The Great Plague: The Story of London's Most Deadly Year

Rating:
Summary: The Human Side of Plague
Review: The word "plague" is one of the most dreaded in Europe. For over a thousand years, Europe was the victim of a series of epidemics which decimated the population. One of the last of these epidemics was the Great Plague of London in 1665 that killed probably a third of the population and left few families untouched.

Plagues are a huge subject. Even today there is little agreement between medical experts as to which pandemics were caused by Yersinia pestis (the bacillus almost certainly responsible for the 1665 plague); what was the contagiousness and morbidity of the various strains of plague; and what were all the ways that it could be transmitted to humans. Then there are all the complicated social questions to sort out: What was cause, what effect, and what coincidence? All this has to be carefully determined from the artifacts left by a largely superstitious and semi-literate society in desperate times.

The husband and wife team of Lloyd and Dorothy Moote have pooled their skills in European history and medical research to examine the human side of the Great Plague. By going back to original source materials, they have provided an intimate picture of life during the plague year that is as free as possible from the myths and misunderstandings that have grown up around the subject. Most valuably, their interpretation of events is sensitive to the knowledge and beliefs of the people at the time. This was an afflicted community only three hundred years after the Black Death - one of the world's greatest horrors - and two hundred years before scientists such as Filippo Pacini, Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch would connect disease to an "organic, living substance of a parasitic nature."

Other books on the plague have tended to concentrate on the epidemiological and political aspects of pandemics. "The Great Plague: The Story of London's Most Deadly Year" is a very welcome addition to the literature because of its careful and sympathetic treatment of the human side of plague.

Rating:
Summary: The Human Side of Plague
Review: The word "plague" is one of the most dreaded in Europe. For over a thousand years, Europe was the victim of a series of epidemics which decimated the population. One of the last of these epidemics was the Great Plague of London in 1665 that killed probably a third of the population and left few families untouched.

Plagues are a huge subject. Even today there is little agreement between medical experts as to which pandemics were caused by Yersinia pestis (the bacillus almost certainly responsible for the 1665 plague); what was the contagiousness and morbidity of the various strains of plague; and what were all the ways that it could be transmitted to humans. Then there are all the complicated social questions to sort out: What was cause, what effect, and what coincidence? All this has to be carefully determined from the artifacts left by a largely superstitious and semi-literate society in desperate times.

The husband and wife team of Lloyd and Dorothy Moote have pooled their skills in European history and medical research to examine the human side of the Great Plague. By going back to original source materials, they have provided an intimate picture of life during the plague year that is as free as possible from the myths and misunderstandings that have grown up around the subject. Most valuably, their interpretation of events is sensitive to the knowledge and beliefs of the people at the time. This was an afflicted community only three hundred years after the Black Death - one of the world's greatest horrors - and two hundred years before scientists such as Filippo Pacini, Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch would connect disease to an "organic, living substance of a parasitic nature."

Other books on the plague have tended to concentrate on the epidemiological and political aspects of pandemics. "The Great Plague: The Story of London's Most Deadly Year" is a very welcome addition to the literature because of its careful and sympathetic treatment of the human side of plague.

Rating:
Summary: Mankind's continuous fight with the microbial world
Review: Wow, talk about a depressing book.

The Great Plague is not the story of the Twentieth Century flu epidemic, or about the Black Death of the Fourteenth. It is about the bubonic plague of Seventeenth Century London during the reign of Charles II. This was the epidemic that drove Newton to return to his home town to confront the famous apple; it is the epidemic that preceded the Great Fire of 1666; it is the Pepys' Diary world.

Probably more than anything, this book, like that on the Great Fire of London, proves the value of diarists and their contemporary accounts. While the facts of the devastation could be adequately conveyed by graph and statistics alone, the emotional impact of the event can not begin to be demonstrated by numbers alone. The courage of the population at every level of society as they attempted to carry on their daily lives despite the devastation all around them was amazing. Even those who fled the city because they could afford to do so, provided financial support to those who could not. The psychological toll that months of death cost is evident in many of the diaries. Even the ever buoyant and optimistic Samuel Pepys, the civil servant's civil servant, began to show cracks in his armor.

One of the things that most impressed upon me the reality of the plague was the staggering demands for burial property. Churchyards were used and reused for single burials, and empty land around the town was used for mass graves. Just disposal of the dead became a major problem. It reminded me of the same issues that arose in the aftermath of the 1900 hurricane that hit Galveston, Texas, only this was a "hurricane" that lasted over a year and produced far more fatalities!

Another point that impressed me was the incredible competence and active involvement of James, Duke of York, the king's brother. While Charles II fled the city for safety, James remained in London to conduct both the naval war with the Dutch and to keep the city stable during the plague. He did much the same during the great fire that occurred shortly after the plague died out. He sounds like a very useful person.

As a health care practitioner myself, I found the alignments of the various elements of the health care world of the time of considerable interest. The conflict between the medical establishment, the pharmacists, the surgeons, and the herbalists during this time helped to define the hierarchy of health care as it is today. It also showed that when confronted by a pandemic of this magnitude society was pretty much helpless. That reality comes through in discussions of the flu pandemic of 1918 (for which see The Great Influenza, by John Barry) as well. With the rise of drug resistant strains of bacteria and viruses like HIV, one wonders if society will one day once again be helpless in the face of a virulent plague.