THE UNIVERSITY OF ST ANDREWS AND CRASSH, UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE PRESENT
VISUAL REPRESENTATIONS OF THE THIRD PLAGUE PANDEMIC 'Disinfecting sufferers of the plague in wooden tubs, Karachi.' Credit: Wellcome Collection
YOUR GUIDE TO THE PHOTOGRAPHIC DATABASE
VISUAL REPRESENTATIONS OF THE THIRD PLAGUE PANDEMIC: ABOUT THE PROJECT Between 2013 and 2018 Visual Representations of the Third Plague Pandemic researchers at the Department of Social Anthropology of the University of St Andrews and at CRASSH, University of Cambridge collected and analysed thousands of photographs of plague produced in the course of the third pandemic of the disease (1894-1959), over 2000 of which have become available online in Apollo, University of Cambridge Repository: www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/275905 The project has shown that the visualisation of plague played a pivotal role in the formation of both scientific understandings and public perception of infectious disease epidemics in the modern era, by establishing a new visual genre – epidemic photography.
"Camels in the Imperial Russian "Plague Fort" in the Baltic Sea, around 1900" Credit: Institute of Experimental Medicine (Saint Petersburg, Russia)
While investigating the visual record of the third plague pandemic in East Asia, South Asia, South East Asia, Africa and the Americas, Visual Plague researchers have engaged in a collaborative and interdisciplinary analysis of the entangled history of the visual representation of the pandemic.
LAUNCHING THE PHOTOGRAPHIC DATABASE The database has been launched and is free to access now. You can find it at the University of Cambridge Library's repository: www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/275905
The third plague pandemic, which broke out in 1855 in Southwest China (Yunnan) and raged across the globe until 1959, caused the death of approximately 12 million people.
As Yersinia pestis spread from country to country and from continent to continent, it left behind it not only a trail of death and terror, but also a growing visual archive on the first global pandemic to be captured by the photographic lens. Rather however than forming a homogeneous or linear visual narrative, these photographic documents provided diverging perspectives on the pandemic, which, more often than not, were not simply different from region to region, but in fact conflicting within any single locus of infection. During the process of researching these photographs, the project team identified four major themes that acted as common analytical ground for study of the third pandemic of plague. You will see this reflected in the images chosen for the database: The Built Environment Civil Disturbance and Public Order Death, Corpses and Burial
Man being shaved in one of the hospital camps, during the outbreak of bubonic plague in Karachi, India Credit: Wellcome Collection
Race, Class and Discrimination
KEY FACTS ABOUT THE THIRD PLAGUE PANDEMIC The third pandemic of plague was caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. Plague took both bubonic and pneumonic clinical form.
Bubonic plague is marked by lymphatic infection and swelling of the lymph nodes leading to the infamous buboes.
Pneumonic plague affects the lungs, and unlike the bubonic clinical form, thus becomes airborne and contagious
With the exception of pneumonic cases, plague during the third pandemic was principally spread through the fleas of infected rats.
Already endemic in large areas of the Old World, with its spread to the Americas in the early 1900s, plague established still-endemic foci in the USA, Peru, Brazil and Bolivia. Unknown author "By the plague brigade collected hollow bamboo containing rat nests, obtained from Javanese houses." Stichting Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen
WHAT HAS THIS DATABASE FOUND? The photographic database is a collection of more than 2000 images, all of which are visible to every user. The project team has carefully curated a selection of international photographs, graciously licensed for use by libraries and institutions around the globe.
'Seamen's Hospital for infectious diseases in Jurujuba, Rio de Janeiro; the interior of one of the wards, with plague patients by their beds. Photograph, 1904/1911.' . Credit: Wellcome Collection.
Seamen's Hospital for infectious diseases in Jurujuba, Rio de Janeiro; a plague patient in bed, viewed from behind, his head supported by a member of the medical team. Photograph, 1904/1911.' . Credit: Wellcome Collection
These images are historical records of: medical efforts to diagnose, study and understand the disease, epidemic control measures taken to prevent and contain the disease, and the reality of plague for patients and doctors alike. Often, based on what we today would consider as mistaken understandings of the disease and articulated within the confines of colonialism, anti-epidemic measures pictured in these photos caused extensive suffering to affected communities through intrusive and ineffectual measures.Â
WHAT WILL YOU FIND? The photographic database is free to access and search. You'll find high quality photographs with accompanying historical context; information about the source; the host archives or institutions; and details about the photographers and original authors, wherever possible.
The images contained in the database, and their accompanying text, are a valuable way to access historical understandings of, and responses to, plague in the course of the third plague pandemic (1894-1959). In the course of the pandemic, multiple theories about plague, its aetiology, transmission pathways, reservoirs and disease ecologies were developed, in many cases reflecting epistemic, social and/or political prejudices at the time. As plague spread via rats and their fleas from country to country and from continent to continent, it left behind it not only a trail of death and terror, but also a growing visual archive on the first global pandemic to be captured by the photographic lens. The database displays this groundbreaking epidemic photography on an international scale, traversing Wu Liande, "Inside the Laboratory" Credit: The Needham Research Institute
historical barriers to provide new methods of comparison.Â
"Half conscious tarabagan, April 1923. Could move slightly but with eyes closed and in erratic manner. T is cat-size" [" Wu 11.XI.1923" from reverse of photo, in Wu Liande's handwriting] Credit: Wu Liande Family.
The database “Photographs of the Third Plague Pandemic” was funded by an European Research Council Starting Grant (under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme/ERC grant agreement no 336564) for the project Visual Representations of the Third Plague Pandemic, led by Dr Christos Lynteris (PI). The project would like to thank its postdoctoral researchers, Drs Lukas Engelmann, Nicholas H. A. Evans, Maurits Meerwijk, Branwyn Poleykett and Abhjit Sarkar, and its administrators Mss Teresa Abaurrea, Emma Hacking and Samantha Peel for their contributions to this database.
How to Find Us @visualplague www.visualplague.wordpress.com tinyurl.com/vr3pp vr3pp.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk