قراءات إضافية

There have been many books written about plagues and in particular about the Black Death, but most promulgate the theory that bubonic plague was responsible or are concerned with the social consequences of the pandemic.
Twigg, G. (1984) The Black Death: A Biological Appraisal, London: Batsford Academic. This was the first book to assemble the evidence and to show convincingly that bubonic plague was not responsible for the Black Death.
Shrewsbury, J. F. D. (1970) A History of Bubonic Plague in the British Isles, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. This gives a comprehensive account of the epidemics in England, although it is a rather boring read. Shrewsbury believed whole-heartedly that Yersinia pestis was responsible for the pestilence but, as a medical microbiologist, realized that this was an impossibility in many of the epidemics. His repeated attempts to rationalize the situation spoil an important compendium. A must if you want to find out about recorded plague epidemics in your local area.
We have presented a new, scientific and mathematical approach to the epidemiology in Scott, S. and Duncan, C. J. (2001) Biology of Plagues: Evidence from Historical Populations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
McNeill, W. H. (1977) Plagues and People, Oxford: Blackwell gives a general account.
An account of events during the arrival of the Great Pestilence is given in Ziegler, P. (1969) The Black Death, London: Collins.
Biraben, J. N. (1975) Les hommes et la peste en France et dans les pays Européens et Méditerraneens, Vols 1 and 2, Paris: Mouton & Co and École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. An invaluable compilation of the recorded plagues in Europe, listed by geographic area. There is a comprehensive bibliography. Biraben also gives an authoritative account of true bubonic plague at Marseille in 1720–22.
Pepys, S. (1665–1906) Diary of Samuel Pepys, London: J. M. Dent. The Great Plague of London in 1665-66 is the best documented of all the epidemics in Europe. Samuel Pepys stayed in London throughout and went about his daily business. His diary is lively and provides an invaluable eye-witness account.
Defoe, D. (1722) Diary of a Plague Year, London: Everyman’s Library. Daniel Defoe was six in 1665 and did not write his very readable story of the Great Plague until 1722. It has been criticized as being fictional, but checking against contemporary sources suggests that this is an accurate account of life during one of the terrible epidemics.
Bell, W. G. (1924) The Great Plague in London in 1665, London: John Lane. Probably the definitive account.
Creighton, C. (1894) History of Epidemics in Britain, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Creighton is the doyen of epidemiologists. Although medically qualified, his approach in this classic work, which was to provide a chronicle of death and disease in the people of the UK, was that of a professional historian and he worked with great care on his sources.
An account of the epidemic at Eyam published 30 years before Yersin’s work on bubonic plague is given by Wood, W. (1865) The History of Antiquities of Eyam, 4th edn, London: Bell and Daldy. It contains no confusing mention of rats and fleas.
The plagues of Iceland are of particular interest because they were constrained within this isolated island community and were initiated by the arrival of a single ship. Karlsson, G. (1996) ‘Plague without rats: the case of fifteenth century Iceland’, Journal of Medieval History, 22: 263–84. It would be particularly interesting to measure the frequency of the CCR5-Δ32 mutation in Iceland today.
An erudite account of plagues in the early Islamic Empire is Dols, M. W. (1977) The Black Death in the Middle East, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
The effect of the plagues in controlling the demography of Europe is covered in two of our books: Scott, S. and Duncan, C. J. (1998) Human Demography and Disease, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, and Scott S. and Duncan, C. J. (2002) Demography and Nutrition, Oxford: Blackwell.

There are many papers or books that cover specialized aspects of our story, for example:

Davis, D. E. (1986) ‘The scarcity of rats and the Black Death: An ecological history’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, XVI: 455–70.
Dyer, A. (1997) ‘The English Sweating Sickness of 1551: An epidemic anatomized’, Medical History, 41: 362–84.
Taviner, M., Thwaites, G. and Grant, V. (1998) ‘The English Sweating Sickness, 1485–1551: A viral pulmonary disease?’ Medical History, 42: 96–8.
Furness, W. (1894) The History of Penrith from the Earliest Period to the Present Time by Ewanian (William Furness), Penrith: William Furness.
Hughes, J. (1971) ‘The plague at Carlisle 1597/8’, Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society, 81: 52–63.
Longrigg, J. (1980) ‘The great plague of Athens’, History of Science, 18: 209–25.
Pfister, C. (1980) ‘The Little Ice Age: Thermal and wetness indices for Central Europe’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 10: 665–96.
Twigg, G. (1978) ‘The role of rodents in plague transmission: A worldwide review’, Mammal Review, 8: 77–110.
Twigg, G. (2003) ‘The Black Death: A problem of population-wide infection’, Local Population Studies, 71: 40–52. Covers evidence that the black rat was not present in rural England during the plague.
A detailed account of the array of newly emerging diseases in a world out of balance is given by Garrett, L. (1994) The Coming Plague, New York: Penguin Books.
Miller J., Engelberg, S. and Broad, W. (2001) Germs: The Ultimate Weapon, New York: Simon & Schuster. Comprehensive coverage of biological weapons of mass destruction and current fears of bioterrorism.