The third plague pandemic was a major plague pandemic that began in Yunnan, China, in 1855. Its name refers to its status as the third of at least three known major pandemics caused by the spread of the bacterium Yersinia pestis. This episode of bubonic plague spread to all inhabited continents, and ultimately led to at least 15 million deaths worldwide, including 10-12 million in British Raj India and 2.2 million in China. Though it is estimated to have killed fewer people than the second plague pandemic), the third plague pandemic had one of the highest death tolls among pandemics in human history.

According to the World Health Organization, the pandemic was considered active until 1960, when worldwide casualties dropped below 200 per year. Plague deaths have continued at a lower level ever since, as plague persists in enzootic reservoirs across Asia, Africa, South America, and the western United States.

The first plague pandemic began with the Plague of Justinian, which ravaged the Byzantine Empire and surrounding areas in 541 and 542; the pandemic persisted in successive waves until the middle of the 8th century. The second began with the Black Death, which killed at least one third of Europe's population in a series of expanding waves of infection from 1346 to 1353; this pandemic recurred regularly until the 19th century.

The plague which spread from Yunnan along China's Southeast Coast and across the world manifested almost exclusively as bubonic plague. It was carried around the world through ocean-going trade, through transporting infected persons, rats, and cargoes harboring fleas., as defined within the third pandemic's scope. The pneumonic Manchurian plague epidemic was geographically, ecologically, genetically, and epidemiologically distinct from the bubonic plague which spread globally from Southern China. It spread throughout the region of Manchuria, reaching Vladivostok and Beijing (which was connected to Manchuria by the Imperial Chinese Railway), but not far beyond due to port and railway closures as well as preventive medical protocols 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) 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 favour the growing and lucrative opium trade, which began after about 1840.

Global distribution

The network of global shipping ensured the widespread distribution of the disease over the next few decades. Recorded outbreaks included the following:

  • Yunnan, Qing China 1855–1870.
  • Beihai, Qing China 1882.
  • Guangzhou, Qing China 1894.
  • British Hong Kong 1894.
  • Japanese Taiwan, Empire of Japan 1896 (until 1923 Great Kantō earthquake).
  • Bombay Presidency, India, 1896–1898.
  • Calcutta, India, 1898.
  • French Madagascar, 1898.
  • Kobe, 1898.
  • Mecca and Medina, Ottoman Empire 1899.
  • Khedivate of Egypt, 1899.
  • Manchuria, China 1899.
  • Paraguay, 1899.
  • Porto, Portugal, 1899.
  • South Africa, 1899–1902.
  • Hawaii, 1899–1900.
  • Glasgow, United Kingdom, 1900.
  • San Francisco, United States, 1900.
  • 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)
  • Manchurian plague, 1911–1912.
  • Cuba and Puerto Rico, 1912.

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. The last significant outbreak of plague associated with the pandemic occurred in Peru and Argentina in 1945.

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. 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, 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.

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.

Disease research

thumb|right|[[Yersinia pestis 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.

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.

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.

Medical procedures implemented by new international health communities

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. 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.

Social implications of the third plague pandemic

In many instances, the third plague pandemic either revealed or exacerbated major social conflicts and racial inequalities. 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 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.

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.

See also

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

References

Further reading

  • 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. .
  • McNeill, William H. Plagues and People. New York: Anchor Books, 1976. .
  • Orent, Wendy. Plague: The Mysterious Past and Terrifying Future of the World's Most Dangerous Disease. New York: Free Press, 2004. .

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  • Visual Representations of the Third Plague Pandemic