far and by what means they moved around, could have influenced the pandemic’s course. Patterns of grain trade, which would have helped <a href="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/711596">rats get around</a>, could have been another important factor, as could have been <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.ppat.1002160">weather</a> and <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2020.2725">climate</a> <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-55953-7">when the plague began</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/105/5/1436">Victims’</a> <a href="https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/tmg/vol1/iss1/10/">health</a> and <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277953621007863">regional disease burdens</a> were yet other variables, two also partially shaped by weather, not to mention nutrition and diet, including the <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691058917/the-great-famine">sheer availability</a> of food and how <a href="http://www.brepols.net/Pages/ShowProduct.aspx?prod_id=IS-9782503547800-1">it was distributed</a>.</p>
<h2>Pandemic lessons</h2>
<p>Our discovery of stunning regional variability in the Black Death has consequences, potentially in and beyond the study of plague’s past. It should prevent us from making quick generalisations about the spread and impact of history’s most infamous pandemic. </p>
<p>It should also change how the Black Death is used as a model for other pandemics. It may still be the “mother of all pandemics”, but what we think the Black Death was is changing. Our discovery might also prevent us from drawing easy conclusions about other pandemics, notably those less studied and with narratives based on fragmentary evidence. </p>
<p>Context matters. Economic activity can determine routes of dissemination, population density can influence how quickly and widely a disease spreads, and pathogen “behaviour” can differ between climates and landscapes. Medical and popular theories about disease causation will shape human behaviour, as trust in authorities will affect their ability to manage disease spread, and social inequalities will ensure disparities in an outbreak’s toll. </p>
<p>While no two pandemics are the same, the study of the past can help us discover where to look for our own vulnerabilities and how to best prepare for future outbreaks. To begin to do that, though, we need to reassess past epidemics with all the evidence we can.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/175461/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adam Izdebski receives funding from the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the National Science Centre (NCN), Poland. He is a member of the international Advisory Panel on Environmental History & Policy (<a href="https://cchri.princeton.edu/envhist4p">https://cchri.princeton.edu/envhist4p</a>).</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tim Newfield receives funding from the Georgetown Environmental Initiative. He is a Project Leader of the Climate Change and Research Initiative (<a href="https://climatechangeandhistory.princeton.edu/">https://climatechangeandhistory.princeton.edu/</a>).</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alessia Masi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Black Death is believed to have been the most devastating pandemic in Europe’s history. Now paleoecologists and historians have cast doubt on how bad it was.Adam Izdebski, Independent Max Planck research Group Leader, Max Planck Institute of GeoanthropologyAlessia Masi, Researcher, Palaeobotany, Sapienza University of RomeTimothy P Newfield, Professor, Environmental History and Historical Epidemiology, Georgetown UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1756542022-02-01T19:14:38Z2022-02-01T19:14:38ZVolcanoes, plague, famine and endless winter: Welcome to 536, what historians and scientists believe was the ‘worst year to be alive’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443614/original/file-20220201-24-1nqtcz0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C6%2C2122%2C1499&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s only February and already 2022 is shaping up badly. A huge volcanic eruption off the coast of Tonga, the prospect of war with Russia, the ongoing pandemic (and its economic disruptions). And that’s even before we touch on Chinese sabre-rattling over Taiwan or Sex and the City’s disastrous reboot.</p>
<p>Welcome to the New Year: as ghastly as the old one.</p>
<h2>A history of bad times</h2>
<p>I write not to make light of our world’s very real problems, but rather to put them into some perspective. 2020, 2021 and perhaps now 2022, have all been bad. </p>
<p>But they have not been worse years than, say, 1347, when the <a href="https://www.historytoday.com/archive/black-death-greatest-catastrophe-ever">Black Death</a> began its long march across Eurasia. Or 1816, the “<a href="https://scied.ucar.edu/learning-zone/how-climate-works/mount-tambora-and-year-without-summer">year without a summer</a>”. Or 1914, when the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Archduke_Franz_Ferdinand">assassination</a> of an obscure Habsburg archduke precipitated not one but two global conflicts – one of which brought about millions of deaths in the world’s most horrific genocide.</p>
<p>There have been plenty of other bad years, and decades, too. In the 1330s, famine set in and ravished Yuan China. In the 1590s a similar famine <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/famine-in-european-history/famines-in-europe-an-overview/1F2C289429D917478CA3124B1604127E">devastated Europe</a>, and the 1490s saw <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/24631803">smallpox and influenza</a> begin to work their way through the indigenous populations of the Americas (reciprocally, <a href="https://www.encyclopedia.com/science/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/appearance-syphilis-1490s">syphilis did the same</a> amongst inhabitants of the Old World).</p>
<p>Life has often been “nasty, brutish, and short”, as the political philosopher and cynic Thomas Hobbes <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3207/3207-h/3207-h.htm">observed</a> in his Leviathan in 1651. And yet historians, even now, sometimes point to one particular year as worse than the others. </p>
<p>Yes, there may have been a time within historical memory when it really was the worst hour to be alive.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443620/original/file-20220201-27-jqyvoo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443620/original/file-20220201-27-jqyvoo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443620/original/file-20220201-27-jqyvoo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443620/original/file-20220201-27-jqyvoo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443620/original/file-20220201-27-jqyvoo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443620/original/file-20220201-27-jqyvoo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=643&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443620/original/file-20220201-27-jqyvoo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=643&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443620/original/file-20220201-27-jqyvoo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=643&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Inspired by the Black Death, The Dance of Death, or Danse Macabre, an allegory on the universality of death, was a common painting motif in the late medieval period.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikipedia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>536: the worst year in history?</h2>
<p>536 is the <a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/why-536-was-worst-year-be-alive">current consensus candidate</a> for worst year in human history. A volcanic eruption, or possibly more than one, somewhere in the northern hemisphere would seem to have been the trigger. </p>
<p>Wherever it was, the eruption precipitated a decade-long “<a href="https://scitechdaily.com/volcanic-winter-ever-present-threat-of-catastrophic-supervolcano-eruptions-revealed/">volcanic winter</a>”, in which China suffered summer snows and average temperatures in Europe dropped by 2.5°C. Crops failed. People starved. Then they took up arms against each other. </p>
<p>In 541 <a href="https://www.worldhistory.org/article/782/justinians-plague-541-542-ce/">bubonic plague arrived</a> in Egypt and went on to kill around a third of the population of the Byzantine empire. </p>
<p>Even in distant Peru, droughts afflicted the hitherto flourishing <a href="https://www.worldhistory.org/Moche_Civilization/">Moche culture</a>.</p>
<p>Increased ocean ice cover (a feedback effect of volcanic winter) and a deep <a href="https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/solar-cycles/en/">solar minimum</a> (the regular period featuring the least solar activity in the Sun’s 11-year solar cycle) in the 600s ensured that global cooling continued for more than a century. </p>
<p>Many of the societies living in 530 simply could not survive the upheavals of the decades that followed. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443622/original/file-20220201-26-on5flv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443622/original/file-20220201-26-on5flv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443622/original/file-20220201-26-on5flv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443622/original/file-20220201-26-on5flv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443622/original/file-20220201-26-on5flv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443622/original/file-20220201-26-on5flv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443622/original/file-20220201-26-on5flv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443622/original/file-20220201-26-on5flv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A volcanic winter is a dramatic drop in temperatures experienced globally, in the aftermath of a massive volcanic eruption as the ash particles and gases such as sulfur dioxide, injected into the stratosphere during the eruption and spread globally by winds, blot out the sun and prevent solar energy from reaching the earth’s surface.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The new ‘science’ of climate history</h2>
<p>Historians now take a particular interest in subjects such as this because we can collaborate with scientists to reconstruct the past in new and surprising ways.</p>
<p>Only a fraction of what we know, or think we know, about what happened during such murky moments now comes from traditional written sources. We have a few for 536: the Byzantine historian Procopius <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?redir_esc=y&id=szQjAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA329&sig=ACfU3U3viCnyjDWpIekZMiXINambZi7GiA&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=portent">wrote</a> that year that “a most dread portent has taken place”, and the Roman senator Cassiodorus <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=aymsvxyyOhoC&pg=PA518&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false">noted</a> in 538 </p>
<blockquote>
<p>[…] the sun seems to have lost its wonted light and appears a bluish colour. We marvel to see no shadows of our bodies at noon and to feel the mighty vigour of its heat wasted into feebleness. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Yet the real strides in historical understanding of this “worst ever year” are emerging through application of such advanced techniques as <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/dendroclimatology">dendroclimatology</a> and <a href="https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/news/picture-climate-what-can-we-learn-ice">analysis of ice cores</a>. </p>
<p>Dendroclimatologist Ulf Büntgen <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/ngeo2652">detected</a> evidence of a cluster of volcanic eruptions, in 536, 540 and 547, in patterns of tree-ring growth. Likewise, “ultraprecise” <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/alpine-icecore-evidence-for-the-transformation-of-the-european-monetary-system-ad-640670/0727B4230C5DA92634B6251B9FBD3898">analysis of ice</a> from a Swiss glacier undertaken by archaeologist Michael McCormick and glaciologist Paul Mayewski has been key to understanding just how severe the climate change of 536 was.</p>
<p>Such analyses are now seen as important, even essential, resources in the historian’s methodological toolkit, especially for discussing periods without an abundance of surviving records.</p>
<p>Some historians – including <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691166834/the-fate-of-rome">Kyle Harper</a>, <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/288954/collapse-by-jared-diamond/">Jared Diamond</a> and <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300219364/global-crisis">Geoffrey Parker</a> – use developments in this growing field to construct whole revisionist narratives about the rise and fall of particular societies. For them, conditions on our planet are far more significant in driving our history forward than we ever realised.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/natural-disasters-are-affecting-some-of-australias-most-disadvantaged-communities-68165">Natural disasters are affecting some of Australia's most disadvantaged communities</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Coping with adversity</h2>
<p>But what was it like living through a climate-changing event such as that which began in 536? It’s a question historians continue to ponder as we sift through our sources.</p>
<p>Most of those alive in 536 probably didn’t know they had it so bad. As historians, we are prone to over-rely on anecdotal doom-laden snippets like the quotations from Procopius and Cassiodorus. </p>
<p>Yet, like the proverbial frog in boiling water, the average person back then may only have realised slowly just how grim conditions in their world were getting. The worst moment would not in fact have been in 536 but some time after – when the full effects of plagues and droughts, chills and famines had truly set in.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/175654/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Miles Pattenden has previously received research funding from the British Academy, the European Commission, and the Government of Spain.</span></em></p>Science has made a strong case for the year 536 as being one of the worst in human history, a year punctuated by volcanic eruptions, drought, famine and plague - and a year long winter.Miles Pattenden, Senior Research Fellow, Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry/Gender and Women's History Research Centre, Australian Catholic UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1702482021-11-15T14:19:49Z2021-11-15T14:19:49ZHow disease has stimulated cultural change<p>In his classic 1954 work, The Gift, the anthropologist Marcel Mauss <a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/The-Gift/">described</a> an unusual practice of gift-giving in the Māori people. People who didn’t reciprocate gifts were believed to be vulnerable to illness — and possibly death. In this way, rituals of giving and receiving were linked with beliefs about sickness, giving disease a central position in cultural interactions.</p>
<p>In modern western society, by contrast, many people view infections only as biological threats to health and wellbeing rather than essential elements of belief and cultural change. Some people expect that outbreaks of novel infectious disease are something humans <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3291401/">periodically</a> just need to deal with.</p>
<p>But disease isn’t just a threat to our lives, as the Māori example indicates. It’s an intricate and underappreciated stimulus of cultural change.</p>
<p>Diseases have had a devastating effect on human populations throughout history. If you take the history of infectious outbreaks together — from the plague of Pericles in ancient Athens to COVID today — infectious disease has killed more people than every war put together. </p>
<p>In fact, infectious diseases usually exploit the conditions created by war. During the Napoleonic wars <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736(02)11807-1.pdf">eight times</a> more people in the British army died from disease than from battle wounds. And because of the enormous threats these organisms pose, combined with a historic — and, arguably, ongoing — lack of comprehension of them, we’ve developed a huge number of rituals across cultures for responding to illness. </p>
<p>In some of our earliest recorded histories, laws surrounding disease were parts of everyday life. For example, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7817/jameroriesoci.136.1.99">among the Hittites</a>, who saw the height of their power in Anatolia (modern-day Turkey) over 3,000 years ago, incorrectly disposing of the remnants of a purification ritual used on a sick person was considered sorcery — which then, as in many cultures, was a serious offence. And today, in Bihar, India, many traditional customs linked with hygiene, such as <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2019.0433">those practised around childbirth</a>, are consistent with modern medical guidance.</p>
<p>Purification, or the removal of substances considered unclean, has also played a central role in many of our most widespread religions, including Hinduism, Judaism, and Islam — and few, if any, modern-day scientists would dispute the importance of personal hygiene for staying healthy. It’s interesting, then, that purification rituals in each of these religions have been <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1201971213001872">associated</a> with risks of infection, ranging from hookworm to herpes.</p>
<p>This highlights the potential for conflict between rituals and scientifically informed behaviour — and creates the illusion that the two are distinct. Yet rituals may develop because they can help people to thwart illness, or as the example of the Māori shows, help groups of people to better maintain social bonds. </p>
<p>It’s when the same ritualistic behaviour is adopted by people in new environments — or even when the environments the rituals are being practised in change — that they can start to harm. For example, while bathing is essential for preventing many illnesses, performing purification rituals in contaminated water sources, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/19/hindu-bodies-ganges-india-pollution-narendra-modi">such as the Ganges river</a> in India, can be extremely dangerous.</p>
<h2>Cultural mismatch</h2>
<p>Where the link between ritualistic practices and health benefits is broken, we might, following the economist Nathan Nunn, call behaviour that harms us <a href="https://www.dysoc.org/ifiles/ESS_DySoC_Nunn_slides.pdf">“cultural mismatches”</a>. And when scientific work helps us to identify these mismatches — such as bathing in contaminated waters — we should adjust our practices.</p>
<p>In each of the innumerable religions and cultures that have risen and declined over the past several millennia, beliefs and rituals requiring a huge amount of shared cultural knowledge surround our relationships with disease. People didn’t start using the centuries-old phrase “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/04/science/you-ll-catch-your-death-an-old-wives-tale-well.html">catching a cold</a>” because anyone understood germ theory, but because of a folk understanding of the circumstances under which people get sick. And in this, as well as so many other cases, modern-day scientific inquiry accords with folk understanding — highlighting just how much we can learn from the science of our ancestors.</p>
<p>The deep relationship between disease and human cultures may, lastly, give some insight into norms that surround disease and even into the dangerous behaviour we’re seeing around COVID. With trust in science low in some corners of western society, people are using unsupported methods for fighting SARS-CoV-2. Despite a lack of evidence, some people <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-51735367">have turned to</a> to garlic, vitamin D or even <a href="https://www.statnews.com/2020/06/05/cdc-misusing-bleach-try-kill-coronavirus/">bleach</a> to protect themselves.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Vitamin D supplements" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/431696/original/file-20211112-15587-1ihzpit.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/431696/original/file-20211112-15587-1ihzpit.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/431696/original/file-20211112-15587-1ihzpit.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/431696/original/file-20211112-15587-1ihzpit.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/431696/original/file-20211112-15587-1ihzpit.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/431696/original/file-20211112-15587-1ihzpit.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/431696/original/file-20211112-15587-1ihzpit.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Some people used vitamin D to protect themselves from COVID.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/vitamin-d-bottle-spilled-contents-on-188247899">Sathit/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When you think about it, this kind of reliance on unscientific — or even magical — thinking is perhaps less scientific than the behaviour we’ve recorded of the Hittites accusing others of sorcery. At least with purification rituals linked with good hygiene – and unlike with drinking bleach – the benefits, in the form of disease prevention, have almost certainly outweighed the costs.</p>
<p>Awareness of these parallels is an important tool for helping people understand that science doesn’t have to collide with ritual, and really, that science and ritual are inextricably connected. But we ought to adjust our mismatched rituals in light of science — and to abandon or update those that harm us. Uniting the study of disease with that of culture may help us better understand both.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/170248/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jonathan R Goodman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Laws and rituals surrounding disease have been part of everyday life for millennia. Here’s why that’s important.Jonathan R Goodman, PhD Candidate, Human Evolutionary Studies, University of CambridgeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1705172021-10-26T12:20:29Z2021-10-26T12:20:29ZFrom Black Death to COVID-19, pandemics have always pushed people to honor death and celebrate life<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/428355/original/file-20211025-15-rtfaio.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=3%2C0%2C2119%2C1517&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Death waits for no man – and pandemics drive the point home.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Triumph_of_Death_by_Pieter_Bruegel_the_Elder.jpg">Pieter Brueghel the Elder: 'The Triumph of Death'</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>After the last couple of Halloweens <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2020/10/04/these-37-states-have-cancelled-popular-halloween-events/42702997/">were plagued</a> by doubt and worry thanks to a global <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-do-pandemics-end-history-suggests-diseases-fade-but-are-almost-never-truly-gone-146066">pandemic with no clear end in sight</a>, Halloween 2022 may <a href="https://nrf.com/topics/holiday-and-seasonal-trends/halloween">feel especially exciting</a> for those <a href="https://theconversation.com/simple-safety-tips-for-trick-or-treating-after-fauci-greenlighted-halloween-2021-170088">ready to celebrate it</a>. Thanks to ongoing vigilance and continuing vaccination efforts, many people in the U.S. are now fortunate enough to feel cautiously optimistic after all those awful months that have passed since March 2020.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/428359/original/file-20211025-17-quhcvq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Etching from Jean-Jacques Manget 'Traite de la peste' 1721." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/428359/original/file-20211025-17-quhcvq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/428359/original/file-20211025-17-quhcvq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428359/original/file-20211025-17-quhcvq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428359/original/file-20211025-17-quhcvq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428359/original/file-20211025-17-quhcvq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1161&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428359/original/file-20211025-17-quhcvq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1161&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428359/original/file-20211025-17-quhcvq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1161&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Etching of a plague doctor in the era’s personal protective equipment.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/plague-doctor-from-jean-jacques-manget-traite-de-la-peste-news-photo/1035082756?adppopup=true">Photo 12/Universal Images Group via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://newark-rutgers.academia.edu/NUKHETVARLIK">I am a historian of pandemics</a>. And yes, Halloween is my favorite holiday because I get to wear my <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_doctor_costume#/media/File:Paul_F%C3%BCrst,_Der_Doctor_Schnabel_von_Rom_(Holl%C3%A4nder_version).png">plague doctor costume</a> complete with a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_doctor_costume#/media/File:Beak_doctor_mask.jpg">beaked mask</a>.</p>
<p>But Halloween opens a little window of freedom for all ages. It lets people move beyond their ordinary social roles, identities and appearances. It is spooky and morbid, yet playful. Even though death is symbolically very much present in Halloween, it’s also a time to celebrate life. The holiday draws from mixed emotions that resonate even more than usual during the COVID-19 era. </p>
<p>Looking at the ways survivors of past pandemics tried to celebrate the triumph of life amid widespread death can add context to the present-day experience. Consider the Black Death — <a href="https://www.medievalacademy.org/page/PandemicWebinar">the mother of all pandemics</a>. </p>
<h2>Black Death birthed a new death culture</h2>
<p><a href="https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/medieval_globe/1/">The Black Death</a> was a pandemic of plague, the infectious disease caused by the bacterium <em>Yersinia pestis</em>. Between 1346 and 1353, plague rampaged across Afro-Eurasia and killed an estimated 40% to 60% of the population. The Black Death ended, but plague carried on, making <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/npt.2020.27">periodic return visits through the centuries</a>.</p>
<p>The catastrophic effects of plague and its relentless recurrences changed life in every possible way.</p>
<p>One aspect was <a href="http://chinhnghia.com/Death%20and%20Dying%20in%20Medieval%20and%20Early%20Modern%20Europe.pdf">attitudes toward death</a>. In Europe, high levels of mortality caused by the Black Death and its recurrent outbreaks made death even more visible and tangible than ever before. The ubiquity of death contributed to the <a href="https://classic.lib.rochester.edu/robbins/death">making of a new death culture</a>, which found an expression in art. For example, images of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danse_Macabre#/media/File:Nuremberg_chronicles_-_Dance_of_Death_(CCLXIIIIv).jpg">dance of death or “danse macabre”</a> showed the dead and the living coming together.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/428343/original/file-20211025-25-w7yf47.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="skeleton takes the hand of a bishop in an etching" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/428343/original/file-20211025-25-w7yf47.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/428343/original/file-20211025-25-w7yf47.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=692&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428343/original/file-20211025-25-w7yf47.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=692&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428343/original/file-20211025-25-w7yf47.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=692&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428343/original/file-20211025-25-w7yf47.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=870&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428343/original/file-20211025-25-w7yf47.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=870&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428343/original/file-20211025-25-w7yf47.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=870&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Everyone from the poor to the powerful will eventually dance with death.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://wellcomecollection.org/works/yq6rwyat">Dance of death: death and the bishop. Etching attributed to J.-A. Chovin, 1720-1776, after the Basel dance of death. Wellcome Collection.</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Even though skeletons and skulls representing death had appeared in <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2016/04/25/middleeast/turkish-skeleton-says-relax/index.html">ancient</a> and <a href="https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2015/10/things-that-go-bump-in-the-night.html">medieval</a> art, such symbols gained renewed emphasis following the Black Death. These images epitomized the transient and volatile nature of life and the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danse_Macabre#/media/File:Dance_of_Death_(replica_of_15th_century_fresco;_National_Gallery_of_Slovenia).jpg">imminence of death for all</a> — <a href="https://archive.org/details/clevelandart-1929.161-dance-of-death-the-m">rich</a> and <a href="https://archive.org/details/clevelandart-1929.168-dance-of-death-the-p">poor</a>, <a href="https://archive.org/details/clevelandart-1929.169-dance-of-death-the-c">young</a> and <a href="https://archive.org/details/clevelandart-1929.165-dance-of-death-the-o">old</a>, <a href="https://archive.org/details/clevelandart-1922.251-the-merchant">men</a> and <a href="https://archive.org/details/clevelandart-1929.166-dance-of-death-the-c">women</a>.</p>
<p>Artists’ allegorical references to death stressed the closeness of the hour of death. Skulls and other “<a href="https://www.medievalists.net/2014/10/memento-mori-medieval-images-death/">memento mori</a>” symbols, including coffins and hourglasses, appeared in <a href="https://www.tuttartpitturasculturapoesiamusica.com/2015/08/Jan-van-Scorel.html">Renaissance paintings</a> to remind viewers that because death was imminent, one must prepare for it.</p>
<p>Bruegel the Elder’s famous “<a href="https://www.museodelprado.es/en/the-collection/art-work/the-triumph-of-death/d3d82b0b-9bf2-4082-ab04-66ed53196ccc">Triumph of Death</a>” stressed the unpredictability of death: Armies of skeletons march over people and take their lives, whether ready or not. </p>
<p>Death culture influenced the 19th-century Western European doctors who started writing about historical pandemics. Through this lens, they imagined a specific version of past pandemics — the Black Death, in particular — that one modern historian named “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00209432">Gothic epidemiology</a>.”</p>
<h2>Flawed image of Black Death emerged in 1800s</h2>
<p>The German medical historian Justus Hecker, who died in 1850, and his followers <a href="https://archive.org/details/blackdeathinfour00heck">wrote about the Black Death</a> in a dark, gloomy, emotional tone. They emphasized its morbid and bizarre aspects, such as violent <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtm005">anti-Jewish pogroms</a> and the itinerant <a href="https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/hilltopreview/vol9/iss2/5">Flagellants who whipped themselves</a> in public displays of penance. In their 19th-century writing of the Black Death, it was cast as a singular event of cataclysmic proportions — a foreign, peculiar, almost wondrous entity that did not belong to European history. </p>
<p>As it is remembered today, the dominant symbols of the Black Death – like images of uncanny <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/culture/art-and-design/what-s-behind-the-fascination-with-dancing-skeletons-20211005-p58xa1.html">dancing skeletons</a> and the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JSlrEHvv_k">Grim Reaper</a> – are products of that Gothic imagination. Ironically, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_doctor#/media/File:Paul_F%C3%BCrst,_Der_Doctor_Schnabel_von_Rom_(coloured_version).png">iconic plague doctor</a> was not a medieval phenomenon but a <a href="https://www.livescience.com/plague-doctors.html">17th-century introduction</a>. It was only then – 300 years post-Black Death – that doctors treating plague patients started wearing <a href="https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/plague-doctor-costumes">special full-body outfits and a beaked mask</a>, a precursor of modern personal protective equipment. So, sadly, my own plague doctor Halloween costume has nothing to do with the Black Death pandemic itself.</p>
<p>Even the term Black Death is a 19th-century invention; none of the medieval witnesses wrote of a “Black Death” or <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-030-72304-0_2">thought of plague as black</a>.</p>
<p>The living legacy of this Gothic epidemiology still defines scholarly and popular understanding of plague and may creep into today’s Halloween costumes and decorations.</p>
<h2>Triumph of death or celebration of life?</h2>
<p>Pandemics never mean death and suffering for all. There is strong evidence that Black Death survivors experienced <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0096513">better living standards</a> and <a href="https://www.medievalists.net/2020/07/black-death-improved-medieval-peasants/">increased prosperity</a>. Even during subsequent outbreaks, differences in class, location and gender informed people’s experiences. The urban poor died in greater numbers, for example, as the well-off fled to their countryside residences. Giovanni Boccaccio’s famous “<a href="https://www.brown.edu/Departments/Italian_Studies/dweb/texts/">Decameron</a>,” written in the immediate aftermath of the Black Death, tells the story of 10 young people who <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-rich-reacted-to-the-bubonic-plague-has-eerie-similarities-to-todays-pandemic-135925">took refuge in the countryside</a>, passing their days telling each other entertaining stories as a way to forget the horrors of plague and imminent death.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/428361/original/file-20211025-19-kzbx01.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="nobility lounge in the countryside and listen to a storyteller" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/428361/original/file-20211025-19-kzbx01.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/428361/original/file-20211025-19-kzbx01.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428361/original/file-20211025-19-kzbx01.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428361/original/file-20211025-19-kzbx01.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428361/original/file-20211025-19-kzbx01.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428361/original/file-20211025-19-kzbx01.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428361/original/file-20211025-19-kzbx01.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The characters of ‘The Decameron’ retreated and distracted themselves from death.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-decameron-private-collection-news-photo/903373326">Heritage Images/Hulton Fine Art Collection via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A later example is Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, a Habsburg ambassador to the Ottoman Empire who took refuge in the Princes’ Islands off the coast of Istanbul during a plague outbreak in 1561. <a href="https://lsupress.org/books/detail/the-turkish-letters-of-ogier-ghiselin-de-busbecq/">His memoir</a> describes how he spent his days fishing and enjoying other pleasant pastimes, even while the daily death toll in the city surpassed 1,000 for months. </p>
<p>Countless narratives testify that recurrent outbreaks of plague inspired people to find new ways to embrace life and death. For some, this meant turning toward religion: <a href="https://web.stanford.edu/class/history13/Readings/MichaelDol.htm">prayer, fasting and processions</a>. For others, it meant excessive <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-bubonic-plague-changed-drinking-habits-160840">drinking</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/quarantine-rule-breakers-in-17th-century-italy-partied-all-night-and-some-clergy-condemned-the-feasting-146473">partying</a> and <a href="https://notchesblog.com/2020/03/12/behaviour-which-merits-a-horrible-and-wretched-death-sex-sin-and-the-black-death-in-medieval-england/">illicit</a> <a href="https://inews.co.uk/opinion/sex-in-the-time-of-the-black-death-they-rushed-headlong-into-lust-419327">sex</a>. For still others, <a href="https://historycollection.com/the-remarkable-story-of-eyam-the-village-that-stopped-the-plague-of-1666/">self-isolation</a> and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/03/12/during-pandemic-isaac-newton-had-work-home-too-he-used-time-wisely/">finding comfort in one’s own company</a> did the trick. </p>
<p>No one yet knows <a href="https://www.inverse.com/culture/national-covid-19-memorial-day-may-28">how the COVID-19 pandemic</a> <a href="https://theconversation.com/will-there-be-a-monument-to-the-covid-19-pandemic-146827">will be remembered</a>. But for the moment, Halloween is the perfect occasion to play with the pandemic lesson to simultaneously celebrate life and contemplate death. </p>
<p>As you dress up in spooky costumes or decorate your home with plastic skeletons to celebrate this late capitalist holiday – yes, Halloween is now a thriving <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/275726/annual-halloween-expenditure-in-the-united-states/">US$10 billion industry annually</a> – you may find comfort thinking about how the way you feel about life and death <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-dead-danced-with-the-living-in-medieval-society-85881">connects you to those who survived past pandemics</a>.</p>
<p>[<em>The Conversation’s science, health and technology editors pick their favorite stories.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/science-editors-picks-71/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=science-favorite">Weekly on Wednesdays</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/170517/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nükhet Varlik does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Halloween, with its mix of the macabre and the playful, provides a moment to reflect on how closely life and death are interwoven – especially in the COVID era.Nükhet Varlik, Associate Professor of History, Rutgers University - NewarkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1658482021-08-11T13:20:33Z2021-08-11T13:20:33ZPlagues and classical history – what the humanities will tell us about COVID in years to come<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415482/original/file-20210810-15-1ir34g2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C4%2C991%2C661&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Greek historian Thucydides </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/statue-portrait-greek-historian-thucydides-front-718204816">Sianstock/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>After almost two years – and an extraordinary global hiatus whose impact remains as yet unclear – it is inevitable that many will write about COVID-19 for decades to come. Indeed, one of the first books – <a href="https://profilebooks.com/work/spike/">Spike</a>, by Jeremy Farrar, one of the UK’s leading scientists and a member of the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/scientific-advisory-group-for-emergencies">Sage emergency committee</a> – has just been published. As we enter a long period of reflection, arts and humanities scholarship has much to offer, especially once the intensity of scientific and medical coverage has begun to subside. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="Woman receiving COVID vaccine in her arm." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415487/original/file-20210810-17-13mhljh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415487/original/file-20210810-17-13mhljh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415487/original/file-20210810-17-13mhljh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415487/original/file-20210810-17-13mhljh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415487/original/file-20210810-17-13mhljh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415487/original/file-20210810-17-13mhljh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415487/original/file-20210810-17-13mhljh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">We’ve been very focused on vaccines.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/close-doctor-holding-syringe-using-cotton-1767084407">By BaLL LunLa/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Early on, as many of us locked down and worried about how we would emerge from the pandemic, the only chapter of any book on COVID any of us wanted to read was the one on the vaccine. Would there be one and would it work? But the technical description of this precious medical intervention in publications to come will be concise and short. The fuller story lies elsewhere.</p>
<p>The medical history of plagues is fascinating, but it is seldom the critical issue. We don’t know for sure what the Athenian plague of the fifth century BC was, or the devastating plague of the <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691166834/the-fate-of-rome">second and third century AD</a>. The plague of the sixth to eighth century AD in the Roman empire is a matter of some discussion but was probably several different infections. We know how the Black Death was spread, but it’s scarcely the most interesting thing about it.</p>
<p>What is more interesting is how people react to plagues and how writers describe their reactions. The account by the Greek historian and general, Thucydides (460-400BC), of <a href="https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1535/thucydides-on-the-plague-of-athens-text--commentar/">how the Athenians responded to their virulent plague</a> in the fifth century, directly or indirectly influenced how many later historians in antiquity described plagues. It set the pattern for a narrative of symptoms alongside social impact.</p>
<p>Athens was in the second year of what would turn into more than 20 years of conflict with its Greek rival Sparta. The plague spread rapidly and killed fast – its symptoms beginning with fever and spreading through the body. Some Athenians were dutiful in caring for others, which usually led to death, but many simply gave up, or they ignored family or the dead, or they chased pleasure of every kind in what time was left to them. </p>
<p>How far the plague changed Athens is debatable – it did not stop the war or affect Athenian prosperity. What Thucydides does say is that the loss of their great statesman Pericles (495-429BC) to the plague altered the nature of their leadership, and removed some of its moderating features. It is left implicit that the Athenians may have abandoned more of their traditional piety and respect for social norms. </p>
<p>This was the generation that would produce the most <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/classical-studies/classical-languages/intellectual-revolution-selections-euripides-thucydides-and-plato-2nd-edition?localeText=United+Kingdom&locale=en_GB&query=&remember_me=on">radical questioning</a> of the role and nature of the gods, of what we know of the world and how we should live. But it also led to <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-gb/A+New+History+of+the+Peloponnesian+War-p-9781405122511">a renewed sense of militarism and eventual catastrophe</a>: Athens’ defeat by Sparta and the loss of her empire.</p>
<h2>Pandemics and their impact</h2>
<p>The temptation is to say that pandemics change everything. The Byzantine historian Procopius (AD500-570), who survived the onset of plague in the sixth century AD, <a href="https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1536/procopius-on-the-plague-of-justinian-text--comment/">was alive to this</a>. Everyone became very religious for a while, but then as soon as they felt they were free, they went back to old behaviour. The plague was a wonderful symbol of systemic decline, but people adjust. </p>
<p>Was the Byzantine world so fatally weakened by plague and its resurgence that it was unable to resist the onslaught of the Arabs in the seventh century? This may well be partly true, but the plague significantly preceded the Arab conquest, there was as much continuity as disruption visible in their culture and city life, and the Arab world had its own pestilences. History is not so simple.</p>
<p>So what of our own pandemic? <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHrXgMbPG3E">What will it change?</a> Tempting as it is to predict a complete overturning of social behaviour, the lessons of the past would suggest that this is unlikely. The strong bonds of society have survived well. </p>
<p>Perhaps the worst consequence is how this has set back progress <a href="https://www.oecd.org/coronavirus/policy-responses/developing-countries-and-development-co-operation-what-is-at-stake-50e97915/">in the developing world</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Yellow paper cut out figure against mental health words" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415491/original/file-20210810-17-62wsyo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415491/original/file-20210810-17-62wsyo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415491/original/file-20210810-17-62wsyo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415491/original/file-20210810-17-62wsyo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415491/original/file-20210810-17-62wsyo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415491/original/file-20210810-17-62wsyo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415491/original/file-20210810-17-62wsyo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The longer-term impact on mental health and education will need good research.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/paper-man-cutout-surrounded-by-corona-1684750924">zimmytws/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>That, and long-term mental health and educational impacts across the world, are exceptionally difficult to gauge – though this will be the most studied pandemic in our history. And it will be arts and humanities scholars and social scientists who will be doing much of this incisive work – and already are. For example, <a href="https://pandemicandbeyond.exeter.ac.uk/">The Pandemic and Beyond</a> at Exeter University is already mapping more than 70 COVID-19 projects in the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s portfolio.</p>
<h2>Pandemic science</h2>
<p>So what does history tell us that is useful? Look harder and dig deeper. That’s why the history of COVID won’t just be the description of the virus and vaccine, or the mystery of whether it came from a bat or a lab. It will be the immensely complex story of how this disease intersected with our social behaviour, how we chose to respond as individuals and families, communities and politicians, nations and global agencies. </p>
<p>What the best historians from Thucydides on have told us is that the biology of disease is inextricable from the social construction of illness and health. And we also see that humans are very bad at thinking about consequences.</p>
<p>One of the most interesting potential consequences of this pandemic is the relationship between politics and science. The Athenian plague may have jolted thinkers to be more radical by questioning traditional views of life, death and the role of the gods. And the <a href="https://www.veryshortintroductions.com/view/10.1093/actrade/9780199589548.001.0001/actrade-9780199589548">Black Death</a> is often seen as gamechanging in terms of religion and philosophy, and encouraging changes to medical ethics and improvements in social care. It even <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-can-the-black-death-tell-us-about-the-global-economic-consequences-of-a-pandemic-132793">changed the balance</a> on the value of labour, but we have yet to see if our pandemic has lasting inroads into patterns of working in offices or virtually.</p>
<p>This latest pandemic has shown science at its best and most essential, but it has also placed it uncomfortably centre stage in political decision making. Alongside the much more dangerous climate crisis, the pandemic has encouraged politicians to claim to “follow the science”. But science does not speak with one voice, seldom offers easy or unequivocal answers and resists the short term. How the conversation between politics and science plays out, and what the consequences of the trade-offs may be, might yet turn out to be one of the surprises of this strangest of moments. </p>
<p>In the long run, understanding the impacts of this virus – and the wider cultural, social and economic challenges in which it is embedded – will require us to deploy a more generous and holistic view of science. Only in that way will we write the account of this pandemic that its disruptive force demands.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/165848/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher Smith is Executive Chair, Arts and Humanities Research Council and is affiliated with UKRI (UK Research and Innovation).</span></em></p>We all need to know about the science of COVID as we battle through pandemic, but the ultimate story will lie in how it changed our societies.Christopher Smith, Executive Chair, Arts and Humanities Research Council, and Professor, School of Classics, University of St AndrewsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1651062021-08-02T13:34:28Z2021-08-02T13:34:28ZHamlet: a play that speaks to pandemics past and present<p>I went to the theatre for the first time in 15 months to see the Theatre Royal Windsor’s new production of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2021/jul/21/hamlet-review-ian-mckellen-unlikely-dane-is-a-prince-of-wiles">Hamlet</a>. Starring Ian McKellen and directed by Sean Mathias, it really resonates in a time of ongoing pandemic. Mckellen’s very contemporary, teenage Hamlet slouches around in a hoodie and trackie bottoms, grieving, isolated and angry. </p>
<p>The setting, like the original, is the city of Elsinore, Denmark. In this version, COVID funerals are disrupted and truncated. Hamlet, a latterday prince, is a bisexual university student stuck at home with mum and step-dad when he wants to be back at uni in Wittenberg, hanging out with his friends and lovers. </p>
<p>Mental health issues afflict those in mourning, especially royalty. Hamlet muses “to be or not to be” as his lover, Horatio, gives the prince that most precious of things in lockdown, a haircut. Characters are overwhelmed by feelings of loss. Suicidal thoughts lurk. Denmark feels, and looks, like a prison. The government is morally corrupt.</p>
<p>Much of the play, this modern interpretation and Shakespeare’s original, speak to the circumstances and current climate in which we live. There is much in it to relate to and also learn from as our world widens and we learn to “live with the virus”.</p>
<h2>Pandemics past</h2>
<p>The spectre of plague and pandemic hung over much of Shakespeare’s life. He was born in April 1564, a few months before an outbreak of bubonic plague killed a quarter of the people in his hometown, Stratford-upon-Avon. Such pandemics <a href="https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/society/city%20life/plague.html">would recur</a> during his time in London in 1592, 1603, 1606 and then 1609.</p>
<p>When Shakespeare wrote Hamlet, usually dated around 1599-1601, feelings of grief, mourning and bereavement were probably at the forefront of his mind. His parents were very elderly by contemporary standards. Shakespeare’s father, John, died in September 1601 around 70 years of age. Five years earlier, in August 1596, Shakespeare’s son, Hamnet, had died aged 11, possibly of plague. </p>
<p>It is an uncanny coincidence that the name Hamlet is so close in sound to the name of Shakespeare’s son. The play is obsessed with fathers and sons, and how to navigate mourning a father’s death. It is full of speeches about grief and attempts to move on after bereavement. Hamlet is not alone in this as Ophelia and Laertes also suffer from unresolved grief in the play.</p>
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<p>What galvanises Hamlet out of his emotional lockdown is theatre. When he hears travelling players are in town he leaps into action. Like so many in the audience he has really missed the theatre. </p>
<p>Despite the modern dress, Sean Mathias’ production eclectically evokes the theatre practices of the troupe in Hamlet. Most obviously, casting ignores age, ethnicity and gender, something which evokes the fact that Shakespeare’s stage had young men playing women. So while <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0404993/">Jonathan Hyde</a> is realistically cast as a plausible, efficient Claudius, the teenage Hamlet is played by an 82-year-old, while <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000768/">Francesca Annis</a> who plays his elderly ghost. </p>
<h2>Pandemic theatre</h2>
<p>Lee Newby’s set design also encourages audiences to think of early modern playing conditions, transforming the Theatre Royal stage into a black metal, faux Globe theatre with two banks of seats on either side of the stage and a gallery at the back. </p>
<p>As a result, the onstage audience are clearly on display, sharing light with the performers. The mandatory face masks offer a constant reminder of COVID, while blanking out the audience’s reactions, but they also offer a reminder that Shakespeare’s playhouse had to navigate its own pandemic and often had to negotiate sudden lockdowns. </p>
<p>When the weekly plague death <a href="https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v33/n07/james-shapiro/lord-have-mercy">count reached 30</a> in Shakespeare’s time, the playhouses closed. Plague transmission was not properly understood, but it was clear that people congregating created a super-spreader event of sorts. </p>
<p>Shakespeare, a player, playwright and, most importantly of all, a shareholder in the Globe, seems to have seized the moment and written prolifically during plague lockdowns. In 1592 he was writing narrative poetry - <a href="https://www.bl.uk/treasures/shakespeare/prtshakepoems.html">Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece</a> - as plague raged. </p>
<p>The years 1603 to 1604, 1606, and 1608 to 1609 were also bad for plague, and seem to have given Shakespeare space to write. For example King Lear was performed at Whitehall Palace on Boxing Day 1606 at the end of a year of plague. From 1597 on, Shakespeare could also escape to his sprawling Warwickshire country mansion, <a href="https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/shakespedia/shakespeares-new-place/about-shakespeares-new-place">New Place</a>, one of the largest houses for miles, with at least 20 rooms.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Illustration of the original Globe Theatre." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414133/original/file-20210802-15-z74e58.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414133/original/file-20210802-15-z74e58.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414133/original/file-20210802-15-z74e58.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414133/original/file-20210802-15-z74e58.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414133/original/file-20210802-15-z74e58.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414133/original/file-20210802-15-z74e58.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414133/original/file-20210802-15-z74e58.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Globe Theatre, detail from Hollar’s View of London, 1647.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globe_Theatre#/media/File:Hollar_Long_View_detail.png">Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>By contrast, many players were desperate for any income and facing destitution. So, sometimes playhouses would reopen before the mortality rate fell to the level considered “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/sep/24/shakespeares-great-escape-plague-1606--james-shapiro">safe</a>”. The thought of what a “freedom day” was like in the early modern playhouse, with those standing (known as groundlings) pressed closely together in the yard, is perhaps even more daunting than watching people flood back now restrictions are lifted.</p>
<p>Now that so <a href="https://www.thestage.co.uk/news/theatres-can-open-at-full-capacity-from-july-19-health-secretary-confirms">many restrictions</a> have been lifted now in the UK since July 19, I am feeling very ambivalent about the shared experience of live theatre. The Theatre Royal created what feels like a very safe space and, personally, I could get used to having such a generous amount of leg room in front of me. In a COVID-secure theatre, there’s no need to get intimate with complete strangers while trying to squeeze through to your seat. </p>
<p>But after “Freedom Day”, the theatre is only insisting that masks remain mandatory for the audience onstage who are in such close proximity to the actors. The theatre will only “strongly encourage” the rest of the audience to mask up. </p>
<p>During the first decade of the 1600s, pandemic ravaged the country’s population and theatres were closed as often as they were open. This might be the case now too. Already <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-andrew-lloyd-webber-cancels-cinderella-for-the-rest-of-the-week-after-cast-and-crew-forced-to-isolate-12359271">productions have</a> had to close to isolate, including <a href="https://twitter.com/The_Globe/status/1416729463044419584">London’s Shakespeare’s Globe</a>, after positive cases among cast and crew. Maybe restrictions indoors could stave off more productions having to close. It took 30 deaths to close the playhouses in the 1600s, but now all it takes to close a theatre is one case of COVID.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/165106/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Elizabeth Schafer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As COVID restrictions ease, Ian McKellen’s take on Hamlet reminds us of how theatres dealt with similar situations during the bard’s time.Elizabeth Schafer, Professor of Drama and Theatre Studies, Royal Holloway University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1634652021-07-07T12:40:25Z2021-07-07T12:40:25Z5 digital games that teach civics through play<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/409374/original/file-20210701-25-1v5l87g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C5%2C1911%2C1072&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Fortnite players have to think about what they want to build to achieve their goals.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/whelsko/41088321270">Whelsko via Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>There is a lot of discussion in the United States about how to help people come together to solve the complex problems facing the nation and the world. </p>
<p>As a scholar of games, I see opportunities for that popular medium to contribute to this effort.</p>
<p>Games and the gaming community, especially online, are not always models of civility or civic life. <a href="https://www.adl.org/free-to-play-2020">Harassment and toxicity</a>, not to mention the spread of disinformation and conspiracy theories, are problems in some games, and in how some people play them.</p>
<p>But in addition to the cruelty in some games, there is compassion too, just as in other kinds of communities, whether school classrooms, town hall meetings or Facebook groups. For instance, a 2020 study by the Anti-Defamation League, an anti-hate organization, <a href="https://www.adl.org/free-to-play-2020">surveyed people who play online multiplayer games</a> and found that 81% of players experienced harassment, but 95% of those surveyed also had positive experiences, like finding friends and mentors and feeling like part of a community.</p>
<p>In fact, many people of all ages may be participating in civic life without even realizing it – through play. Gamers engage in debates and political discussions, take on others’ perspectives, and even protest issues about both physical and virtual worlds.</p>
<p>As I explain in my book “<a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/we-the-gamers-9780190926113?cc=us&lang=en&">We the Gamers: How Games Teach Ethics and Civics</a>,” games can help players practice important skills related to civics and public life, like communication, empathy and compassion, critical thinking and problem-solving. Here are some examples.</p>
<h2>Fortnite</h2>
<p>In the most popular mode of <a href="https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/en-US/home">Fortnite</a>, 100 players’ characters get air-dropped onto an island, where they battle until just one survivor remains. To win, players need to collect items, build shelters, find weapons and avoid bad weather.</p>
<p>The in-game goal is to kill the other players’ characters, but these other tasks help players develop strategic thinking skills like managing limited resources. These are also useful in civic problem-solving. A Fortnite player needs to think about the best places to build a shelter, when to take health potions, or how much wood and stone to stockpile, just as a community has to think about how to secure structures or store first aid supplies before a coming storm.</p>
<p>In addition, Fortnite held a series of <a href="https://www.polygon.com/2020/7/3/21312768/fortnite-we-the-people-black-lives-matter-july-4-broadcast-killer-mike">conversations on race and politics through the game</a>, hosted by political commentator Van Jones, which featured speakers like journalists Jemele Hill and Elaine Welteroth.</p>
<h2>Minecraft</h2>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/QSoJshduVNo?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">An exploration of the Dream SMP Minecraft server.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.minecraft.net/en-us">Minecraft</a> players can find and break apart bricks that yield materials they can use to craft items like tools, buildings and food. </p>
<p>There are different modes of play, like survival mode, where players need to maintain their health by finding resources, or creative mode, where players can modify the game to develop new items or activities within the game.</p>
<p>For instance, players in Minecraft may need to think about where to build or which materials to use to create a home or building, just like planners and builders in a real-world community.</p>
<p>In addition, players have used the game to engage in civic-related stories. Last year, thousands of YouTube and Twitch viewers watched Minecraft livestreamers on one particular shared virtual world. While they played Minecraft, they performed a dramatic narrative related to a fictional election for the president of a world they created, called L’Manberg. In this election, four imaginary political parties competed. The finale in January 2021 brought in <a href="https://dotesports.com/streaming/news/tommyinnit-peaks-at-over-650000-viewers-in-dream-smp-finale">over 650,000 viewers across YouTube and Twitch</a> and dealt with such issues as voter fraud.</p>
<h2>Among Us</h2>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/lUl3axF8J7k?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Highlights from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s play of Among Us.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In <a href="https://innersloth.itch.io/among-us">Among Us</a>, 10 people play together online as crewmates on a spaceship. But one or two of them are imposters who pretend to perform simulated crew duties but really sneak around and eliminate the other players from the game.</p>
<p>Players need to use communication and deliberation skills to try to figure out who the imposters are. Players mount arguments about who they think is the imposter and provide such persuasive evidence as “I saw the yellow character running from the cafeteria.” The need to share evidence and use reasoning skills and persuasive techniques provides practice at collaborating to solve group problems.</p>
<p>This game has also been used by real-world politicians to engage people: In 2020, U.S. Reps. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/games/2020/oct/22/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-ilhan-omar-among-us-twitch-stream-aoc">Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar played Among Us</a> and streamed it live on Twitch, where more than 400,000 people watched.</p>
<h2>Animal Crossing: New Horizons</h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/409372/original/file-20210701-13-5ypqek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two hands playing a mobile video game" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/409372/original/file-20210701-13-5ypqek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/409372/original/file-20210701-13-5ypqek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=351&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/409372/original/file-20210701-13-5ypqek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=351&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/409372/original/file-20210701-13-5ypqek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=351&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/409372/original/file-20210701-13-5ypqek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/409372/original/file-20210701-13-5ypqek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/409372/original/file-20210701-13-5ypqek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Animal Crossings: New Horizons lets players explore their own self-expression and connect with others.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/this-photo-taken-on-april-29-2020-shows-australian-high-news-photo/1211426084">William West/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>In <a href="https://animal-crossing.com/">Animal Crossing: New Horizons</a>, players create their own island, visit others’ islands and collect bugs, fish and other digital critters. </p>
<p>Players can design and clothe their own digital avatars, give items to other players and purchase upgrades for their homes. They need to express their identity in the game; my daughter’s in-game house has an aquatic-themed living room, while mine looks like a library. Giving gifts that fit the desires of other players requires learning their interests and perspectives.</p>
<p>Learning to express themselves and understand the needs of neighbors helps players feel part of the wider conversation about how society improves the world.</p>
<p>During their election campaign, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris created their own islands in the game, which featured <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2020/10/16/joe-biden-now-has-his-own-island-on-animal-crossing/?sh=432329207131">virtual versions of the political figures</a>, and encouraged players to vote. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals even staged a <a href="https://www.thedrum.com/news/2020/05/22/peta-storms-animal-crossing-protest-treatment-digital-animals">protest as part of the game</a>, against a digital museum that is a destination in the game, asking for the virtual tanks and exhibitions to be emptied and the digital critters to be freed.</p>
<h2>Plague, Inc.: The Cure</h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/409371/original/file-20210701-20946-1in65fx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A screenshot from Plague, Inc.: The Cure" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/409371/original/file-20210701-20946-1in65fx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/409371/original/file-20210701-20946-1in65fx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/409371/original/file-20210701-20946-1in65fx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/409371/original/file-20210701-20946-1in65fx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/409371/original/file-20210701-20946-1in65fx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/409371/original/file-20210701-20946-1in65fx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/409371/original/file-20210701-20946-1in65fx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Players can engage in a worldwide battle against a fast-spreading virus.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.ndemiccreations.com/en/news/184-plague-inc-the-cure-is-out-now-for-ios-and-android">Ndemic Creations</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Some games even help players more directly solve civic problems. In the <a href="https://www.ndemiccreations.com/en/">Plague, Inc. series</a>, gamers play as a virus, bacteria or other germ and try to spread it as much as possible. They can evolve the pathogen to spread through insects or to cause symptoms like coughing. </p>
<p>But a recent version, Plague, Inc.: The Cure, puts players in the role of fighting the outbreak, much as the world has been working to curb the COVID-19 pandemic. Players try to develop a vaccine or make policies around masking or social distancing and observe the economic and social fallout.</p>
<p>Playing games like these helps people understand complex systems and how the intersection of dynamic factors can play out in a society.</p>
<h2>What’s next?</h2>
<p>Learning skills for group problem-solving, understanding world crises, observing elected officials – those all sound like civic engagement, social action and activism, even when they’re happening in a digital game.</p>
<p>Of course, just like all public spaces and civic communities, it is important to consider whether everyone is able to participate equally. Obstacles to joining include the need to have computers or smartphones, internet access and spare time to play. The biases that shape the world also unfortunately affect games and whether people feel that they belong and can express themselves in game worlds. For instance, <a href="https://www.adl.org/designing-ourselves">designers may limit the types of hair textures</a> – such as Type 4, a tightly coiled texture rare in games – or body types players can apply to their avatars. More inclusive and equitable games may help even more people learn about and participate in civics.</p>
<p>Games may even be useful ways to explore potential changes in social, political and economic systems. Letting millions of people experiment in a digital world could provide insights identifying productive – and destructive – policies that might be adopted in the physical world. For instance, through the game <a href="https://eternagame.org">EterRNA</a>, players are already helping to <a href="https://eternagame.org/news/10811812">design new mRNA vaccines</a> that can defend against variants of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. Games may reveal flaws, opportunities and even solutions to troubling problems. </p>
<p>As Americans consider how to become more civically engaged and encourage each other to do so, digital games provide opportunities to learn, grow, explore and change – not just individually, but in terms of humanity and society as well.</p>
<p>[<em>The Conversation’s Politics + Society editors pick need-to-know stories.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/politics-weekly-74/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=politics-need-to-know">Sign up for Politics Weekly</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/163465/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Karen "Kat" Schrier receives funding from Templeton World Charity and from the Belfer Foundation for work on games and learning. </span></em></p>Games can help players practice important skills related to civics and public life, like communication, empathy and compassion, critical thinking, and problem-solving.Karen "Kat" Schrier, Associate Professor and Director of Games and Emerging Media, Marist CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1636022021-06-30T13:00:13Z2021-06-30T13:00:13ZHow women’s experience of birth during COVID-19 can help improve childbirth in future<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/409098/original/file-20210630-25-1fdsl0v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3314%2C2202&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/mother-holding-her-newborn-baby-child-585445133">Natalia Deriabina/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Over the past 15 months we have avoided hugs and handshakes, stayed at home and quarantined, and experienced important life events alone. We have been reduced to family bubbles – keeping away from friends, acquaintances and even other family members.</p>
<p>Who could forget the poignant images of the Queen sitting alone and masked at Prince Philip’s funeral in May? Many of us eagerly await the return to “normal”, yet the disruption provides an important moment to reflect on the role of companionship at critical points in our lives, such as grieving or giving birth. </p>
<p>The pandemic made pregnancy a particularly stressful time for expectant mothers, and giving birth alone became both a <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/covid-birth-pregnancy-alone-nhs-b1801118.html">fear and a reality</a>. Often a birthing partner was only admitted during the actual labour stage. Support from family members, friends and <a href="https://doula.org.uk/what-doulas-do/">“doulas”</a> – paid birthing companions who provide practical and emotional support – was strictly curtailed. For some women this made giving birth a deeply traumatic experience, undergoing a painful experience without the reassurance of any companions. </p>
<p>Yet this is not the first time in history that women have had to undergo this intense experience without support. In Defoe’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2020/apr/28/a-journal-of-the-plague-year-by-daniel-defoe-is-our-reading-group-book-for-may">A Journal of the Plague Year</a>, based on the <a href="https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/great-plague/">Great Plague of 1665</a>, the narrator laments that: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>One of the most deplorable cases in all the present calamity was that of women with child, who, when they came to the hour of their sorrows, and their pains come upon them, could neither have help of one kind or another; neither midwife or neighbouring women to come near them. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Of course there is no suggestion that women were left without appropriate medical care during the COVID pandemic, but they were certainly left without the modern equivalent of the “neighbouring women”. Despite being frequently called “gossips” these women performed a function much like a modern-day doula.</p>
<p>They too provided emotional and practical support to a woman in labour. The relationship was reciprocal, and women would act as each other’s gossip in turn, as detailed in the novel <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52725725-the-gossips-choice">The Gossips’ Choice</a>. Women often gave birth in a room filled with women including a midwife or handwoman, neighbours and female relatives. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408922/original/file-20210629-27-m77far.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woodcut engraving of a woman who has just given birth being cared for by other women." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408922/original/file-20210629-27-m77far.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408922/original/file-20210629-27-m77far.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408922/original/file-20210629-27-m77far.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408922/original/file-20210629-27-m77far.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408922/original/file-20210629-27-m77far.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=737&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408922/original/file-20210629-27-m77far.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=737&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408922/original/file-20210629-27-m77far.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=737&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Neighbouring women’ looking after a woman who has just given birth, from 1711.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://wellcomecollection.org/works/jjcba979">Wellcome Collection</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Support networks</h2>
<p>Companionship of peers, not just professionals, was considered comforting and essential during this challenging experience. Since the mid-20th century, birthing experiences have increasingly overemphasised professional relationships at the expense of this kind of social intimacy. While support networks during childbirth have changed over the years, the company of someone trusted throughout labour is a key component of respectful maternity care and provides reassurance to the mother.</p>
<p>During the 18th century it became more usual for men to be present in the birthing chamber as surgeons and physicians took more interest in obstetrics and worked as <em>“accoucheurs</em>” or male midwives, but the labouring woman would still have the companionship of her gossips.</p>
<p>From the mid-18th century, “lying-in” or maternity hospitals were founded in many western countries. But it remained the case that, during the 18th and 19th century, most working-class women would have been supported by neighbouring women both during labour and immediately afterwards.</p>
<p>As the location of childbirth shifted from the home to the hospital, these support networks were challenged and changed. By the 1960s, women giving birth in hospitals frequently found themselves <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Zp_5DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA565&lpg=PA565&dq=women+left+to+labour+alone+twentieth+century&source=bl&ots=pMEEcImkmg&sig=ACfU3U10BOaxYi0Z9nwSL3_TS0JjqgfS8A&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi40s-5n7_xAhXYQUEAHVoRBmoQ6AEwEXoECAwQAw#v=onepage&q=women%20left%20to%20labour%20alone%20twentieth%20century&f=false">left to labour alone</a> for long hours in sterile hospital environments. Birth was becoming increasingly medicalised and the professional relationship took precedence over all others.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="A woodcut engraving of a male surgeon attending a woman giving birth, from 1711." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408926/original/file-20210629-11592-12kh9bg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408926/original/file-20210629-11592-12kh9bg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=922&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408926/original/file-20210629-11592-12kh9bg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=922&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408926/original/file-20210629-11592-12kh9bg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=922&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408926/original/file-20210629-11592-12kh9bg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1158&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408926/original/file-20210629-11592-12kh9bg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1158&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408926/original/file-20210629-11592-12kh9bg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1158&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A male surgeon attends a woman giving birth, 1711.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://wellcomecollection.org/works/bthj35qq">Wellcome Collection</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This was widely considered forward-thinking and modern. While midwives checked on the mothers, often there was no birthing partner, friend or neighbourhood women present, and increasingly an obstetrician managed both pregnancy and birth.</p>
<h2>Birthing fashions</h2>
<p>History reveals how birth companionship has changed over the centuries – and even before the pandemic took hold, things were changing again. For example, over the past two decades doulas have experienced a sharp rise in popularity due to cultural shifts towards prioritising women’s experiences during birth. These shifts stemmed from <a href="https://www.nursing.upenn.edu/live/files/674-kline-background-readingpdf">birth activism</a> that began in the 1970s as part of the women’s movement and, after American midwifery was professionalised in the 1990s, doulas began to fill a gap in non-professional care. </p>
<p>From the 1970s, fathers were increasingly invited and even encouraged to participate in antenatal classes and to attend the birth. While medical advancements over the past few decades have been life-saving for more at-risk mothers and babies, something is now lacking both for those and the majority of unproblematic deliveries.</p>
<p>That “something” can be explained by the companionship that people have sought out in different times and places. COVID has challenged women’s assumptions about childbirth. Women’s experiences of labour have been ignored at a time when their fears about giving birth were heightened by the restrictions of the pandemic. Companionship could have provided calming comfort. </p>
<p>Those present during birth can make a <a href="https://www.who.int/reproductivehealth/companion-during-labour-childbirth/en/">big difference</a> to mother and infant, from providing emotional support and advocating for the mother’s preferences during labour, to decreasing the chance of postpartum depression.</p>
<p>It seems a shame that just as things were turning back towards friendly support for labouring women, the pandemic put an end to it. A mother’s desire for companionship and support from someone they trust during birth is part of the reason people pay hundreds of pounds to be attended by a doula in a hospital. It also influenced others to consider “free birth” with no medical professionals the best option under pandemic conditions.</p>
<p>We need a broader definition of what comprises an acceptable birth experience, one that includes adequate social support. COVID-19 turned childbirth into a lonely and frightening experience for many women – but it could provide the starting point for an discussion about how we improve the experience of childbirth for all women.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/163602/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Janet Greenlees has received funding from from the Wellcome Trust, ESRC, British Academy and charities. This article is not directly connected to these funded projects.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrea Ford and Sara Read do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The plight of women who had to give birth alone during the pandemic is a good starting point to discuss a better childbirth experience for all women.Janet Greenlees, Associate Professor of Health History, Glasgow Caledonian UniversityAndrea Ford, Researcher in Medical Anthropology, The University of EdinburghSara Read, Lecturer in English, Loughborough UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1619452021-06-10T14:25:35Z2021-06-10T14:25:35ZFrom the great plague to the 1918 flu, history shows that disease outbreaks make inequality worse<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/405628/original/file-20210610-19-4e9jj8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=150%2C1525%2C1983%2C1245&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Two men discover a dead body in the street during the Great Plague of London.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://wellcomecollection.org/works/v5q884pm">19th-century wood engraving. Herbert Railton/Wellcome Collection</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In May 2021, virologist Angela Rasmussen <a href="https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/05/human-tissue-preserved-world-war-i-yields-new-clues-about-1918-pandemic">reflected</a> how “if the last 18 months have demonstrated anything, it’s that we would do well to remember the lessons of past pandemics as we try to prevent future ones”. This includes ensuring we come out stronger.</p>
<p>Witnesses of past disease outbreaks can help with this. While they don’t offer definitive answers on what to do next, they warn us rising inequality is inevitable after a pandemic and needs to be actively confronted if it’s to be avoided.</p>
<p>Consider the great plague of London in 1665. As it began to abate, naval official and diarist Samuel Pepys <a href="https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1665/12/">noted</a> that his wealth had more than tripled that year, despite the terrible times many were experiencing.</p>
<p>Even so, he regretted the expense of leaving London to avoid the danger. Pepys had had to fund lodgings for his wife and maids at Woolwich and for himself and his clerks at Greenwich. His experience stood in stark contrast to those Londoners who lost their livelihoods – and the <a href="https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/education/plague.pdf">100,000</a> who died.</p>
<p>We can see the same social and economic inequalities becoming more pronounced today. Amazon’s <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-55793575">Jeff Bezos</a> and Tesla’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/15/billionaires-net-worth-coronavirus-pandemic-jeff-bezos-elon-musk">Elon Musk</a> have increased their net worth by billions of dollars during the pandemic, while many of their employees <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/12/jeff-bezos-amazon-workers-covid-19-scrooge-capitalism">have faced coronavirus risks</a> in the workplace for little extra pay.</p>
<p>Similarly, during and after the 1918 influenza outbreak – in which it’s estimated a third of the world’s population was infected and around <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1918-commemoration/1918-pandemic-history.htm">50 million people died</a> – purveyors of medicines <a href="https://exhibits.lib.unc.edu/exhibits/show/going-viral/profiting">sought to make a profit</a>. In western countries, this was accompanied by <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3867839/">panic buying</a> of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/05/1918-flu-pandemic-coronavirus-drug-trials-scientists-treatments-evidence">quinine</a> and other products for treating and avoiding the flu.</p>
<p>Today, there’s controversy as wealthy nations stockpile vaccines and promising <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7717394/">potential treatments</a>. Despite Covax being created to spread vaccines equitably, distribution has been <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-55795297">strongly in favour</a> of wealthy countries. In modern ways, we’re replicating the problems of the past.</p>
<h2>Charity increases too</h2>
<p>Yet in such crises, alongside greed and inequality there’s also the chance for acts of charity. In Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year – a fictional account of the great plague, published many years later in 1722 and written in voice of someone who lived through the event – the narrator, H.F., <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/376/376-h/376-h.htm">comments</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This misery of the poor I had many occasions to be an eyewitness of, and sometimes also of the charitable assistance that some pious people daily gave to such, sending them relief and supplies both of food, physic, and other help, as they found they wanted.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>H.F. notes that while private citizens were sending funds to the mayor to distribute, they were also taking it upon themselves to give “vast sums” to those in need.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A hall of influenza patients in bed." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/405378/original/file-20210609-14721-1e4sngw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/405378/original/file-20210609-14721-1e4sngw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405378/original/file-20210609-14721-1e4sngw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405378/original/file-20210609-14721-1e4sngw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405378/original/file-20210609-14721-1e4sngw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405378/original/file-20210609-14721-1e4sngw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405378/original/file-20210609-14721-1e4sngw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The US was keen to consign the horrors of the 1918 pandemic to the past.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Camp_Funston,_at_Fort_Riley,_Kansas,_during_the_1918_Spanish_flu_pandemic.jpg">US National Museum of Health and Medicine/Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And according to real-life accounts of the 1918 flu pandemic, this crisis also saw many <a href="https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2020/03/31/sisters-work-during-1918-flu-epidemic-seen-model-crisis-today">acts of charity</a>. Such kindnesses have also been found during this pandemic, with a surge in <a href="https://www.civilsociety.co.uk/news/donations-surged-800m-during-national-lockdown.html">charitable donations</a> and <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51908023">projects to support those in need</a>. Around the world, giving practices have become more <a href="https://ssir.org/articles/entry/household_generosity_during_the_pandemic">local and expansive</a>, and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/14/mutual-aid-coronavirus-pandemic-rebecca-solnit">mutual aid</a> – the practice of helping others in a spirit of solidarity and reciprocity – is increasing.</p>
<p>Yet such practices risk dissolving after the current crisis.</p>
<p>After the 1918 pandemic, the US <a href="https://tomdispatch.com/the-great-forgetting/">quickly forgot</a> the disease that had killed about 675,000 of its citizens. The economic boom that became known as the roaring 20s erased memories. Few social and historical memorials exist.</p>
<p>Katherine Porter’s 1939 short novel Pale Horse, Pale Rider is an exception. It describes Miranda’s experience of the 1918 outbreak, as she becomes ill and delirious with influenza, but recovers. Yet she finds that the pale rider, or death, has taken her soldier love Adam, who probably became ill from caring for her. It’s a reminder that the trauma of pandemics is deeply personal and shouldn’t be forgotten.</p>
<h2>Inequalities persist</h2>
<p>As economies today start to recover and <a href="https://www.ey.com/en_uk/growth/ey-item-club/why-the-uk-economy-looks-well-placed-for-a-post-pandemic-recover">growth is expected</a>, we need to remember both the individual suffering and social upheaval the pandemic has caused – and use this to make better decisions about moving forward. History suggests that inequalities so recently exposed and exacerbated will simply reappear again unless we make an effort to fight them.</p>
<p>Consider, for example, a long-unresolved inequality in pandemics: that women and children are especially hard hit. Defoe’s narrator H.F., when considering that poor women had to give birth alone during the plague, with no midwife or even neighbours to help, called it one of the most “deplorable cases in all the present calamity”.</p>
<p>H.F. also argued that more women and children died of the plague than records suggest, because other causes of death were recorded even when the plague was involved. The 1918 flu pandemic also hit under-fives and those aged 20-40 hardest, leaving many <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stories-from-a-past-pandemic/">infants motherless or orphaned</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A woman home-schooling her daughter" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/405639/original/file-20210610-22-15zpms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/405639/original/file-20210610-22-15zpms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405639/original/file-20210610-22-15zpms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405639/original/file-20210610-22-15zpms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405639/original/file-20210610-22-15zpms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405639/original/file-20210610-22-15zpms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/405639/original/file-20210610-22-15zpms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">As with previous pandemics, COVID-19 has had a disproportionate effect on women and children.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/side-view-mother-helping-daughter-doing-644960089">LightField Studios/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the current pandemic, mothers have too often had to give birth with far less support than desired. They have also borne a greater burden in terms of having to balance <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/05/17/upshot/women-workforce-employment-covid.html">employment, childcare and home schooling</a>. The number of children in poverty has also risen, with an estimated <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/dec/09/britains-child-poverty-exposed-by-pandemic-mps-children-commissioner">14% of British children</a> having faced persistent hunger at some point during the pandemic.</p>
<h2>Planning for the future</h2>
<p>Yet looking at the literature from the past does not mean being doomed to repeat patterns of inequality. Hopefully, it can inspire the opposite. The £20 weekly <a href="https://www.bigissue.com/latest/universal-credit-what-is-it-and-why-does-the-20-increase-matter/">universal credit uplift</a> introduced in the UK at the start of the pandemic is currently only extended until September. As we emerge from the crisis, perhaps it’s time to consider radical changes to the status quo, like <a href="https://theconversation.com/support-is-growing-for-a-universal-basic-income-and-rightly-so-161309">universal basic income</a> and heavily subsidised childcare.</p>
<p>Now is the time for policymakers and society to think big and be bold. Should we be so lucky as to have a swift and strong economic recovery as after 1918, let’s not forget that another disaster, whether a pandemic or something else, will bring the weaknesses exposed throughout history back to the fore.</p>
<p>Maybe we should not look forward to the day when normal is back, but remember the hope from early in the pandemic – that it might catalyse a new and better normal.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/161945/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Janet Greenlees has received funding from the Wellcome Trust, Economic and Social Research Council, British Academy and various charities within the US and Great Britain. This piece does not directly relate to any funded projects.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sara Read has received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. This piece does not relate to any funded project.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrea Ford does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Accounts of previous epidemics – by Samuel Pepys, Daniel Defoe and Katherine Porter – warn of mistakes that we risk repeating.Janet Greenlees, Associate Professor of Health History, Glasgow Caledonian UniversityAndrea Ford, Researcher in Medical Anthropology, The University of EdinburghSara Read, Lecturer in English, Loughborough UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1608402021-05-13T13:17:45Z2021-05-13T13:17:45ZHow the bubonic plague changed drinking habits<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/400362/original/file-20210512-22-1q1yf9u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=82%2C816%2C2129%2C1412&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Engraving of a man drinking plague water during the 1665 London outbreak.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://wellcomecollection.org/works/m8eseb2a/images?id=ddddaws6">Wellcome Collection</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Alcohol deaths in England and Wales in 2020 were the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-57008067">highest for 20 years</a>. The <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/quarterlyalcoholspecificdeathsinenglandandwales/2001to2019registrationsandquarter1jantomartoquarter4octtodec2020provisionalregistrations">Office for National Statistics</a> recorded 7,423 deaths from alcohol misuse, a 19.6% increase compared with 2019. Although this is likely to have many complex causes, data from <a href="https://analytics.phe.gov.uk/apps/covid-19-indirect-effects/">Public Health England</a> suggests that the COVID-19 pandemic and its resulting lockdowns are at least partly responsible for the increase. Largely, the disruption of work and social routines have led to a surge of hazardous drinking within the home (with some fairly <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-53807908">harrowing personal stories</a>).</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.intoxicatingspaces.org/">Intoxicating Spaces</a> project, of which I’m part, has been exploring how pandemics also influenced the use of intoxicants, including patterns of alcohol consumption, in the past. As part of this work, we’ve looked at how the <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Impact_of_Plague_in_Tudor_and_Stuart.html?id=oNkOAAAAQAAJ">successive bubonic plague outbreaks</a> that gripped England, especially London, in the 17th century (1603, 1625, 1636 and 1665) wrought similar changes in people’s drinking habits.</p>
<p>Like today, these sudden and frightening outbreaks of disease restricted access to inns, taverns, alehouses and other public drinking places – the <a href="https://boydellandbrewer.com/9781783271542/alehouses-and-good-fellowship-in-early-modern-england/">cornerstones of early-modern sociability</a>. While never subject to wholesale closure, these environments were targeted by the equivalent of social distancing legislation. A 1665 London plague order, for example, identified “tippling in taverns, alehouses, coffee-houses, and cellars” as “the greatest occasion of dispersing the plague”, and imposed a 9pm curfew.</p>
<p>The extent to which these regulations altered 17th-century people’s relationship with alcohol is difficult to determine based on surviving information. However, anecdotal evidence suggests there might have been a comparable shift towards drinking at home. </p>
<p>In his classic 1722 meditation on the 1665 London outbreak <a href="https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CW0117399741/ECCO?u=su_uk&sid=ECCO&xid=b1fb03f8&pg=1">Due Preparations for the Plague</a>, Daniel Defoe told the story of a London grocer who voluntarily quarantined himself and his family in their home for the duration of the pandemic. Among the provisions he assembled were 12 hogsheads of beer; casks and rundlets containing four varieties of wine (canary, malmsey, sack and tent; 16 gallons of brandy; and “many sorts of distill’d waters” (spirits).</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="Painting of two men standing outside a tavern while a plague cart goes by." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/400360/original/file-20210512-23-oepvk6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/400360/original/file-20210512-23-oepvk6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=788&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400360/original/file-20210512-23-oepvk6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=788&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400360/original/file-20210512-23-oepvk6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=788&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400360/original/file-20210512-23-oepvk6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=990&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400360/original/file-20210512-23-oepvk6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=990&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400360/original/file-20210512-23-oepvk6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=990&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A painting of a quarantined house during the 1665 London plague outbreak, with the signboards of public houses visible in the background.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://wellcomecollection.org/works/hjbr8cxs/images?id=db9nc58c">Wellcome Collection</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>According to Defoe, this impressive stockpile was not gratuitous but “necessary supplies”. This is because, surprisingly from the perspective of today’s public health messaging, in this period alcohol was thought to have had medicinal value and its moderate consumption during plague outbreaks was actively encouraged.</p>
<h2>Doctor’s orders</h2>
<p>Contemporary doctors and medical writers believed alcohol worked as a plague preventatives, in two main ways. </p>
<p>First, the consumption of beers, wines and spirits was believed to strengthen the body’s key defensive organs of the brain, heart and liver. They were especially beneficial when taken first thing in the morning, with many commentators recommending fortifying liquid plague breakfasts.</p>
<p>In his 1665 plague treatise, Medela Pestilentiae, minister and medical writer Richard Kephale claimed that it’s good “to drink a pint of maligo [Malaga wine or port] in the morning against the infection”. (He was also effusive on “the inexpressible virtues of tobacco”.) Many recipes for the popular “preventative” and “cure” <a href="https://rarecooking.com/2020/04/02/plague-water/">plague water</a> invariably contain wine and spirits, as well as pharmaceutical herbs.</p>
<p>Second, and perhaps more significantly, moderate drinking was believed to ward off those fearful mental states that induced melancholy (early modern terminology for depression), which was thought to make people more vulnerable to contracting the plague.</p>
<p>As Defoe put it, the grocer’s liquor hoard was not for his and his family’s “mirth or plentiful drinking”, but rather “so as not to suffer their spirits to sink or be dejected, as on such melancholy occasions they might be supposed to do”. Likewise, in his 1665 plague treatise, Zenexton Ante-Pestilentiale, physician William Simpson advocated the “drinking of good wholesome well-spirited liquor” to “make the heart merry” and “cause cheerfulness”. This would banish “many enormous ideas of fear, hatred, anxiousness, sorrow, and other perplexing thoughts”, and thereby “fortify the balsam of life against all infectious breaths”.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Engaraving of plague ridden street." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/400366/original/file-20210512-21-1onyye9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/400366/original/file-20210512-21-1onyye9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400366/original/file-20210512-21-1onyye9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400366/original/file-20210512-21-1onyye9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400366/original/file-20210512-21-1onyye9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=531&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400366/original/file-20210512-21-1onyye9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=531&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400366/original/file-20210512-21-1onyye9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=531&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Engraving of the 1665 London outbreak.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://wellcomecollection.org/works/jvvju7uv/images?id=bmwhd4zd">Wellcome Collection.</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The key thing for all of these writers was alcohol “moderately taken”. Excessive drinking to the point of drunkenness was still cautioned against, and “living with temperance upon a good generous diet” (in the words of <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/54843/54843-h/54843-h.htm">one author</a>) remained the baseline for most plague medicine. </p>
<p>However, then as now, it’s likely that the disruption of patterns of labour and leisure, along with the daily anxieties of living in a plague-stricken city, drove many to the psychological consolations of the bottle on a more dangerous and habitual basis. In <a href="https://gutenberg.org/files/376/376-h/376-h.htm">A Journal of the Plague Year</a> – Defoe’s other, more celebrated novel about the 1665 London outbreak – he tells the story of a physician who kept his “spirits always high and hot with cordials and wine”. But “could not leave them off when the infection was quite gone, and so became a sot for all his life after”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/160840/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Brown receives funding from HERA.</span></em></p>To stave off illness and melancholy, moderate drinking was advised by doctors.James Brown, Research Associate & Project Manager (UK), University of SheffieldLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1547742021-03-01T21:14:20Z2021-03-01T21:14:20ZNaples memorialized its 17th century plague with a festival for healing, and so should we after COVID-19<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/384135/original/file-20210214-19-1qkrkk1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=188%2C197%2C5703%2C3745&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Monuments are good; so are civic festivals. The 'plague column' at Piazza San Domenico Maggiore, in Naples.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Obelisco_di_San_Domenico,_piazza_San_Domenico_Maggiore_(Napoli)_01.jpg">(Mongolo1984/Wikimedia Commons)</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.google.com/maps/@40.8483993,14.2552795,3a,75y,280.66h,101.73t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sxx-yvcIB0CmlHiK3aweCqQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656">A poignant reminder of death</a> stands in Naples, where the old Roman road meets the main college street and the imposing <em>palazzos</em> step back to reveal a sun-drenched plaza. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386866/original/file-20210228-17-dn0ffz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="The San Domenico column, Naples." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386866/original/file-20210228-17-dn0ffz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386866/original/file-20210228-17-dn0ffz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386866/original/file-20210228-17-dn0ffz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386866/original/file-20210228-17-dn0ffz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386866/original/file-20210228-17-dn0ffz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386866/original/file-20210228-17-dn0ffz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386866/original/file-20210228-17-dn0ffz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The San Domenico column, Naples, shown in May 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/">(damian entwistle/Flickr)</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The spire of San Domenico — a stone obelisk topped with a <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Dominic">statue of the saint</a> — is one of Europe’s “<a href="https://daily.jstor.org/how-to-memorialize-a-plague/">plague columns</a>.” Such monuments were erected after <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/ereh/het013">devastating epidemics in the 17th century</a> to memorialize the religious figures believed to have interceded to stop the spread of disease.</p>
<p>Vienna still has the most famous one, <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/morbid-monday-plague-columns">though others survive</a>. Of the three columns standing in Naples, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4238769?seq=1">only the spire of San Domenico</a> was erected to actually commemorate a plague. As art historian Maria Ann Conelli <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/4238769">points out</a>, the column shares its form with a type of <a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/344430">temporary funeral monument</a> erected to display the coffin of a prominent citizen in baroque-era Italy. </p>
<p>As the one-year anniversary of the World Health Organization’s declaration of a global pandemic approaches (and as <a href="https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/canada-more-than-doubles-covid-19-vaccine-distribution-this-week-1.5326477">vaccination programs begin</a>), it might finally be time to consider how our modern age wants to remember this plague. </p>
<h2>End-of-plague festival</h2>
<p>Pulitzer-winning art critic Christopher Knight <a href="https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2020-05-05/coronavirus-plague-columns-memorials-trump-tower">recently suggested</a> we should build a new plague column to remember COVID-19 victims. It’s a brilliant idea. But columns take time. The spire of San Domenico, begun two years after <a href="https://wellcomecollection.org/works/cav46qt4/items?canvas=1&langCode=ita">the 1656 epidemic</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/4238769">took 79 years to complete</a>.</p>
<p>The Neapolitan civic officials of 1656 have another lesson to teach about how to remember a plague: they put together a grand celebration to mark the containment of the epidemic and help heal a wounded city. For 10 days (instead of the usual eight), beginning on Dec. 1, 1656, the city was transformed by festivities both solemn and joyous.</p>
<p>“After such calamity, and in such a short time,” <a href="https://reader.digitale-sammlungen.de/de/fs1/object/display/bsb11345118_00184.html">says a contemporary Jesuit account</a>, the city put together a celebration that was “if not the greatest, as is often said, then at least, no one can deny, one not unequal to those seen in Naples in the midst of its greatest happiness.” </p>
<p><a href="https://reader.digitale-sammlungen.de/de/fs1/object/display/bsb11345118_00007.html">This source</a>, a Jesuit text that celebrated miracles performed during the plague, had reason to put things in the best light. Yet it describes events typical of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004251830_014">Neapolitan feasts</a>, for which <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=HTtiQgAACAAJ&dq=Feste+Ed+Apparati+Civili+E+Religiosi+in+Napoli+De+Viceregno&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiC06aOi47vAhWHrp4KHZjyD6MQ6AEwAHoECAIQAQ">there are many sources</a>. </p>
<p>Painters, sculptors, musicians, the military, clergy, bureaucrats and politicians all had a role to play. As the procession moved through the streets, people worshipped before spectacular new altars and statues, and listened to musical performances and the thunder of artillery.</p>
<p>“As much a spectacle of beauty as of piety,” <a href="https://reader.digitale-sammlungen.de/de/fs1/object/display/bsb11345118_00182.html">the author wrote</a>. “Not a simple tribute, but a full triumph.”</p>
<h2>Commissioning artists</h2>
<p>The festivities began with a more sombre event on the evening of Dec. 1. The officials responsible for combating the disease, the deputies of health, <a href="https://reader.digitale-sammlungen.de/de/fs1/object/display/bsb11345118_00175.html">sat in the cathedral</a> facing a <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=vaioJXFbhS0C&pg=PA122#v=onepage&q&f=false">bejeweled</a> statue of Saint Francis Xavier as he was proclaimed protector of the city. </p>
<p>Six months earlier, as the bodies were piling up in the streets, the deputies <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=vaioJXFbhS0C&pg=PA43#v=onepage&q&f=false">had prayed to</a> him to intercede and save Naples. On that Saturday in December, the voices of four choirs resounded through the cathedral in a work of thanksgiving, the <em>Te Deum</em>. </p>
<p>“In the number and quality of singers, it was the best of the whole festival,” <a href="https://reader.digitale-sammlungen.de/de/fs1/object/display/bsb11345118_00175.html">wrote the author</a>.</p>
<p>Though the religious character of that night might seem striking today, in 1656 all civic officials in Naples professed the Roman Catholic faith and believed it was their duty to ask saints to perform miracles. In June, the Neapolitan city council had in fact <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/3046040">commissioned artist Mattia Preti</a> to paint new frescoes depicting saints to be mounted above the city’s gates in order to protect against the plague.</p>
<p>This religious zeal was just one part of a complex civic life — and struggle against an epidemic — with some bracingly familiar features.</p>
<p>There were conspiracy theories about the origins of the virus — <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=IDM1gZMr-tkC&pg=PA27#v=onepage&q&f=false">that it was</a> “artificially spread to kill the people” as vengeance for an <a href="https://www.historytoday.com/archive/masaniellos-naples-revolt-against-spain">earlier uprising</a>. There was the problem of where to bury the bodies. And there was the heartbreak <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=IDM1gZMr-tkC&pg=PA63#v=onepage&q&f=false">over shuttered</a> theatres, schools and businesses.</p>
<p>“The whole city had become a tomb,” <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=IDM1gZMr-tkC&pg=PA40#v=onepage&q&f=false">one observer recalled</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387038/original/file-20210301-17-1ujryw6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Painting of people struck by plague." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387038/original/file-20210301-17-1ujryw6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387038/original/file-20210301-17-1ujryw6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387038/original/file-20210301-17-1ujryw6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387038/original/file-20210301-17-1ujryw6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387038/original/file-20210301-17-1ujryw6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=534&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387038/original/file-20210301-17-1ujryw6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=534&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387038/original/file-20210301-17-1ujryw6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=534&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Piazza Mercatello in Naples during the plague of 1656, painting by Domenico Gargiulo.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Museo Nazionale di San Martino/Wikimedia Commons)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For the city in the shadow <a href="https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/content/this-day-history-eruption-mt-vesuvius-1631">of Mount Vesuvius</a>, the December feast must have felt like an eruption of joy. By Sunday night, the solemn religious processions gave way to “the great rejoicing of fireworks and lights.” Neapolitans were so familiar with fireworks displays from past festivals that the account of them <a href="https://reader.digitale-sammlungen.de/de/fs1/object/display/bsb11345118_00181.html">simply says</a> that they, “being of the usual sort, don’t need their own particular recounting.”</p>
<h2>Social connection, joy</h2>
<p>Today, we are all hungry to enjoy the familiar things we did before the pandemic. Neapolitans were too. As a city facing <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-us/The+Revolt+of+Naples-p-9780745607245">economic, political and religious divisions</a>, Naples celebrated these crucial festivals in order to bring together the city’s disparate parts for a few precious days. </p>
<p>Festivals admittedly served to glorify favoured Catholic saints and strengthen the viceroyalty. But they also put artists to work, fostered social connection and allowed for a brief spasm of joy. Some historians, <a href="https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/becoming-neapolitan">like John Marino</a>, emphasize the former; others, like <a href="https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9780719078224">Gabriel Guarino</a>, the latter.</p>
<p>When we’re finally ready to get back to normal after COVID-19 will we be content to mark the event with a shopping spree, a haircut and a meal? Or will we take a page from the Neapolitan playbook, updated for our pluralistic world, and come together for a (responsible, socially distanced) feast of music, fellowship and fireworks <a href="https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-event-cancellations-communication-is-key-to-retaining-public-trust-133594">that could aid social, cultural and economic</a> recovery right now? </p>
<p>Let’s commission spectacular works of music, art and sculpture, as the Neapolitans did, and prepare to revel in eight days of celebration.</p>
<p>If it goes well, we can make it 10.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/154774/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>I previously received a SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship and a University of Toronto Dünnhaupt Travel Fellowship for archival research in Naples.</span></em></p>As the one-year anniversary of the World Health Organization’s declaration of a pandemic approaches, it might be time to consider how our modern age wants to remember this plague.Keith Johnston, Adjunct Lecturer in History, Algoma UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.