The medieval Black Death: analysis of the demographic, health, and social consequences of a historic emerging disease

Sharon DeWitte博士（南卡罗莱纳大学）将调查黑死病（约1347-1351年），这是一种由导致现代黑死病的病原体引起的毁灭性疾病。黑死病是历史上最重要的新兴传染病之一，这类疾病至今仍是公共卫生的主要威胁。这项为期三年的研究将使用在伦敦黑死病之前，期间和之后死亡的人的骨骼遗骸。它将解决黑死病出现的原因，流行病的选择性死亡如何与流行病后生活水平的提高相结合，在幸存人口中形成健康和人口模式，以及鼠疫流行病学如何随着时间的推移而变化。本项目将对1920具骨架进行危害分析。黑死病前的死亡率和健康模式将揭示在流行之前人口是否变得越来越不健康。黑死病后的样本将被分析，以确定幸存的人群是否面临更低的死亡风险，寿命更长，更健康。该项目还将揭示鼠疫流行病学的短期变化，这些变化可能是由于人类宿主或病原体的变化而发生的。这个项目很重要，因为它将提高对中世纪瘟疫的理解，更广泛地说，是对新出现的疾病动态的理解。研究这些疾病对于理解现代人类生物学、人口学和文化至关重要，因为它们具有塑造人口和推动人类进化的力量。了解影响疾病出现、流行病学和人类疾病经历的社会、政治和经济过程，并扩大此类调查的时间范围，也很重要。过去对新出现疾病的评估也有利于优先为研究现代新出现疾病和在生活人群中制定监测和预防措施提供资金的努力。

Dr. Sharon DeWitte (University of South Carolina) will investigate the Black Death (c. 1347-1351), a devastating disease that was caused by the pathogen responsible for modern bubonic plague. The Black Death was one of the most important emerging infectious diseases in history, and such diseases are still major threats to public health today. This three-year study will be done using the skeletal remains of people who died just before, during, and after the Black Death in London. It will address the questions of why the Black Death emerged when it did, how the selective mortality of the epidemic in combination with post-epidemic rising standards of living shaped health and demographic patterns within the surviving population, and how plague epidemiology changed over time.This project will use hazard analysis of 1920 skeletons. Mortality and health patterns in the pre-Black Death period will reveal whether the population was becoming increasingly unhealthy before the epidemic. The post-Black Death samples will be analyzed to determine whether the surviving population faced lower risks of mortality, lived longer, and was healthier. This project will also reveal short-term changes in plague epidemiology that might have occurred because of changes in the human host or the pathogen. This project is important because it will improve understanding of medieval plague and, more generally, emerging disease dynamics. Investigating these diseases is vital to understanding modern human biology, demography, and culture given their power to shape populations and drive human evolution. It is also important to understand the social, political, and economic processes that affect the emergence, epidemiology, and human experience of disease, and to expand the temporal scope of such inquiries. Assessment of emerging diseases in the past can also benefit efforts to prioritize funding for studying modern emerging diseases and for enacting surveillance and preventative measures in living populations.