Immunity - Measles and man's health history

The 1300’s were a very interesting phase in the middle either side of 1350 there was the Black Death (bubonic plague) and at the start of the 1300’s (1315- 1317) there was a massive famine, both of which had a significant impact on the global population.

The population after the Black Death was estimated to be around 360 million people and before the Black Death around 470 million, estimates are that the world’s population was reduced by a quarter (25%) bearing in mind many parts of the known world were largely unaffected.

Africa apart from the coastal areas to the Mediterranean, Russia, Pakistan and China were virtually unaffected; the areas most affected were southern Scandinavia, southern Baltic regions and Britain through to areas boarding the Mediterranean region.

So the transmission was clearly linked to trade and travel as the most convenient form of travel and trade was by water, the rivers and waterways through Europe, north Atlantic and the Mediterranean. An interesting parallel with today’s measles out break in New Zealand and our Pacific neighbours, which appears to be linked to travel.

Bearing in mind the bubonic plague was fatal for 1/3 to over a 1/2 of the population where it struck in the population centre of Europe of the day; an interesting result was that areas that were affected the population was genetically altered and the plague can be tracked today through the altered genetics of the regions that were impacted i.e. people with a predisposition to the virus didn’t make it and those that had a resistance survived and their genetics were passed on.