New Science and Old Sources: Why the Ottoman Experience of Plague Matters

Abstract

She studies the early modern history of medicine, epidemic diseases, and the rise of public health in the Mediterranean world. She is the author of several articles and her first book, entitled Plague and Empire in the Early Modern Mediterranean World: The Ottoman Experience, 1347-1600, is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press. She is also editing a collection of articles entitled Plague and Contagion in the Islamic Mediterranean (contracted by Ashgate Press). In conjunction with this research, she teaches courses on epidemic diseases in world history, with a particular focus on plague. In her teaching, she incorporates research findings from bioarcheology, genetics, and climate history. She is the recipient of an NEH Fellowship for study at the American Research Institute in Turkey, a Senior Fellowship from Koç University's Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations, and a Turkish Cultural Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellowship. She holds a PhD from the University of Chicago.

No evidence for persistent natural plague reservoirs in historical and modern Europe

“…Our analyses, however, do not eliminate the possible existence of putative short- to medium-term reservoirs in the Mediterranean regions of Spain, Greece, Italy, and France, as well as in Central Europe in the 14th–17th centuries, and the Balkans in the 16th–19th centuries–as have been previously proposed ( 13 – 15 , 18 ). To appreciate how such putative European reservoirs might have existed for decades or even centuries, historians, archaeologists, soil scientists, and biologists need to collaborate to investigate other factors that sustained them ( 49 ). This will require exploring the complex relationships between European rodents, their fleas, and their ecologies, along with humans and their ectoparasites, as possible plague hosts and vectors after Y. pestis arrived in European ports from natural wildlife reservoirs in the East.…”

Plague Persistence in Western Europe: A Hypothesis

“…How, then, does it travel between rural areas, small market centers, and larger cities? 4 The papers by Nükhet Varlık (2014) and Michelle Ziegler (2014, both in this issue) offer detailed observations on amplifying rodent host species (Varlık) and the circumstances and locations in which flea "super-production" would have amplified flea-borne transmissions to susceptible mammals, including humans (Ziegler). Here I will direct attention to a remote region serving as habitat for a possible plague maintenance host.…”

“…Rather than focusing entirely on M. marmota, we should note the general characteristics of Alpine zones and the high meadowlands that marmots favor. Thus equally important would be the wide range of potential amplifying hosts common throughout the Alpine foothills and high massif regions of Western Eurasia, species that Varlık details in her dis-cussion of rural plague transmissions (Varlık 2014, in this issue; specifically for the western Alps, see Allainé and Yoccoz 2003 ). In particular, the southern face of the Eurasian Alpine system, linked to Mediterranean climates and ecology, bears important ecological similarities to modern areas where newly introduced plague persisted.…”

Plague Persistence in Western Europe: A Hypothesis

“…Rather than focusing entirely on M. marmota, we should note the general characteristics of Alpine zones and the high meadowlands that marmots favor. Thus equally important would be the wide range of potential amplifying hosts common throughout the Alpine foothills and high massif regions of Western Eurasia, species that Varlık details in her dis-cussion of rural plague transmissions (Varlık 2014, in this issue; specifically for the western Alps, see Allainé and Yoccoz 2003 ). In particular, the southern face of the Eurasian Alpine system, linked to Mediterranean climates and ecology, bears important ecological similarities to modern areas where newly introduced plague persisted.…”