The Power of Plagues. Irwin W. Sherman

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The Power of Plagues - Irwin W. Sherman


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in the process wool barons. The smaller labor force in the cities led to their having a stronger negotiating position, and so there was a need to pay higher wages; as a consequence, there was an improvement in the standard of living. Many individuals, however, fled the cities and moved to the country, and there the survivors were induced by landowners to harvest the crops by the provision of higher wages. The standard of living among the urban and rural populations improved, and the laboring classes became more mobile. The Black Death was thus a contributing factor in altering the social and economic structure in England, and by the 16th century landlord and serf ceased to exist, although feudalism did linger for several more centuries in continental Europe.

      Another was to employ an economy of scale in sea- and oceangoing transport vessels. Bigger ships with smaller crews could remain at sea for longer periods of time and would be able to sail directly from port to port, but this would require better ship construction, improvements in navigational instruments, and new business enterprises such as maritime insurance to protect the investment in cargo and the ship. As a consequence, merchants such as bankers and craftsmen became more powerful. The new economy became more diversified, there was a more intensive use of capital, technological innovations became more and more important, and there was a greater redistribution of wealth. In time the aristocracy found it had to yield power to the masses. The social and economic fabric of Europe began to be altered, and it was the Black Death that instigated such change.

      Finding the Killer

      As plague raged through medieval Europe, it became increasingly apparent that this disease was contagious. Even if Fracastoro’s idea of “seeds of contagion” was accepted, however, at this time there would still be no means to identify precisely the causative agent. Identifying the “seed” would not only require a technological innovation; it would also require a change in the concept of infectious (contagious) diseases. Three centuries after Fracastoro’s theory of contagion, the concept that disease could result from the invasion of the body by microbes or germs—the germ theory of disease—was established. And with a 17th-century technological innovation, the microscope, it was actually possible for humans to see germs! Two schools of thought, one in France under the leadership of Louis Pasteur (1882-1895) and the other in Germany, led by Robert Koch (1843-1910), were responsible for firmly grounding the germ theory, and for all of their lives these two microbe hunters remained fierce competitors (see p. 418).

      Finding the Vector

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