How Gerbils Killed Millions February 25, 2015
Author: Beach Combing | in : Medieval
One of the most exciting areas of plague research in the last year has been the question of what transmitted the Black Death from central Asia into the distant but well populated margins of Euro-Asia in the fourteenth century. The answer which has been patly trotted out for over a hundred years now is that a rat […]
Medieval and Ancient Rats January 18, 2012
Author: Beach Combing | in : Ancient, Medieval
One of the mysteries of the Black Death in the Middle Ages is how the victims never – with one curious Scandinavian exception – cottoned on to the fact that rodents, particularly rats were disease bearers. In some cases there were infestations of rats before the disease struck and many rats also died, which should […]
A Fifteenth-Century Interest in Scandinavian Plague Rats July 15, 2010
Author: Beach Combing | in : Medieval
The Bubonic plague was around a long time before, in 1897, scientists finally discovered what caused the illness: disease-carrying fleas on the backs of rats. Then having taken over five hundred years to work out the plague in scientific terms: these same genius […]
