TY - BOOK ID - 30743868 TI - What disease was plague? : on the controversy over the microbiological identity of plague epidemics of the past PY - 2010 SN - 1283292327 9786613292322 900419391X 9004180028 9789004193918 9789004180024 9781283292320 661329232X PB - Leiden : Brill, DB - UniCat KW - Plague KW - Communicable diseases KW - Microbiology. KW - Epidemiology. KW - History. KW - Bubonic plague KW - Yersinia infections UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:30743868 AB - 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. ER -