Year of Wonders

Curious but real is the history of Eyam during the Plague, in 1666.

Eyam's an English village in Derbyshire, England (my beloved England), but it's also known as the "Plague village". Why?

The medieval Plague arrived to Europe from Constantinople through the Mediterranean Sea, and spread quickly accross the continent during the XIV Century. You, Catalans, suffered it specially that year 1348.


There are some curiosities about the Plague, also called Black Death because of the black-purple buboes of the diseased. In the beginning, medieval doctors thought the disease spread through the air (That's why some of them called it "The Great Pestilence", similar to the Spanish name), and so, one of the means they used to fight against it was burning some kind of scented herbs, to "clean" the air. They also used that typical masks you've surely seen in some medieval draws, to keep their noses far from the patients, dead or alive. Nowadays, we know that is caused by a bacterium called Yersinia Pestis, which spread by fleas thanks to other animals like the black rat.

And even if it wasn't a "new" disease, and was quite known before (it's believed that Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius died because of Plague in 180 A.D., in Vindobona -No, not strangled by his son Commodus), this was a horrible epidemic that killed almost the 50% of European population... in 4 years! And more than 75.000.000 in the 14th Century.

...But forgive me again! I start talking about something and then I end up with other subject! We were talking about Eyam!


So, long story short, the Plague reached Eyam in 1665, brought in a flea-infested bundle of cloth delivered to the taylor George Viccars, from London (you can see the entrance of his house in the previous picture)... who was the first to die, within a week. When people started to die, apparently without reason, they all turned -of course- to the priest of the town, looking for some answers. And so, the Reverend William Mompesson decided to take some precautions to slow the spread of the illness... One of them, for example, was to celebrate the church services outdoor, in a place called Cucklett Delf, to allow the assistants to separate themselves, reducing the risk of getting infected.


But, the most famous decission, and the one which made this town so popular was to self-isolate themselves to prevent the spreading of the Plague disease to other towns. And so, for 16 months, nobody entered or left Eyam. Families were forced to bury their own dead, and trades with other towns were made in a non-presential way, leaving money and the goods (food, medicines, etc.) in a place called nowadays "Mompesson's Well", where the water was believed to "clean" the coins from the disease... However, they also used vinegar.


When they finally decided to put an end to the quarantine, already in 1666, there were only 83 alive villagers, out of a population of 350. And so, not a pattern of infection could be established. For instance, Elizabeth Hancock never became ill, but she buried her 6 children and her husband in 8 days. Ah! The unofficial undertaker didn't die, either.

But why "Year of Wonders"? 2 reasons: The first, that's the name of an interesting historical novel about Eyam's case, written by Geraldine Brooks. The other, a poem written by the English poet John Dryden, in 1667... Because he believed that 1666 was really a year of wonders, "Annus Mirabilis"... Really? Plague... The Great Fire of London (with Capital Letters)... Wonders? Dryden chose to interpret the absence of greater disaster as miraculous intervention by God... That's a nice lesson for these times of crisis, don't you think?

However, it was really a "Year of Wonders" to Newton, who saw an apple falling from a tree, got inspired and formulated his theory of gravitation.