A plague on mankind

Last port: The city of Marseille suffered the last major outbreak of the second plague pandemic in Europe in spite of sophisticated quarantine procedures. After heavy casualties, the epidemic was confi ned to this area and died down there. This contemporary engraving is by the artist Michel Serre (1658–1733), who distinguished himself in the city’s response to the disaster. (Photo: Robert Valette/Wikipedia.) Europe’s doom began in the Crimean peninsula with one of the earliest recorded uses of biological weapons. In 1347 CE, the Mongol army besieged the port of Caffa (today known as Feodosia), then the main Genoese trading post in the Black Sea and an important gateway between Europe and Asia. The plague ravaged the Mongol troops, but before they gave up the siege, they catapulted corpses infected with the plague into the town. Plague broke out in Caffa, and Genoese fl eeing to Italy are said to have started off the infamous Black Death epidemic which spread from Italy across the continent and killed up to half the European population in the years 1348 to 1351. From that time onwards, recurring waves of plague swept across Europe again and again, each time decimating the populations in the areas affected, and particularly in the cities, where high population density and poor sanitary conditions helped the pandemic along. After nearly four centuries, the pandemic fi zzled out in the 18th century. The last signifi cant outbreak in Europe began in Marseille in 1720. In breach of the sophisticated quarantine system of this port city based on previous experience with the plague, contaminated goods were brought ashore from a ship that was known to carry the disease, and a devastating and well-documented outbreak followed. The population was heavily decimated, with an estimated death toll of 50,000 in the city and a comparable number in surrounding towns. Yet the well-organised response succeeded in confi ning the epidemic to that area, and the plague’s devastating spread stopped there. Since then, Europe has been spared, even though a new global pandemic emerged from Hong Kong at the end of the 19th century, spread via shipping routes across the Pacifi c