The World's Deadliest Epidemics: 101 Amazing Facts

By Jack Goldstein and Frankie Taylor

For as long as humans have lived on this earth, nature has done its very best to rid the planet of us. This book not only looks back at a number of times in recorded history where the future of our very existence was put in jeopardy, but also asks whether we could survive a resurgence of these pandemics… or even an entirely new as-yet undetected threat. From the plague of Justinian, through the Black Death and Spanish flu, to the 2015/16 Zika outbreak, the authors explore how each epidemic began, spread, and threatened to wipe us out. Although at times it may be a scary read, this fascinating book takes the reader on an unmissable journey through some of the darkest and most worrying threats to mankind.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Acorn Books
• Release date: Jul 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9781785385490

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The Plague of Justinian

It is the year 541. The Roman Empire has essentially split in two, with the Eastern section known as the Byzantine Empire, its capital Constantinople (Istanbul in the modern age). Within a year or so, the empire - and especially its beautiful and amazing capital city - will be devastated. Not by war, not due to a more powerful enemy... but by plague; a plague that will eventually kill fifty million people - at the time around a quarter of the world’s entire population.

The cause of this particular pandemic is now confirmed to have been the same bacterium that was responsible for the bubonic plague. In fact, the Black Death and the Plague of Justinian share many similarities - not only in biological terms but also in the social and cultural impact that the outbreaks had on the people of the respective times.

The plague is named after the man who was the Eastern Roman Emperor at the time - Justinian I. He actually contracted the disease himself, but did not die from it. The plague did outlive him however, returning time and again until the 8th century. It is a generally accepted viewpoint that the history of Europe was completely transformed by the plague, with the balance of power shifting enormously as a direct result of its spread.

The key method of transmission - also known as the vector - was through bites from fleas carrying infected blood from black rats. Locations such as grain stores saw huge populations of rats, and therefore wherever humans lived and worked in significant numbers, rats - and therefore their fleas - were nearby.

At the plague’s peak, it was killing some five thousand people in the Empire’s capital every day - and it wasn’t just to Constantinople that the disease brought its particular brand of death. Very few locations around the eastern Mediterranean escaped, and around a quarter of the entire regions population lost their lives as a direct result of infection.

It is believed today that this particular strain of the yersinia pestis bacterium originated in China, although it was brought to Europe via Egypt. Ships carrying grain from the Middle East brought with them infected rats which quickly spread the disease via fleas to the European population. We have first-hand accounts of the plague from historians of the era such as Procopius, who tells of an epidemic hitting Pelusuim, an Egyptian port near Suez. Another comes from a church historian by the name of Evagrius Scholasticus, who actually caught the plague as a child, even displaying the buboes after which the disease is named - and yet, thankfully, survived!

Although - as with most historical epidemics - we only have estimates to go by, we have no reason to doubt the figures provided by these historians. Procopius tells us that at the plague’s height, some ten thousand people were dying every day in Constantinople. The entire city stank of death, and corpses were literally stacked high in the streets. In the end, fourty per cent of the city’s inhabitants lost their lives. The sheer number of people dying affected the empire in two distinct ways: firstly economically - tax income was severely reduced; secondly, there were simply fewer men available to fight for the empire as soldiers. Due to these combined effects, the Goths (who had almost been defeated by Justinian) saw a resurgence in strength; the Western and Eastern empires had so nearly re-joined one another, yet didn’t quite make it, meaning the Lombards could take Italy. The Saxons were able to focus their strength on conquering Britain instead of focusing on an eastern defensive position, and the Arabs were able to put up a strong fight in the Byzantine-Arab wars, whereas they would have been overwhelmed had the