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Also the site claims that immunity to Black Death may also confer immunity to AIDS - very intriguing!
These are lecture notes from Virginia Tech's Entomology Department. Some of the links here are broken, but it's a good general overview of the role the flea plays in the spread of plague. Yersinia pestis can be hosted by over 100 different animals, and people can spread it to people just as easily as rats can spread it to people. This site vilifies rats a bit, but also points out that it was black rats, not our pet Norwegian rats, that were the main hosts of the plague. There's also an emphasis on how big a role poor sanitation played in the disease's spread. Did you know that in the Midwestern US ground squirrels are a common host of the plague? Plague and Public Health in Renaissance Europe This is a fabulous site, which is still under construction, but will eventually house a collection of first-person writings from the plague years. It is interesting to note that not once in any of the documents that are here now is the word rat ever mentioned. The one spot where they might be inferred to be included is in this passage from The Florentine Chronicle by Marchione di Coppo Stefani: "And it was not just that men and women died, but even sentient animals died. Dogs, cats, chickens, oxen, donkeys, sheep showed the same symptoms and died of the same disease." Reading his account of how the people of Florence reacted to the disease and how cruelly they treated each other is very disheartening. Renaissance Rattie Tid-bits Rats saved the lives of Renaissance explorer Magellan and his crew by giving up their own. Yes, the sailors didn't pack enough food for the sea voyage to Guam and ended up dining on rats. Bet they (and the rats) wished they'd packed more hard-tack! A popular sport at Renaissance Faires is Rat Puck. Don't ask....  Go To Page: 1 2
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