The Great Plague

I watched a film called The Great Plague online the other day and I’m a microbiologist by trade, so I found it intrinsically interesting. It had been a long time since I read about our dear friend Yesinia pestis, and usually when I do it is always the same story of uncleanliness and rat vectors. Boring. It sucked that it killed 2/3 of the London population in one summer, but I could never index it relative to anything around me. Until this documentary.

It told a story of a single alleyway community where the details were meticulously kept in a journal by a local journeyman. To say the least I learned a lot from this hour of morbid internet entertainment. During the time of plague it was law that if someone in a household was symptomatic for plague, the whole household would be locked inside the house, almost sentenced to death. The doors were locked from the outside and no one was allowed in except for the death seekers and apothecaries. Now that was an interesting lot. Death seekers were the poorest of the poor, thought to be disposable, sent to see who died and to take their bodies to pits where they would be buried in a mass grave, if not incinerated.

The apothecaries were the most interesting characters in the movie. They wore what I originally thought was a Venetian style mask, this creepy thing with a long nose that you only see in period pieces or Mardis Gras. It turns out this design is based on what was known as a plague mask. Apothecaries had various ways of treating plague; a major part was burning the buboes after draining them. The long nose, logically was supposed to collect the smoke so that it never reached the face of the physician. I’m not sure if it worked, but it did remind me of the spy vs. spy characters and made me wonder what they were really supposed to represent. In addition to burning people, the apothecaries recommended that people drink intoxicating mixtures of alcohol and opium, or smoke tobacco to protect themselves against plague, especially children since they were most susceptible.

It was also amazing that during the time of plague they learned about fumigation. It was common practice to burn piles of sulfur and manure in unison around the cit to rid them of rats. Although I don’t think anything could withstand that putrid smell. It made me wonder why it was so hard to figure out that if you kept things clean, rats have nothing to feed on…

The last cool part of the movie was the Ring around the Rosie song. Originally it was explained to me that this children’s song was developed in the Middle Ages based on fairy rings. {Naturally occurring rings of poisonous mushrooms that sprout up overnight} It’s a fairly common phenomena and it was said that the song was a cautionary tail not to eat the mushrooms. Au contraire. Line by line:

Ring around the rosies: a rosie circular rash is the very first indication of plague, it then blisters and buboes appear later.

Pockets full of posies: posies were little bags filled with nicely scented items like lavender to hold over your nose in this putrid smelling situation.

ashes ashes: people were being cremated everyday

we all fall down: a huge part of the population had died due to plague.

So. Mystery solved. If you can find it online, {the link I watched it on is dead, but may be back up The Great Plague } definitely catch it. It’s quite interesting.