The Last Visitation of the Plague in Sweden: the Case of Bräkne-Hoby, Blekinge in 1710-11
The last visitation of the plague in Sweden: the case of Bräkne-Hoby, Blekinge in 1710-11 By ROGER SCHOFIELD SUMMARY: In an earlier study of the plague in Colyton, Devon the household distribution of deaths was studied to see whether this provided a method of the identifying the causative disease. In this article, a known epidemic of plague in the Swedish parish of Bräkne-Hoby was studied as a means of testing out the generality of the household distribution of deaths. It was discovered that, in this case, the very heavy mortality was due to two radically different means of spreading the disease, initially the classic bubonic one through the rat flea, and latterly, and somewhat surprisingly, the pneumonic one, through the infection of the inhabitants by their own friends and neighbours. One of the difficulties in studying epidemics in the past is that the disease behind the epidemic is often not identified as such in the burial register.1 Although there are certain pointers to the nature of disease, such as its seasonality, these are in general far from conclusive. Accordingly in a study that I made of the epidemic in Colyton, Devon in 1645-6, I decided to investigate the patterns of deaths within the household, just in case this gave additional information on the nature of the infection.2 One method of achieving this is through a ‘family reconstitution’ of the parish register, but for a parish of the size of Bräkne-Hoby, about 2900 inhabitants in 1749; this is a difficult and extremely laborious undertaking.3 In later epidemics, in this part of Sweden, it is possible to avoid this, by also using two alternative sources, a ‘husförhörslängd’, which is a household examination book, and the tables known as the ‘statistiska tabeller’, which contain an aggregate analysis of the parish registers.
[Show full text]