Overview

In recent decades, alternatives to the established bubonic-plague theory have been presented as to the microbiologcal identity and mechanism(s) of spread of historical plague epidemics. In this monograph, the six important alternative theories are intensively discussed in the light of the historical sources, the central primary studies and standard works on bubonic plague and the alternative microbiological agents, insofar as they are testable. These seven theories are incompatible and at least six of them must be untenable. In the author’s opinion, the arguments against the bubonic-plague theory and for all alternative theories are untenable. This monograph therefore also has been written also as a standard work on bubonic plague, giving a broad and in-depth presentation of the medical, epidemiological and historical evidence and the methodological tenets for identification of historical diseases by comparison with modern medical knowledge.

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9789004180024

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Reviews

En lineas generales, Benedictow articula el libro en torno a tres ejes principales. Asi, en el primero se encarga de definir las condiciones basicas para el desarrollo de la plaga bubonica en la Europa medieval, en el segundo pormenoriza las caracteristicas definitorias de la epidemia y por ultimo, una vez perfilado el cuadro de que es y que sabemos de la Peste Negra, se lanza a desmontar las teorias alternativas que han ido surgiendo en los ultimos anos, senalando sus defectos de forma y contenido. - Alberto Reche (IEM), Medievalia, 2012, No. 15, 366-368 pp.

Author Information

Ole J. Benedictow, Cand. Philol. in History (1961), University of Oslo, Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Oslo. He has published extensively on historical plague epidemics and medieval demography including The Black Death 1346-1353. The Complete History (Boydell&Brewer 2004), The Black Death and Later Plague Epidemics in Norway (in Norwegian, Unipub 2002), and The Medieval Demographic System of the Nordic Countries (Middelalderforlaget, 2nd ed. 1996).

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