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Plague in Byzantine Times: An Historical and Medical Study (Medicine in the Medieval Mediterranean)

Amazon.com Price:  $142.50 (as of 03/05/2019 07:20 PST- Details)

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Description

The aim of this study is to identify and present the outbreaks of plague in the Byzantine Empire (330-1453 A.D.) as a historical and biological phenomenon. Being multifactorial, epidemics should be approached from the standpoints of different scientific disciplines, including epidemiology, microbiology, historical demography and geography in addition to ecology. The present study offers a substantial explanation for the epidemic waves of plague that struck Byzantium by exploring the a couple of factors that caused or triggered epidemics. The epidemiological models and risk factors for a plague are diachronic, having changed very little from antiquity to Byzantium. Based on this rationale, Dr Tsiamis attempts to illustrate the temporal relationship between humans, diseases and the environment in the Byzantine era on the basis of the epidemics of plague.

The study covers all of the period extending from the beginning of the Byzantine Empire until its fall in 1453, a period which was once marked by two major pandemics, namely the Plague of Justinian and the Black Death. All known primary sources have been examined and grouped from a spatiotemporal perspective, in an effort to retrace the unfolding of the two pandemics and individual epidemic waves. The analysis of the sources raises a series of questions, principally epidemiological in nature: the entry points and spreading of the disease in the Mediterranean, the epidemic dynamics in addition to the evolution of the microbial agent of plague, i.e. Yersinia pestis. The point of interest of the research shifts from known historical frameworks to ones of human geography, endemicity and natural environment of the era as risk factors for epidemic outbreaks. The two pandemics are approached in the same way with the examination of the number of epidemic outbreaks, and the geography and duration of such outbreaks, at the side of modern molecular biology data associated with the evolution of Yersinia pestis.


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