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Darrera modificació: 2018-12-13
Bases de dades: Sciència.cat
Dameron, George, "Identificazione di un killer: recenti scoperte scientifiche e storiche sulla natura della peste nera", dins: Ciabattoni, Francesco - Filosa, Elsa - Olson, Kristina Marie (eds.), Boccaccio 1313-2013, Ravena, Longo (Memoria del Tempo, 48), 2015, pp. 57-70.
- Resum
- Between 1347 and 1353, the Black Death took the lives of at least one third to a half of the populations of Europe, North Africa, and West Asia. The initial consensus among scholars in the past century identified the disease as plague (Yersinia pestis). However, beginning in the 1980's, many historians and epidemiologists raised doubts about this identification, and they offered alternative explanations. Recent revolutionary advances in molecular biology and paleo-genetics have now however proven conclusively that the culprit behind the fourteenth century pandemic was indeed the plague pathogen, Yersinia pestis. This essay reviews the recent research that has finally confirmed Yersinia pestis as the cause of the disease. The fourteenth century pathogen (Yersinia pestis), differing only slightly from the contemporary genome, apparently interacted with secondary infections and deteriorating social and environmental conditions to create this devastating pandemic. Recent research now also downplays the role of the black rat in the spread of the disease, suggesting instead that the plague reservoirs were actually rodent communities in central Asia. Climate fluctuation apparently affected the size of these rodent populations, which included communities of gerbils and marmots. When their numbers collapsed, fleas sought other hosts such as humans and domestic animals. Caravans brought plague along the Silk Road to Mediterranean harbors, and Yersinia pestis thereby entered fourteenth century Europe through its maritime connections to Asia.
- Matèries
- Medicina - Pesta i altres malalties
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