A pandemic beginning in 1347 saw an estimated 75 million or one third of Europe’s population die of bubonic plague. The earlier plague of Justinian was worse still as a percentage. Between 541 and 549 AD, bubonic plague carried off around half of Europe’s population. Between 30 million and 100 million died. The Great Plague of London killed about 100,000.
Bubonic plague still exists among Central Asian marmots, and gophers in the United States. Even today, if there is an upsurge in gopher deaths, the US Parks Service closes national parks to prevent an outbreak of plague.
Starting in Central Asia around 1855, a third worldwide bubonic plague killed 16 million people. Ten million of those were in China. There, in 1910, there was a 100 per cent mortality rate at first. Rat clearances and improvements in disinfectant use reduced the next Chinese outbreak in 1920 to a 20 per cent death rate.
Coo-ee: Benalla's worst earthquake
In Hong Kong, where it arrived in 1894, the British colonial authorities clashed violently with locals over treatment methods. The British insisted on open windows in hospitals, reflecting Florence Nightingale’s theory that the disease spread by miasma or bad air. The locals believed that open windows caused fatalities.
The bacillus responsible was isolated during the Hong Kong outbreak.
This modern plague outbreak was unique in several ways. It was the first plague pandemic that reached all five continents. It struck major cities. In Honolulu, where it reached in 1899, health authorities closed the harbour and the island’s Chinatown district. While they were burning unsanitary houses, fire got out of control. Most of Chinatown was destroyed. Other citizens were forced to evacuate and quarantine.
In Sydney and Los Angeles where the plague arrived in January 1900 and 1924 respectively, there was panic. Although deaths remained few in number in Sydney and only 10 in Melbourne, dockside areas like the Sydney Rocks area were believed to harbour the disease. Authorities demanded the clearance of slums that had existed there since European settlement.
Coo-ee: The Queen visits Benalla
Under Health Acts that are still the legislative basis for mandatory masks, forced quarantine and other potentially draconian health orders in Australian states, authorities forced inhabitants out and pulled down Sydney slums.
By 1905, scientists discovered the role of rat fleas in transmitting plague. However, this did little to change quarantine regimens.
In Karachi where plague had arrived in 1898, Paul-Louis Simond injected serum into patients in an attempt to pass on immunity. The treatment sometimes worked but it sometimes killed the patient. It also fed violent Indian resistance to British colonial rule.
In Britain, there were deaths recorded throughout the period of 1901 to 1916 in four British port cities. Parts of Europe experienced plague outbreaks until 1959.
Perhaps masks are not that bad.
