The Great Plague Channel 5 9pm

[Wingedharpy]

3 consecutive nights - last one on Thursday/today.
Anyone else watching this?
Absolutely fascinating - particularly now.

[gleegeek]

Just watched the first episode. Really interesting, fascinating to see all the new technology and how they're proving how it spread. Looking forward to seeing how it develops.

[SchadenfreudePersonified]

Didn't know about it - but will watch it now. Sounds interesting.

[FuzzyPuffling]

I thought it was fascinating, especially how much they seemed to now about transmission. Definitely worth watching.

[SchadenfreudePersonified]

Really enjoyed this little series - thanks for the heads-up Harpy

(Most revolting moment: - the French virologist's lab, with the square of cloth teeming with body lice. I nearly vomited, and I'm not a squeamish person.)

[FuzzyPuffling]

I can't imagine how flipping itchy it must have been to live in those days.

[SchadenfreudePersonified]

from the history books I have read I know that one of the ways they destroyed lice and their eggs was by soaking clothes in barrels of urine.

So itchy and smelly.

[FuzzyPuffling]

Ewwww.
How come they had so many children then? A spotty, wee-smelling, lice-ridden chap wouldn't do it for me. (Even if I was a spotty, wee-smelling, lice-ridden wench)

[SchadenfreudePersonified]

Well, Fuzzy, I suppose that if everybody around you smells of tinkle, then you stop noticing it - it was a pretty putrid time (not as bad as the 14th century, but still rather rank in many areas).

Also, strictly speaking, you only need one act of "hanky-panky" (as I believe the medical term is) to get pregnant - so theoretically once/year could get a girl up the duff every year, though breast-feeding acted as a slightly dodgy contraceptive, and she'd probably only fall pregnant every other year. So theoretically if a woman got married at 20 she could expect around 7 full-term pregnancies before succumbing to childbed fever, bubonic plague, the bloody flux, syphilis, malaria, scurvy or smallpox, all compounded by malnutrition (and probably rickets) around the age of 35. If she could last until then, she'd probably make it to around 60. Of course, at least two of those children would die before they were a year old, and a couple more before they were five. I expect there was a chance that by the time they were 12, one would be hanged for stealing bread and another press-ganged into the navy or prostitution (I think the age of consent was about 10). That leaves you with one . . .

[barbedwired]

And we think we have it bad

[whenwillthemadnessend]

Sounds interesting. Can you get it on catch up?

[Ginfordinner]

What channel was it on? I would like to watch it on catch up.

[SchadenfreudePersonified]

And at least we have chocolate barbedwire.

They didn't even have so much as a Twix to nibble on to take their minds off vermin, disease, sewage in the streets, and no anaesthetics.

Only gin.

Lovely, lovely gin.

[Holothane]

I adored this and would pay money for this on dvd or blu ray, some hope the medical history never gets released.

[catlovingdoctor]

Brilliant and informative! Quite surprising how the series challenged the commonly-held theory that fleas on rats were the main source of plague transmission.

[FuzzyPuffling]

I have run out of Daz so I'm off to piddle on my tea towels.

( It was on channel 5 and is ( or was) on catch up)

[Appuskidu]

Is this on catch up?

[SchadenfreudePersonified]

Yes - it's on catch up. I watched after the OP posted on it. It's worth a watch.

[SchadenfreudePersonified]

@catlovingdoctor

Brilliant and informative! Quite surprising how the series challenged the commonly-held theory that fleas on rats were the main source of plague transmission.

Rats and fleas get the blame for everything!

It's so unfair!

[whenwillthemadnessend]

Watched first episode. Really enjoyed it. But it was gross!!!

[Ginfordinner]

We watched the first episode tonight and really enjoyed it. I had no idea there had been an outbreak in Glasgow in 1900.

As it as a programme about bubonic plague I didn't think it was that gross.

[ItsNotNormalLove]

DH and I just watched the first ep OP, thanks for the recommendation. The bit with the lice on the bit of cloth made me itch!!

As an aside, people in the concentration camps during World War Two were also crawling with body lice, which caused deadly outbreaks of Typhus.

[SchadenfreudePersonified]

In "People of the Abyss"*, Jack London describes the death of an old woman living in poverty - her body was nearly missed because there were so many lice creeping infesting her that people had through it was just a grey blanket - as he said, No-one should live or die in such dreadful misery

*It's been umpteen decades since I read it, but this particular horror stuck in my mind