Fleas 'unfairly blamed' for Black Death

For hundreds of years, they have been depicted as harbingers of death – carriers of a disease that decimated large swaths of medieval Europe. But now a new book will attempt to exonerate rats and fleas of responsibility for spreading the Black Death.

Professor Sam Cohn of Glasgow University argues that, contrary to popular belief, the virulent 14th-century epidemic bore little or no resemblance to the bubonic plague outbreaks of later centuries.

InThe Black Death Transformed: Disease and Culture in the Early Renaissance, Professor Cohn argues that, far from being spread by vermin, the Black Death was more like a 'flu bug transmitted by physical contact between people.

"There were no rats, no fleas and the epidemiology of the disease is about as different from bubonic plague as you can get," he says.

"Although very virulent, with something like a 95 per cent death rate in its bubonic form, plague spreads very slowly and inefficiently, partly because it's dependent on rodents that don't travel very far or very fast.

"Black Death spread about as fast per day as modern bubonic plague did in a year."

The Black Death broke out in 1349-50, during the reign of Edward III, rapidly spreading across Europe and claiming between a third and a half of the continent's population.

While Professor Cohn is adamant that rats and fleas have been wrongly blamed for spreading the Black Death, he says we are no nearer to knowing what caused it in the first place.