third plague pandemic

The bubonic plague was endemic in populations of infected ground rodents in Central Asia and was a known cause of death among the migrant and established human populations in that region for centuries. An influx of new people because of political conflicts and global trade led to the spread of the disease throughout the world from Asia to the rest of Europe, to reach Africa and the Americas.{{citation needed|date=December 2020}}

A natural reservoir or nidus for plague is in western Yunnan: it is still a health risk. The third pandemic of plague originated in the area after a rapid influx of Han Chinese to exploit the demand for minerals, primarily copper, in the second half of the 19th century.{{cite book|last1=Benedict|first1=Carol|title=Bubonic plague in eighteenth-century China|date=1996|publisher=Stanford Univ. Press|location=Stanford, CA|isbn=978-0804726610|pages=[https://archive.org/details/bubonicplagueinn00bene/page/47 47, 70]|url=https://archive.org/details/bubonicplagueinn00bene/page/47}} By 1850, the population had exploded to over 7 million people. Increasing transportation throughout the region brought people in contact with plague-infected fleas, the primary vector between the yellow-breasted or buff-breasted rat (Rattus flavipectus){{cite journal | last=Mei-Wen | first=ZHANG | last2=Cong | first2=GUO | last3=Yong | first3=WANG | last4=Zhong-Jun | first4=HU | last5=An-Guo | first5=CHEN | title=The Buff-Breasted Rats (Rattus flavipectus) in China | journal=Zoological Research | volume=21 | issue=6 | date=2000-12-22 | issn=2095-8137 | pages=487–497 | url=https://www.zoores.ac.cn/en/article/id/697 }} aka Rattus tanezumi and humans. People brought the fleas and rats back into growing urban areas, where small outbreaks sometimes reached epidemic proportions. The plague spread further and began to appear in the Pearl River delta, including Canton and Hong Kong. Although William McNeil and others believe the plague to have been brought from the interior to the coastal regions by troops returning from battles against the Muslim rebels, Benedict suggested evidence to favor the growing and lucrative opium trade, which began after about 1840.

In the city of Canton, beginning in March 1894, the disease killed 80,000 people in a few weeks. Daily water-traffic with the nearby city of Hong Kong rapidly spread the plague. Within two months, after 100,000 deaths, the death rates dropped below epidemic rates, but the disease continued to be endemic in Hong Kong until 1929.{{cite journal|last1=Pryor|first1=E.G.|title=The Great Plague of Hong Kong|journal=Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society|date=1975|volume=15|pages=61–70 |pmid=11614750|url=http://cultus.hk/middle_ages/plagueHK.pdf}}

The network of global shipping ensured the widespread distribution of the disease over the next few decades.{{Cite journal |last=Tsai |first=HungYin |date=2022 |title=The History of Vaccine Uptake in Taiwan |url=https://www.americanscientist.org/article/the-history-of-vaccine-uptake-in-taiwan |journal=American Scientist |volume=110 |issue=5 |pages=292 |doi=10.1511/2022.110.5.292 |s2cid=252266866 |issn=0003-0996|url-access=subscription }}{{cite journal

| last = Low

| first = Bruce

| title = Report upon the Progress and Diffusion of Bubonic Plague from 1879 to 1898

| journal = Reports of the Medical Officer of the Privy Council and Local Government Board, Annual Report, 1898–99.

| pages = 199–258

| publisher = Darling & Son, Ltd. on behalf of His Majesty's Stationery Office

| location = London

| year = 1899

| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=40b27sOJ804C&pg=PA199

| access-date = 17 October 2010}}{{cite journal

| last = Low

| first = Bruce

| title = Summary of the Progress and Diffusion of the Plague in 1900

| journal = Reports of the Medical Officer of the Privy Council and Local Government Board, Annual Report, 1900–01.

| pages = 264–282

| publisher = Darling & Son, Ltd. on behalf of His Majesty's Stationery Office

| location = London

| year = 1902

| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=V0qI_7nCT_YC&pg=PA264

| access-date = 17 October 2010}}{{cite journal

| last = Eager

| first = J.M.

| title = The Present Pandemic of Plague

| journal = Public Health Bulletin

| pages = 436–443

| publisher = Government Printing Office

| location = Washington

| year = 1908

| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=C3fnNKB5dVwC&pg=PA142-IA89

| access-date = 17 October 2010}} Recorded outbreaks included the following:

{{Div col}}

• Yunnan, Qing China 1860–1870.
• Beihai, Qing China 1882.
• Guangzhou, Qing China 1894.
• British Hong Kong 1894.
• Japanese Taiwan, Empire of Japan 1896 (until 1923 Great Kantō earthquake).{{failed verification|date=March 2020}}
• Bombay Presidency, India, 1896–1898.
• Calcutta, India, 1898.
• French Madagascar, 1898.
• Kobe, 1898.
• Mecca and Medina, Ottoman Empire 1899.{{cite book

| last1 = Curson

| first1 = Peter H.

| last2 = McCracken

| first2 = Kevin

| title = Plague in Sydney: The Anatomy of an Epidemic

| publisher = New South Wales University Press

| year = 1989

| page = 31

| isbn = 0868402192

}}{{cite book

| last = Welford

| first = Mark

| title = Geographies of Plague Pandemics: The Spatial-Temporal Behavior of Plague to the Modern Day

| publisher = Routledge

| year = 2018

| page = 109

| isbn = 978-1138232891

}}

• Khedivate of Egypt, 1899.
• Manchuria, China 1899.
• Paraguay, 1899.
• Porto, Portugal, 1899.{{cite journal

|url=https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/284809

|title=Plague Hospital in Porto - 1899

|website=Apollo - University of Cambridge Repository

|year=2018

|doi=10.17863/CAM.32180

|access-date=1 March 2020

|author1=(:Unkn) Unknown

}}

• South Africa, 1899–1902.
• Hawaii, 1899–1900.{{cite journal

| title = Honolulu's Battle with Bubonic Plague

| journal = Hawaiian Almanac and Annual

| pages = 97–105

| publisher = Thos. G. Thrum, Hawaiian Gazette Co.

| location = Honolulu

| year = 1900

| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=lE8XAAAAYAAJ&pg=RA1-PA97

| access-date = 17 October 2010}}{{cite web |author=Kevin R. Bailey |url=https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1794/7694/Bailey_Kevin_thesis2007.pdf?sequence=1 |title=Plague in paradise : a study of plague on Hawaiian sugarcane plantations |website=Department of History and the Honors College of the University of Oregon |page=3 |date=June 2007 }}

• Glasgow, United Kingdom, 1900.{{cite web

| url = https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-46654092

| last = MacDonald

| first = Kenneth

| date = 2 January 2019

| access-date = 2 January 2019

| title = Rats 'wrongly blamed' for 1900 Glasgow plague outbreak

| website = BBC News}}

• San Francisco, United States, 1900.{{cite journal

| title = On The Plague In San Francisco

| journal = Journal of the American Medical Association

| volume = 36

| issue = 15

| page = 1042

| publisher = The American Medical Association

| location = Chicago

| date = April 13, 1901

| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=ZOsBAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA1042

| access-date = 17 October 2010

| doi=10.1001/jama.1901.52470150038003| url-access = subscription

}}{{cite journal

| title = The Plague, "American Medicine," And The "Philadelphia Medical Journal."

| journal = Occidental Medical Times

| volume = 15

| pages = 171–179

| location = San Francisco

| year = 1901

| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=izegAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA171

| access-date = 17 October 2010}}{{cite journal

| title = Bubonic Plague At San Francisco, Cal.

| journal = Annual Report of the Supervising Surgeon General of the Marine Hospital Service of the United States for the Fiscal Year 1901

| pages = [https://archive.org/details/annualreportsup00statgoog/page/n732 491]–

| publisher = Government Printing Office

| location = Washington

| year = 1901

| url = https://archive.org/details/annualreportsup00statgoog

| access-date = 17 October 2010}}

• Manila, 1900.
• Australia, 1900–1905.
• Russian Empire/Soviet Union, 1900–1927.
• Fujian, China 1901.
• Thailand, 1904.
• British Burma, 1905.
• French Tunisia, 1907.
• Trinidad, Venezuela, Peru and Ecuador, 1908.
• Bolivia and Brazil, 1908.
• Freston, Suffolk, United Kingdom, 1910 (disputed){{cite journal |last=Zwanenberg |first=D Van |title=The last epidemic of plague in England? Suffolk 1906-1918. |journal=Medical History |volume=14 |issue=1 |date=Jan 1970 |pmid=4904731 |pmc=1034015 |pages=63–74 |doi=10.1017/s0025727300015143}}{{cite book |title=The Black Death, 1346-1353: the complete history |first=Ole Jørgen |last=Benedictow | publisher=Boydell & Brewer |year=2004 |isbn=0-85115-943-5 |page=20}}{{cite book | title=A History of Bubonic Plague in the British Isles | first=J. F. D. | last=Shrewsbury | publisher=Cambridge University Press | year=2005 | isbn=0-521-02247-9 | pages=509–510 }}
• Manchurian plague, 1911–1912.
• Cuba and Puerto Rico, 1912.

{{Div col end}}

Each of the areas, as well as Great Britain, France, and other areas of Europe, continued to experience plague outbreaks and casualties until the 1960s, although extremely few of these occurred after 1950.{{cite journal |last1=Glatter |first1=Kathryn A. |last2=Finkelman |first2=Paul |date=February 2021 |title=History of the Plague: An Ancient Pandemic for the Age of COVID-19 |journal=The American Journal of Medicine |volume=134 |issue=2 |pages=176–181 |doi=10.1016/j.amjmed.2020.08.019 |pmid=32979306 |pmc=7513766 |s2cid=221882331 }} The last significant outbreak of plague associated with the pandemic occurred in Peru and Argentina in 1945.{{citation needed|date=January 2021}}

{{Main|1894 Hong Kong plague}}

The 1894 Hong Kong plague was a major outbreak of the third global pandemic from the late 19th century to the early 20th century.{{cite journal |last1=Bramanti |first1=Barbara |last2=Dean |first2=Katharine R. |last3=Walløe |first3=Lars |last4=Chr. Stenseth |first4=Nils |title=The Third Plague Pandemic in Europe |journal=Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences |date=24 April 2019 |volume=286 |issue=1901 |pages=20182429 |doi=10.1098/rspb.2018.2429 |publisher=The Royal Society|pmid=30991930 |pmc=6501942 }} The first case, discovered in May 1894, was a hospital clerk who had just returned from Canton. The hardest hit was the mountainous area in Sheung Wan, the most densely-populated area in Hong Kong, characterised by Chinese-style buildings. From May to October 1894, the plague killed more than 6,000 people, leading to the exodus of one third of the population. In the 30 years starting in 1926{{dubious|date=March 2021}}, the plague occurred in Hong Kong almost every year and killed more than 20,000 people. Through maritime traffic, the epidemic spread to the rest of the country after 1894 and eventually spread to British Raj India where about ten million Indians were killed.

There were several reasons for the rapid outbreak and spread of the plague. Firstly, in the early days, Sheung Wan was a Chinese settlement. Houses — in the mountains — had no drainage channels, toilets, or running water. The houses were small and the floors were not paved. Secondly, during the Ching Ming Festival in 1894, many Chinese living in Hong Kong returned to the countryside to tend to family graves, which coincided with the outbreak of the epidemic in Canton and the introduction of bacteria into Hong Kong. Thirdly, in the first four months of 1894, rainfall decreased and soil dried up, accelerating the spread of the plague.{{Cite web| url=http://elearning.qcobass.edu.hk/~sha/cs01.htm| title=1894上環大鼠疫| website=elearning.qcobass.edu.hk| access-date=2019-03-06}}

The main preventive measures were setting up plague hospitals and deploying medical staff to treat and isolate plague patients; conducting house-to-house search operations, discovering and transferring plague patients, and cleaning and disinfecting infected houses and areas; and setting up designated cemeteries and assigning a person responsible for transporting and burying the plague dead.{{Cite journal|last=楊|first=祥銀|date=2010|title=公共衛生與1894年香港鼠疫研究| url=http://ezproxy01.hsu.edu.hk:2460/view/%E5%85%AC%E5%85%B1%E5%8D%AB%E7%94%9F%E4%B8%8E1894%E5%B9%B4%E9%A6%99%E6%B8%AF%E9%BC%A0%E7%96%AB%E7%A0%94%E7%A9%B6.aspx?ID=Periodical_hzsfdxxb-rwsh201004011&transaction=%7b%22ExtraData%22%3a%5b%5d%2c%22Transaction%22%3a%7b%22DateTime%22%3a%22%5c%2fDate(1551871817185%2b0800)%5c%2f%22%2c%22Id%22%3a%22767ba8da-eb59-4b7e-9e8a-aa0801416dc5%22%2c%22ProductDetail%22%3a%22Periodical_hzsfdxxb-rwsh201004011%22%2c%22SessionId%22%3a%2248c1544a-86cf-49f1-b327-986c1866fdf6%22%2c%22Signature%22%3a%22znak63so7%5c%2f2u0S4grGYUMtKy%5c%2f9%2bdQ8Liq7H6XjyBsAVMWd6MQ48npB1oQ4DDzN4A%22%2c%22TransferIn%22%3a%7b%22AccountType%22%3a%22Income%22%2c%22Key%22%3a%22PeriodicalFulltext%22%7d%2c%22TransferOut%22%3a%7b%22AccountType%22%3a%22GTimeLimit%22%2c%22Key%22%3a%22hsglxy%22%7d%2c%22Turnover%22%3a1.00000%2c%22User%22%3anull%7d%2c%22TransferOutAccountsStatus%22%3a%5b%5d%7d|journal=華中師範大學學報|volume=49|pages=68–75}}

File:Preparações de Ricardo Jorge do bacilo da peste bubónica no Porto (1899) - fotografias de António Plácido da Costa (Museu de História da Medicina Maximiano Lemos, FMUP).png isolated by Ricardo Jorge during the 1899 Porto plague outbreak]]

Researchers working in Asia during the "Third Pandemic" identified plague vectors and the plague bacillus. In 1894, in Hong Kong, Swiss-born French bacteriologist Alexandre Yersin isolated the responsible bacterium (Yersinia pestis, named for Yersin) and determined the common mode of transmission. His discoveries led in time to modern treatment methods, including insecticides, the use of antibiotics and eventually plague vaccines. In 1898, French researcher Paul-Louis Simond demonstrated the role of fleas as a vector.Marc Simond, Margaret L. Godley, and Pierre D.E. Mouriquand (1998). “Paul-Louis Simond and his discovery of plague transmission by rat fleas: A centenary” J. Roy. Soc. Med., 91, 101-104.

The disease is caused by a bacterium usually transmitted by the bite of fleas from an infected host, often a black rat. The bacteria are transferred from the blood of infected rats to flea (Xenopsylla cheopis). The bacillus multiplies in the stomach of the flea, blocking it. When the flea next bites a mammal, the consumed blood is regurgitated along with the bacillus into the bloodstream of the bitten animal. Any serious outbreak of plague in humans is preceded by an outbreak in the rodent population. During the outbreak, infected fleas that have lost their normal rodent hosts seek other sources of blood.{{Cite book|title=Waldemar Mordekhaï Haffkine (1860–1930). Biographie intellectuelle|last=Hanhart|first=Joel|publisher=Honore Champion}}

The British colonial government in India pressed medical researcher Waldemar Haffkine to develop a plague vaccine. After three months of persistent work with a limited staff, a form for human trials was ready. On January 10, 1897, Haffkine tested it on himself. After the initial test was reported to the authorities, volunteers at the Byculla jail were used in a control test. All inoculated prisoners survived the epidemics, while seven inmates of the control group died. By the turn of the century, the number of inoculees in India alone reached four million. Haffkine was appointed the Director of the Plague Laboratory (now called the Haffkine Institute) in Bombay.{{Cite book|title=Waldemar Mordekhaï Haffkine (1860–1930). Biographie intellectuelle|last=Hanhart|first=Joel|publisher=Honore Champion|year=2016|location=Paris}}

In the early 1900s, despite the increasing knowledge of germ theory and the rapid growth of scientific communities around the prevention of major disease, there was little the international communities could do other than create standard protocols for how to deal with an outbreak of the plague.{{Cite journal|last=Echenberg|first=Myron|date=2002|title=Pestis Redux: The Initial Years of the Third Bubonic Plague Pandemic, 1894-1901|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/20078978|journal=Journal of World History|volume=13|issue=2|pages=429–449|doi=10.1353/jwh.2002.0033|jstor=20078978|pmid=20712094|s2cid=45975258 |issn=1045-6007|url-access=subscription}} In 1897 and 1903, two conventions were held known as International Sanitary Conferences; the first in Venice and the second in Paris, to help deal with threat of the new outbreaks of the bubonic plague. From these conventions was formed an international disease convention supervised by the Office International d'Hygiene Publique (OIHP) in Paris which would be one of the major predecessors of the League of Nations health organization. From these conventions came the standard Protocols used in dealing with the bubonic plague throughout the early 1900s. These protocols were often old fashioned and were generally summarized as the 3 "I's": Isolation, Incineration, and Inoculation. Isolation is a standard protocol of many modern disease outbreaks, but the usage of incineration was a protocol of disease control used most uniquely for dealing with the bubonic plague. Burning was used often to deal with the Plague as it was believed to be the most effective way to eliminate strains of the disease from places inhabited by the infected. But it was also a problematic technique as it led to the creation of many out-of-control fires that devastated communities, the most notable being the great fire in Honolulu which devastated the Chinatown community there. Inoculation was the usage of newly invented plague vaccines, with some in India being recorded to have an efficacy of over 50%.{{Cite journal|last=Hawgood|first=Barbara J|date=2007-02-01|title=Waldemar Mordecai Haffkine, CIE (1860–1930): prophylactic vaccination against cholera and bubonic plague in British India|url=https://doi.org/10.1258/j.jmb.2007.05-59|journal=Journal of Medical Biography|language=en|volume=15|issue=1|pages=9–19|doi=10.1258/j.jmb.2007.05-59|pmid=17356724|s2cid=42075270 |issn=0967-7720|url-access=subscription}}

In many instances, the third plague pandemic either revealed or exacerbated major social conflicts and racial inequalities. Many of the ports infected during the plague were at the time in British colonies.{{Cite journal|last=Chatterjee|first=Srilata|title=Plague and Politics in Bengal 1896 to 1898|date=2005|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/44145931|journal=Proceedings of the Indian History Congress|volume=66|pages=1194–1201|jstor=44145931|issn=2249-1937}} Because of this, the British authorities often ended up enforcing western hygiene and medical practices and radical quarantine measures in countries and provinces such as India, South Africa and Hong Kong.

In India harsh quarantines were initially implemented by the British governments, leading to Indian resentment of quarantine measures. In South Africa, when the plague broke out in Cape Colony, the colonial government forced a large group of Black South Africans to move out of a supposed slum into areas on the outskirts of the city, which historians have argued as a racially-motivated move by White South Africans to segregate Blacks into other parts of the city.{{Cite journal| last=Swanson| first=Maynard W.| date=July 1977| title=The Sanitation Syndrome: Bubonic Plague and Urban Native Policy in the Cape Colony, 1900–1909| url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-african-history/article/abs/sanitation-syndrome-bubonic-plague-and-urban-native-policy-in-the-cape-colony-190019091/6D7EEF9FEA053F609877EE3056BAE1CB| journal=The Journal of African History| language=en| volume=18| issue=3| pages=387–410| doi=10.1017/S0021853700027328| pmid=11632219|s2cid=43662707 |issn=1469-5138| url-access=subscription}} In Hong Kong the British enforced many locally unfamiliar medical practices, such as floating plague victims out on boats onto the water and cooling plague victims with ice, which scared many Chinese residents of Hong Kong and led to their migrating back to mainland China, which was then even more badly affected by the plague.{{Cite journal| last=Benedict| first=Carol| date=1988| title=Bubonic Plague in Nineteenth-Century China| url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/189268| journal=Modern China| volume=14| issue=2| pages=107–155| doi=10.1177/009770048801400201| jstor=189268| pmid=11620272| s2cid=33772946 |issn=0097-7004| url-access=subscription}}

Another instance of social harm caused by the response to the plague is the "great fire of Honolulu" in 1900, in which much of Chinatown in Honolulu was burned by the Honolulu Board of Health in order to control the plague, rendering over 7,000 Chinese and Japanese residents homeless. In America when the plague reached San Francisco, the medical board of the city implemented a strict quarantine of the entire Chinatown district after discovering only one case of the plague; this has led historians to question whether this measure was motivated by racial bias among medical professionals.{{Cite thesis| title=Anti-Chinese Discrimination in Twentieth Century America: Perceptions of Chinese Americans During the Third Bubonic Plague Pandemic in San Francisco, 1900-1908| url=https://etd.ohiolink.edu/apexprod/rws_olink/r/1501/10?clear=10&p10_accession_num=ysu1299600446| publisher=Youngstown State University| date=2010| language=en| first=Belinda A.| last=Vavlas}}

• List of epidemics and pandemics
• Timeline of plague
• British Raj India pandemics

{{clear}}

{{Reflist}}

{{Refbegin|30em}}

• {{citation |title=Report On Plague Investigations In India, 1906–1910 |author=Advisory Committee for Plague Investigations in India |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5ME8AAAAIAAJ&pg=RA1-PA13 |year=1911}}
• Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, The Promised Messiah. Noah's Ark: An Invitation to Faith.
• Gandhi, M. K. The Plague Panic in South Africa
• Gregg, Charles. Plague: An Ancients Disease in the Twentieth Century. Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press, 1985.
• Kelly, John. The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2005. {{ISBN|0-06-000692-7}}.
• McNeill, William H. Plagues and People. New York: Anchor Books, 1976. {{ISBN|0-385-12122-9}}.
• Orent, Wendy. Plague: The Mysterious Past and Terrifying Future of the World's Most Dangerous Disease. New York: Free Press, 2004. {{ISBN|0-7432-3685-8}}.
• {{cite journal |last1=Frith |first1=John |title=The History of Plague – Part 1. The Three Great Pandemics |journal=JMVH |volume=20 |issue=2 |url=https://jmvh.org/article/the-history-of-plague-part-1-the-three-great-pandemics/ |access-date=2 September 2022}}
• {{cite journal |last1=Glatter |first1=Kathryn A. |last2=Finkelman |first2=Paul |title=History of the Plague: An Ancient Pandemic for the Age of COVID-19 |journal=The American Journal of Medicine |date=1 February 2021 |volume=134 |issue=2 |pages=176–181 |doi=10.1016/j.amjmed.2020.08.019|pmid=32979306 |pmc=7513766 }}
• {{cite journal |last1=Bramanti |first1=Barbara |last2=Dean |first2=Katharine R. |last3=Walløe |first3=Lars |last4=Chr. Stenseth |first4=Nils |title=The Third Plague Pandemic in Europe |journal=Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences |date=24 April 2019 |volume=286 |issue=1901 |pages=20182429 |doi=10.1098/rspb.2018.2429|pmid=30991930 |pmc=6501942 }}

{{Refend}}

{{Commons category-inline|Plague, third pandemic}}.

• [http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/programmes/visual-representations-of-the-third-plague-pandemic Visual Representations of the Third Plague Pandemic]

{{Epidemics}}

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Plague 03

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