A study casts doubt on whether the epidemic that struck Mallorca in 1820 was bubonic plague
The plague outbreak recorded in the Mallorcan towns of Son Servera and Capdepera in 1820, with an overall case-fatality rate of 78 per cent, has historically been regarded as an episode of bubonic plague, a zoonotic disease normally acquired through the bite of an infected flea carried by animals such as rodents. Now, a study published in the journal PNAS, which has drawn on hundreds of contemporary reports—including daily death tolls—and epidemiological models, suggests that the disease was not transmitted exclusively by infected rodents, but was spread from person to person. Therefore, according to the authors, it may have been the pneumonic or septicaemic forms of the plague.
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