gsvol
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Aug 22, 2008
- Messages
- 14,179
- Likes
- 11
:hi:
Just finished revises my third and final term paper for this semester and am imbibing some delicious port. Figured youtube video watching was in hand.
What degree are you pursueing if I may ask?
Wrong.
Don't chew too much.
Then what was the first bacteriological warfare event?
Are you saying you eat a lot of soup or are you telling me how to eat?
Are you implying that Muslims caused the Black Death? Are you suggesting they did such in an intentional manner?
This from the US Center for Disease Control:
Biological Warfare at the 1346 Siege of Caffa - Vol. 8 No. 9 - September 2002 - Emerging Infectious Disease journal - CDC
On the basis of a 14th-century account by the Genoese Gabriele de Mussi, the Black Death is widely believed to have reached Europe from the Crimea as the result of a biological warfare attack.
-----------------------------------
Historians generally agree that the outbreak moved west out of the steppes north of the Black and Caspian Seas, and its spread through Europe and the Middle East is fairly well documented.
------------------------------
In 1343 the Mongols under Janibeg (who succeeded Özbeg in 1340) besieged Caffa and the Italian enclave at Tana (12), following a brawl between Italians and Muslims in Tana. The Italian merchants in Tana fled to Caffa (which, by virtue of its location directly on the coast, maintained maritime access despite the siege). The siege of Caffa lasted until February 1344, when it was lifted after an Italian relief force killed 15,000 Mongol troops and destroyed their siege machines (21). Janibeg renewed the siege in 1345 but was again forced to lift it after a year, this time by an epidemic of plague that devastated his forces.
--------------------------------
In 1346, in the countries of the East, countless numbers of Tartars and Saracens were struck down by a mysterious illness which brought sudden death. Within these countries broad regions, far-spreading provinces, magnificent kingdoms, cities, towns and settlements, ground down by illness and devoured by dreadful death, were soon stripped of their inhabitants.
----------------------------------
But behold, the whole army was affected by a disease which overran the Tartars and killed thousands upon thousands every day.
-------------------------
The dying Tartars, stunned and stupefied by the immensity of the disaster brought about by the disease, and realizing that they had no hope of escape, lost interest in the siege. But they ordered corpses to be placed in catapults1 and lobbed into the city in the hope that the intolerable stench would kill everyone inside.2 What seemed like mountains of dead were thrown into the city, and the Christians could not hide or flee or escape from them, although they dumped as many of the bodies as they could in the sea. And soon the rotting corpses tainted the air and poisoned the water supply, and the stench was so overwhelming that hardly one in several thousand was in a position to flee the remains of the Tartar army. Moreover one infected man could carry the poison to others, and infect people and places with the disease by look alone. No one knew, or could discover, a means of defense.
No one knew, or could discover, a means of defense.
------------------------------------
As it happened, among those who escaped from Caffa by boat were a few sailors who had been infected with the poisonous disease. Some boats were bound for Genoa, others went to Venice and to other Christian areas. When the sailors reached these places and mixed with the people there, it was as if they had brought evil spirits with them: every city, every settlement, every place was poisoned by the contagious pestilence, and their inhabitants, both men and women, died suddenly. And when one person had contracted the illness, he poisoned his whole family even as he fell and died, so that those preparing to bury his body were seized by death in the same way. Thus death entered through the windows, and as cities and towns were depopulated their inhabitants mourned their dead neighbours. (Reproduced with permission from Horrox, pp. 1620 [4])
----------------------------
Thus it seems plausible that the events recounted by de Mussi could have been an effective means of transmission of plague into the city. The alternative, rodent-to-rodent transmission from the Mongol encampments into the city, is less likely. Besieging forces must have camped at least a kilometer away from the city walls.
-----------------------
There has never been any doubt that plague entered the Mediterranean from the Crimea, following established maritime trade routes.
----------------------
Despite its historical unimportance, the siege of Caffa is a powerful reminder of the horrific consequences when disease is successfully used as a weapon.
Tell me what you think.