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112  The Infamous Black Death
     May Return to Haunt Us
     The Washington Post  Saturday, August 31, 1968

     In mid-14th century, the Crimean seaport of Caffa (now called
Feodosia) was an important fortified outpost of Genoese traders.  For
the previous 50 years, Genoa had been in intermittent conflict with
Venice, and with factions of the Mongol Golden Horde. The famous Travels
of Marco Polo were written while this Venetian adventurer was a
prisoner-of-war in the hands of the Genoese.

     In the year 1346, Caffa was again besieged by the Mongols. During
this same time, a vast epidemic of bubonic plague had rapidly spread
through the Mongol empire.  In the words of Gabriel de Mussis, a 
contemporary chronicler, "The Tartars, fatigued by such a plague and 
pestiferous disease, stupefied and amazed, observing themselves dying
without hope of health, ordered cadavers placed on their catapults and
thrown into the city of Caffa, so that by means of these intolerable
passengers the defenders died widely."

     After this bacteriological attack, the survivors abandoned the
city and returned to Genoa as best they could.  By 1348, the Black
Death had devastated Europe.

     Dr. V. J. Derbes of Tulane Medical School, writing in the Journal
of the American Medical Association (April 4, 1966), pointed out
that the plague would undoubtedly have reached Europe by trade routes,
regardless of this incident.  Nevertheless, what is known of the
spread of the Black Death, starting from the Italian seaports, is 
consistent with attaching it to the return of the Genoese ships from
Caffa with a heavy cargo of infected rats and fleas.

     The Black Death raged across Europe for the next two years, and
burned itself out only after killing at least a fourth of the
population.  As the epidemic became more intense, an increasing
proportion of the cases were of the so-called pneumonic form,
being spread directly from the infected lungs of one victim via     
airborne droplets inhaled by the next -- essentially like the
common cold or the more usual forms of tuberculosis.

     Plague is still with us.  It is usually associated with tropical,
rat-infested environments, and indeed it was again killing a million 
people a year, mostly in India, at the time of World War I.  Since
World War II, vigorous rat-eradication programs have succeeded in 
holding plague deaths down to a few hundred.

     The disease has, however, gradually spread to native, wild 
rodents throughout the world, where it smolders, only to break out in an
isolated case or small epidemic of "sylvatic" or forest-living plague.
The deprivations of war, as in Vietnam, also foster new outbreaks
of plagues.

     As far as we know, these outbreaks are caused by the same bacillus
that spread the Black Death.  However, the organism does show 
considerable variation under laboratory conditions.  An epidemic of the
Black Death may have reflected the evolution of some especially 
virulent and contagious form of the bacillus. Fortunately, streptomycin 
and a few other antibiotics are remarkably effective.

     Nevertheless, human ingenuity is quite capable of wasting the
good fortune of the human species.  Mutant strains of the bacillus
that are indifferent to antibiotic therapy are easily cultured.

     The potential of plague for biological warfare (BW) is obvious
in the light of the historic precedents.  Any intelligent program of
BW research, especially if its main mission were "defensive," would
have to develop aggressive, drug-resistant bacilli in order to
evaluate them as a military threat.  BW research must also be 
concerned with the factors that encourage the airborne spread of 
pneumonic plague.  There is no evident way in which basic knowledge of
such phenomena can be denied to the most impoverished,
psychotically hostile nations or even individuals.

     The Black Death of 1346 probably could have been contained with
the resources of modern medicine.  When hostile bacilli have been 
augmented by human intelligence, however, any confidence that they can
be contained is a delusion.  

     The disastrous course of present-day Soviet militarism makes it
vastly harder to attempt a world settlement for the surveillance and
control of BW agents.  But BW can add nothing to the strategic power
of nuclear-armed states.  If in nothing else, we should be able to
find a common cause in protecting ourselves from a recurrence of 
pestilence.  Or must we console ourselves with the recollection that the
Black Death helped pave the way to the Renaissance?


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