A History of Bubonic Plague in the British Isles

The influence of epidemics of infectious disease on the history of civilization is one of recurring interest, and one which has yet to be comprehensively studied; indeed until our knowledge of the extent and severity of the individual epidemics has been plotted no true measure of their effects can be made. Professor Shrewsbury in this work has attempted to do just this for bubonic plague. All future historians of medical geography will be indebted to him for the painstaking way in which he has collated a mass of material into a comprehensive narrative. The story of bubonic plague is well told, almost year by year, from the time that it entered the British Isles near Weymouth in 1348, until its mysterious disappearance soon after the 'Great Plague of London' in 1665. Its distribution during the first great wave is traced diocese by diocese. With no records of deaths or burials the only guide to its effects are still the bishops' registers of the induction of the clergy into vacant benefices-parish priests in the fourteenth century seem to have moved from living to living as often as their successors of today-but more frequent inductions than the average are probably of some significance. Dr. Shrewsbury uses the term 'the great pestilence' for this period, pointing out that the modern pseudonym 'the Black Death' was first introduced to English readers by Mrs. Penrose in 1823. It is Dr. Shrewsbury's thesis that the great pestilence was not so severe as has been stated by other students of the period, and that some of the mortality may have been due to other epidemic diseases such as typhus fever. He bases this thesis on the known behaviour of the modem disease and of the vector. Plague is a summer disease most likely to become epidemic in hot weather and to die out as soon as colder weather forces Xenopsylla cheopis, the flea that carries the Bacillus pestis, to hibernate. This may be so. Some of Dr. Shrewsbury's other assumptions are more questionable. He states that plague is always worst in the young. Is it not more probable that plague is worst in that part of the population which has not developed immunity? When plague came to the British Isles after what was almost certainly an absence of centuries, would it not have affected young and old alike? Basing his observations on the habits of the rat …