Plague (pronounced pleyg)
(1) An infectious, epidemic disease caused by a bacterium, Yersinia pestis (trans transmitted to man by the bite of the rat flea (Xenopsylla cheopis)) characterized by fever, chills, and prostration.
(2) In casual use, any epidemic disease that causes high mortality; pestilence.
(3) Any widespread affliction, calamity, or evil, especially one regarded as divine retribution.
(4) Any cause of trouble, annoyance, or vexation; torment; to pester.
(5) As in “… a plague upon…”, to curse another, wishing any evil upon them. The variation “a plague upon both your houses” suggests an unwillingness to take sides, an implication one thinks both parties are in the wrong.
1350-1400: From the Middle English plage, a borrowing from the Old French plage, from the Latin plāga (blow, wound, (and pestilence in Late Latin), from plangō or plangere (to strike), the ultimate root being the Ancient Greek plēgē (a stroke). It was cognate with the Middle Dutch plāghe (from the Dutch plaag) & plāghen (from the Dutch plagen), the Middle Low German plāge, the Middle High German plāge & pflāge (from the German plage) & plāgen (from the German plagen), the Swedish plåga, the French plaie and the Occitan plaga. Plague exists as verb and noun, plaguer being the other noun, plaguing & plagued the verbs. Other derived forms exist but are rarely seen except in historic or technical writing: plagioclase, plagioclimax, plagiohedral, plagiotropic and plagiotropism, plaguesome & plaguy. For the actual disease there’s no actual synonym but many words tend to be used interchangeably in any context: invasion, scourge, contagion, pandemic, epidemic, curse, infection, outbreak, influenza, infestation, blight, calamity, pest, cancer, bedevil, afflict, beleaguer, bother, haunt, torment. Plague & plaguing are nouns & verbs, plaguer & plaguiness are nouns, plagued is a verb & adjective, plagueful, plaguelike, plaguesome, plagueish, plaguesque, plaguey & plagueless are adjectives and plaguily is an adverb; the noun plural is plagues.
Plagues and the Plague
Plague is an infectious disease caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis and exists in three strains: Bubonic plague, Septicemic plague & Pneumonic plague, the former two usually contracted by the handling of an infected animal or the bite of a flea, the last by contact between people via infectious droplets in the air. Typically, several hundred cases are reported annually, mostly in India, the Congo, Madagascar & Peru and cases have been reported in the US but historically, outbreaks were large-scale events lasting months or years, the best known of which include the fourteenth century Black Death, estimated to have killed some fifty-million and the Great Plague of London which, in 1665-1666, caused the death of one in five of the city's population. COVID-19 was thus a plague but not the plague. A common noun, plague is written with an initial capital only at the beginning of a sentence, or (as in the Great Plague of London) when it has become a thing. Notable epidemics have included:
The Black Death (1346-1353)
Death Toll: 75 – 200 million; Cause: Bubonic Plague
The Plague ravaged Europe, Africa, and Asia, with a death toll of 75-200 million, killing up to half the population of some European countries. Thought to have originated in Asia, Plague was most likely spread by fleas living on the rats of merchant ships and in some countries, populations didn’t recover until the nineteenth century. Now unknown in most parts of the world, outbreaks still happen in various places.
Plague of Justianian (541-542)
Death Toll: 25 million; Cause: Bubonic Plague
Thought to have killed perhaps half the population of Europe, the Plague of Justinian afflicted the Byzantine Empire and Mediterranean port cities. The first verified and well-documented incident of the Bubonic Plague, it reduced the population of the Eastern Mediterranean by a quarter and devastated Constantinople, where, at the height of the pandemic, 5,000 a day were dying.
Antonine Plague (165 AD)
Death Toll: 5 million; Cause: Unknown
Also known as the Plague of Galen, the Antonine Plague affected Asia Minor (the modern Republic of Türkiye), Egypt, Greece, and Italy and is thought to have been either Smallpox or Measles, though the true cause is unknown. The disease was brought to Rome by soldiers returning from Mesopotamia. The pandemic significantly weakened the Roman army.
Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, December 2011.
In idiomatic use, the phrases “a pox on both their houses” & “a pox on both your houses”, are variants of the line (Act 3, Scene 1) in William Shakespeare’s (1564–1616) tragedy Romeo and Juliet (1597), spoken by Mercuito as, mortally wounded by Tybalt’s blade, he lies awaiting the visitation of the angel of death:
A plague o' both your houses!
They have made worms' meat of me: I have it,
And soundly too: your houses!
The phrase is used to express displeasure at or condemnation of both sides in an argument, either because both seem equally bad or the dispute appears pointless. As things turn out, Mercuito was prophetic; because of the quarantine imposed on the city to reduce the risk of plague, circumstances unfold that lead to the deaths of the “two star-cross'd lovers”. In modern use the phrase appears either with “a plague” or “a pox” and in the earliest printed editions of the play, Mercutio does wish the pox (syphilis or possibly smallpox) upon the “Two households, both alike in dignity”. Shakespearian scholars suggest the bard’s later substitution of “plague” was because a condition more likely to be fatal exerted a greater dramatic effect.
London and the plagues of Plague
A London Bill of Mortality, 1665.
During the sixteenth & seventeenth centuries when "bubonic plague was abroad", the authorities compiled "Bills of Mortality" listing the causes of death recorded that week. It's now believed the statistics are not wholly reliable (Plague numbers, like the global toll from Covid-19, believed greatly to have been understated) but the startling ratio of deaths attributed to Plague compared with other causes is indicative of the deadly nature of the epidemic. In one week 3880 residents of London were reported as having succumbed to Plague, dwarfing the number recorded as dying by other causes including Old Age (54), Consumption (Tuberculous) (174), Small Pox (10), Fright (1), Grief (1), Spotted Fever and the Purples (190), Griping in the Guts (74), Lethargy (1), Rifing of the Lights (19) and Wind (1). Like the Covid-19 statistics, there was likely some overlap in the numbers but the disparity remains striking.
After the Black Death, London's major plague epidemics occurred in 1563, 1593, 1625 and 1665 and although the last is best-known (associated as it was with the Great Fire of 1666), it's believed it was during the 1563 event the city suffered the greatest proportional mortality with between a quarter and a third of the populating dying; losses have been estimated to be as high as 18,000 and in some weeks the toll exceeded 1000. From there, the disease spread around the nation the following year, the fleas which were the primary vector of transmission having hibernated through what was a comparatively mild winter. Echoing the political and military effects of epidemics noted since Antiquity, it was at this time England was compelled to give up their last French possession, Le Havre, which was being held as a hostage for Calais. Plague broke out in the occupying garrison and few troops escaped infection so the town had to be surrendered.
There were small, manageable outbreaks in 1603 & 1610-1611 but the epidemic of 1625 was severe and associated with a notable internal migration as those with the means to leave London did not, the reduction in the number of magistrates & doctors noted as inducing the predicable social consequences although as time passed, it was clear the disease was becoming less virulent and the mortality rate had fallen, something now attributed at least partially to the so-called "harvesting effect". After 1666, the Plague didn't vanish and there were periodic outbreaks but the lessons had been well-learned and the efficiency of communications and the still embryonic public-health infrastructure operated well, even if little progress had been made in actual medical techniques. The Hull (an East Yorkshire port city) Plague of 1699 was contained with little spread and when an outbreak of fever was reported in Marseilles in 1720, stricter quarantine measures were imposed in English ports which successfully prevented any great spread. Throughout the eighteenth & nineteenth centuries (as late as 1896-1897) there were occasional isolated cases and small outbreaks of plague in various parts of England but none ever remotely approached the scale of the 1665-1666 epidemic.
Werner Herzog's Nosferatu (1979)
Werner Herzog's (b 1942) 1979 remake of Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau's (1888–1931) masterpiece of Weimar expressionism (Nosferatu (1922)) takes place mostly in a small German city afflicted suddenly by Plague, Herzog rendering something chilling and darkly austere, despite the stylistic flourishes. The 1979 film delivered the definitive screen Dracula and was a piece to enjoy when living in the social isolation of the Covid era.
Scene from Werner Herzog's Nosferatu (1979)
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