FRIDAY NOVEMBER 10 2000

Tooth reveals root of Plague

FROM ADAM SAGE IN PARIS

THE bacterium responsible for the Black Death, which killed up to 30 million people in Europe in the 14th century, has been identified by a team of French scientists.

The Yersinia pestis bacterium was discovered in the tooth of a victim lying in a mass grave in the town of Montpellier, southern France, where 90 per cent of the population died at the height of La Peste Noire between 1347 and 1351.

There has been a long debate in the scientific community over the past two decades about what really was the Black Death, said Didier Raoult, professor of
medicine at the Mediterranean University in
Marseilles, who led the researchers. Some scientists said it could be haemorrhagic fever, others that it could be a form of ebola.

After trying and failing to carry out DNA tests on 600-year-old bones, M Raoult decided to use teeth. The so-called pulp tissue inside the teeth of septicaemia victims had been infected with the bacteria. And once
the bacteria is in there, there is no way it can get out again and no way it can be contaminated from another source, since the tooth is closed.

His DNA test on the Montpellier corpse settled the academic argument about the cause of the Black Death. M Raoult found Yersinia pestis, the bacterium identified in 1894 by a French doctor, Alexandre Yersin, as responsible for the plague.

It was brought back in the 13th century from the Crusades by fleas on rats. It then spread to become an epidemic by the middle of the 14th century. The researchers say it is similiar although not identical to the modern form of the plague, which still affects
40,000 people across the world every year.

Until the 19th century, all sorts of different diseases were described as the plague, M Raoult said. But this really was the plague. The doctors in the 14th century were right.
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"90% of the population"?? It's hard to imagine, never mind believe. No wonder the Plague caused such social and economic upheaval. It's also easy to see why so many people thought God was punishing them for something. Unreal.

Gwen