The Village of Eyam

It’s hard to prove the causative agent was a virus because of course in those days there were no blood tests for viruses. And today it’s impossible to extract viral DNA from 700 year-old skeletal remains. But in the last few years some evidence has emerged that seems to support the viral theory.

There may not have been blood tests, but in England at least there were parish records from about 1540. They give a detailed picture of what happened to the inhabitants of even the smallest village - births, deaths, marriages, and baptisms. One such village was Eyam, a lead-mining village in the county of Derbyshire in an area known as the Peak District, in central England.

The Black Death suddenly struck this tiny village in September 1665. The town’s rector persuaded the villagers to quarantine themselves to prevent the disease from spreading through the region. During the period of isolation, food was left for the villagers at a well on the parish boundary high up on the hill above the village, and paid for by coins which were dipped in vinegar to disinfect them. It seemed to work, because none of the surrounding areas were affected by the plague. A year later, the first outsiders ventured into Eyam. About half the town had survived.

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DNA Proves Immunity to Bubonic Plague and HIV

People with a genetic mutation that makes them more resistant to the AIDS virus probably have smallpox to thank, according to two population geneticists at the University of California, Berkeley.

About 10 percent of Europeans have a mutation that disables a protein the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV-1) uses to slip into immune system cells. HIV-1 has a harder time infecting people who have a mutation in one of the two genes that code for this receptor protein, and if these people become infected, their disease progresses more slowly. Those with mutations in both copies of the gene are almost completely resistant to the virus.

This genetic mutation arose as recently as 700 years ago, and some researchers have suggested that the bubonic plague that devastated Europe periodically over the past 1,000 years may have selected for the mutation by sparing those who lacked one or both copies of the gene.

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