Biology and Germ Warfare

Spencer, Chrissy

Title:

Biology and Germ Warfare

dc.contributor.author	Spencer, Chrissy	en_US
dc.contributor.corporatename	International Society for the Study of Medievalism	en_US
dc.contributor.corporatename	Georgia Institute of Technology. Writing and Communication Program	en_US
dc.contributor.corporatename	Georgia Institute of Technology. School of Literature, Media, and Communication	en_US
dc.date.accessioned	2013-01-25T19:46:37Z
dc.date.available	2013-01-25T19:46:37Z
dc.date.issued	2012-11-13
dc.description	Presented on November 13, 2012 from 12:00 – 5:00 pm in the Student Success Center, Press Room B.	en_US
dc.description	Runtime: 28:46 minutes	en_US
dc.description.abstract	Biological or “germ” warfare among humans is an ancient battle tradition. Medieval European writings reveal evidence of biological warfare, such as poisoning well water with human remains (1155, Italy), catapulting plague victims into a besieged city (1346, Siege of Caffa), or mixing the blood of lepers with wine for sale to the enemy (1495, Italy) (reviewed in Reidel, 2004). In a contemporary account of the Siege of Caffa, Italian notary Gabriele de’ Mussi asserted that plague victims were catapulted inside the city walls as a deliberate form of biological warfare. He also assumes that Italians fleeing Caffa by ship carried the plague to port cities in the Mediterranean, thereby initiating a deadly pandemic called the Black Death, which was either bubonic plague or viral haemorrhagic fever (Duncan and Scott, 2005), in Europe. de’ Mussi’s second assertion has received criticism from modern scholars (Wheelis, 2002; Duncan and Scott, 2005), who contend that there were many other more probable causes of the Black Death pandemic. Whether or not the Black Death had its roots in biological warfare, the consequences of the pandemic were far-reaching, and decimated the European population while also causing human evolution that has ramifications for infections in the HIV pandemic of this era.	en_US
dc.format.extent	28:46 minutes
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/1853/46008
dc.language.iso	en_US	en_US
dc.publisher	Georgia Institute of Technology	en_US
dc.relation.ispartofseries	Tech Gets Medieval Symposium: How Medieval Technology Can Teach the Past
dc.subject	Black Death	en_US
dc.subject	Pandemic	en_US
dc.subject	Human genetic variation	en_US
dc.subject	HIV	en_US
dc.subject	Biological warfare	en_US
dc.subject	Siege of Caffa	en_US
dc.subject	Catapult	en_US
dc.title	Biology and Germ Warfare	en_US
dc.type	Moving Image
dc.type.genre	Presentation
dspace.entity.type	Publication
local.contributor.corporatename	School of Literature, Media, and Communication
local.contributor.corporatename	Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts
local.relation.ispartofseries	Tech Gets Medieval Symposium
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