Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Conversion table for imperial to metric units
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Epidemiological concepts
- 3 The biology of bubonic plague
- 4 The Great Pestilence
- 5 Case study: the plague at Penrith in 1597–98
- 6 Pestilence and plague in the 16th century in England
- 7 Plagues in the 16th century in northern England: a metapopulation study
- 8 Plagues in London in the 17th century
- 9 Plagues in the provinces in the 17th century
- 10 Plague at Eyam in 1665–66: a case study
- 11 Continental Europe during the third age of plagues: a study of large-scale metapopulation dynamics
- 12 The plague at Marseilles, 1720–22: an outbreak of bubonic plague?
- 13 Conclusions
- References
- Index
2 - Epidemiological concepts
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Conversion table for imperial to metric units
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Epidemiological concepts
- 3 The biology of bubonic plague
- 4 The Great Pestilence
- 5 Case study: the plague at Penrith in 1597–98
- 6 Pestilence and plague in the 16th century in England
- 7 Plagues in the 16th century in northern England: a metapopulation study
- 8 Plagues in London in the 17th century
- 9 Plagues in the provinces in the 17th century
- 10 Plague at Eyam in 1665–66: a case study
- 11 Continental Europe during the third age of plagues: a study of large-scale metapopulation dynamics
- 12 The plague at Marseilles, 1720–22: an outbreak of bubonic plague?
- 13 Conclusions
- References
- Index
Summary
Any serious attempt to elucidate the identities of the infectious agents in the plagues that struck at Europe over several centuries must begin with a scientific study of their biology and characteristics so far as we can discover them – every disease leaves its fingerprints on which the epidemiologist may work. Infectious agents may be viral, bacterial or protozoan, as well as larger animals such as nematodes or helminths, but they all have one feature in common, namely that humans are their ecological niche wherein they have shelter and food and can reproduce prodigiously. However, transmission from one host to another is fundamental to the survival strategy of all infectious diseases because a host will eventually clear the infection or die and hence the arrival of a disease in an individual depends crucially on the occurrence of that disease in other members of the population (Halloran, 1998). Transmission may be direct, person-to-person (as in measles or smallpox) or indirect, involving an intermediate host (e.g., the anopheline mosquito, which transmits the protozoan parasite Plasmodium of malarial). However, zoonoses are primarily diseases of animal hosts that are occasionally transmitted to humans. Examples are Lyme disease and bubonic plague; it is important to note that events are not critically dependent on the human population in these diseases.
We found the review by Halloran (1998) invaluable when we prepared this brief overview of modern epidemiological concepts; the works by Gisecke (1994), Lilienfeld & Stolley (1994) and Last (1995) are also recommended.
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- Information
- Biology of PlaguesEvidence from Historical Populations, pp. 21 - 46Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001