by Tim Severin
They begin to lie dormant in the second week in October, and like the European marmot a great many will congregate in one burrow.
Now, however, Doc was treating the corpse of the marmot as if it was a spitting cobra about to attack. It seemed very strange. After all, we had been eating baked marmot with Delger and Bayar only two weeks before.
‘Don’t get out of the jeep! Stay where you are!’ warned Doc urgently, his voice muffled through the handkerchief held over his nose and mouth. ‘That marmot is very sick.’
‘What does that mean?’ I asked him.
‘It means that there is an outbreak of pestes in the valley, and we must warn the Orianghai immediately,’ he answered.
‘Pestes?’ Then I remembered my Latin. ‘Do you mean plague?’ I asked.
‘Yes’, Doc confirmed. ‘Plague!’
There was no doubt that Doc was very alarmed. Paul certainly thought that he was overreacting, and started to get out of the jeep to take a photograph. But Doc caught him by the arm, and it was the first time I had ever seen him really angry. ‘I told you. Don’t go near the animal!’ he ordered fiercely. ‘If you breathe the air near that marmot, you could die!’ Paul, looking sceptical, sat back in his seat. I, too, was puzzled rather than alarmed. The marmot may indeed have been suffering from plague - which seemed extraordinary enough - but I had always thought that plague was transmitted by fleas and other parasites which transferred the sickness from rats, the carriers, to man. But this was a layman’s view, and Doc seemed so intense that it was better to do as he said.
We promptly turned the jeep and drove back to the two herdsmen whom we had passed a few moments earlier. Doc spoke to them very seriously. Immediately they drove their horse-herd over to one side to avoid passing close to the dead marmot in its burrow. The country people, Doc told me, were so fearful of the plague that they believed you could catch the disease simply by breathing the contaminated air near a diseased marmot, and they gave all dead marmots a very wide berth. (A traditional belief founded on the now scientifically proven fact that pneumonic plague can be transmitted aerogenically between humans by bacillus-carrying droplets expelled from the lungs.)
Then we continued up to the Orianghai gers. They had established a small, rather scruffy camp on a bare patch of ground where the slope was not quite as steep as the rest of the valley. Physically the Orianghai looked just like other Mongols, and the camp itself had a sense of impermanence. It could not have been in position for more than two or three days and ironically, in view of the -drought, I noticed a small ditch had freshly been scooped around the nearest ger to divert run-off surface water. Apparently the previous evening there had been a sudden downpour, the first for weeks, which had swept through the tents causing damage and soaking all their possessions.
Nothing had been going right for the luckless Orianghai. They confirmed that there had been a severe drought for the past two months. Many of their cattle had already starved to death in the lower valley, and recently they had moved up to the higher ground hoping to find more grass. Doc told them about the dead marmot, and warned them that there was probably plague in the valley. The Orianghai looked even more despondent.
‘They say it is the final blow’, Doc translated. ‘Now they will have to abandon this valley too and try to find somewhere else for their herds. But the grazing season is almost over, and there is no pasture left. They said it is the third of their misfortunes.’
‘I know about drought and plague’, I said, ‘but what is the third misfortune?’
‘Look by your feet.’
I looked down and saw dozens and dozens of grasshoppers crawling among the pebbles and small stones.
‘Locusts. They are destroying what little grass there is left’, said Doc.
It seemed as if the biblical plagues of Egypt were being visited on the hapless Orianghai, but at one time and in one place.
There was no point in our lingering there with the Orianghai. The news of the dead marmot had cast a pall. They would move out next morning, they told us, and leave that doomed area. Doc was also eager to get out of the vicinity, and at once. He feared that as soon as the local authorities discovered there was plague in the valley, they would quarantine the area. In that case, we would be obliged to stay in the valley, forbidden to travel, for at least another month. It was better, he said, that we get ourselves further west. The Orianghai had already seen other carcasses in valley, small rodents as well as cattle were dying. I suspected that the cattle were dying from starvation rather than disease, but the deaths of the mice and rats could have been connected with the outbreak of plague which, if I guessed rightly, was better known in the west as the Black Death.
As we left the valley, Doc confirmed my suspicions. He listed the classic symptoms of the illness he called pestes - high fever, shivering, swelling glands especially in the armpit and groin which produced an agonizing, tearing pain, giddiness so that the unfortunate victims staggered as if drunk, and delirium. Death came usually within ten days. The signs Doc had listed were very similar to the sufferings of the plague victims described by medieval writers in the 14th century, when an estimated 25 million people in Europe perished from the Black Death. The standard explanation for the arrival of the Black Death in Europe was that it had been brought by diseased rats aboard ships. But the shock of discovering that the Black Death still survived in the very heart of the continent, far from any seaports, made me wonder if that was the full story.
The illness occurred only in summer, Doc explained, usually breaking out in late July or early August and subsiding in the autumn. The arats called it ‘Marmot Sickness’ and were well aware that the disease was somehow connected with the appearance of sick and dying marmots. The disease was so virulent that it had been known to decimate the summer communities of nomads, and wipe out entire families. Apparently it could strike any area of the country, and without warning. So by tradition a precautionary formula had developed for approaching isolated gers during the danger season. Arriving at a strange ger no one should dismount from horseback, but wait instead at a safe distance and call out loudly. ‘Tie up the dog! Tie up the dog!’ If someone emerged from the ger, then it was safe to come closer. But if nobody appeared from the door of the felt tent, then it was a warning that there could be sickness inside and perhaps the occupants lay dead. In that case the custom was to turn one’s horse and ride away without staying a moment longer than necessary because the disease was so contagious. If by chance there were survivors in a ger where plague had struck, then it was their duty to close the ventilation flap at the top of the ger and leave the tail end of the rope that normally controlled the vent panel hanging across the door. This was the warning for all visitors to stay clear for fear of infection.
We spent two more days in the region, venturing to within 5 miles of the Chinese border. We were discreet because officially we were in a forbidden zone, but I wanted to locate the Sixth Brigade. This was not a military formation but a somon’s work brigade which was said to be camped near the border for the summer. Doc had picked up a rumour that witch-doctor shamans were living among the Sixth Brigade, but it was a false report. The Sixth proved to be a perfectly ordinary work brigade of Kazakhs looking after their flocks and herds of the bare, windswept Altai plateau, their grazing land overlooked by small, rather grimy glaciers which clung to the crests of the dividing range between China and Mongolia. The humble equipment around each yurt was a summary of nomad life - a makeshift wooden rack on which small blocks of curd were drying, a couple of logs to provide wood chips to start the fire in the stove, the main fuel supply of yak dung kept dry under a piece of tarpaulin, and a few sheepskins drying on a pole. Sometimes there was a hunting eagle perched on a rock. The carpet of animal droppings told you all you needed to know about their livelihood - the larger cow pats of the yaks and hainags, medium-sized turds of sheep, and the tiny pellets of small goats. The only surprise was to note that the birdlife was dominated by seabirds. Gulls, terns
and cormorants had travelled immense distances along the river systems to finish up in the tangled knot of the Altai highlands in the very heart of the landmass.
The World Health Organisation has an office in Ulaan Baatar whose responsibility is to monitor the presence of communicable and dangerous diseases. The following week, when Paul, Doc and I had returned to Ulaan Baatar from our venture into the Altai after completing our research there, I lost no time in contacting the WHO officials for further information about the continuing existence of plague in modern Mongolia. By international agreement plague is rated as one of the most pathogenic and lethal diseases in the world, and it was the duty of the WHO office to report its presence in Mongolia. But when I telephoned to ask for information, the WHO office was evasive and refused to comment. They were not able to give any data, and told me that I should better address my questions to the Ministry of Public Health.
Once again Doc knew what to do. He knew personally the medical doctor who had recently been appointed as Minister of Health in the government reform programme. We were walking towards the Ministry of Public Health building to make an appointment to see him, when we met the new Minister himself, hurrying along the pavement. Yes of course, he said at once, he could spare us time to discuss the matter of plague.
Dr Nymadawa was another of the new style of Mongolian administrators. He was well informed, decisive, and very frank. He also had a wry sense of humour. ‘If you had come a year ago to ask me about plague in Mongolia,’ he said in his excellent English, ‘I would have had to reply to you that it did not exist in our country. That it was impossible for such a dangerous disease to survive in a socialist society after so many decades of improving health care, and that plague had been eradicated long ago. But now, with glasnost, it is more helpful to tell the truth, because this is a subject where we need to have Western help. Yes, we do have plague in Mongolia, it is endemic, and we believe that the live vaccines which we get from the Soviet Union are not as effective as they should be. I have read that there are dead vaccines made in the West which offer better protection. Let me show you the extent of the problem.’
An aide produced the plague file. The first document was a map which showed the areas of Mongolia where plague had been reported, either as a disease in animals or where there had been human victims of the illness. Regions where plague was endemic were coloured light green, the places where there had been reported cases of human plague were then shaded dark green. Starkly, the pale green belt with its dark green blobs extended in a broad sweep along the entire width of Mongolia. No less than 60 per cent of the land surface of Mongolia, the Minister revealed, served as a natural reservoir of plague. It was, as he pointed out, a major plague zone.
The Minister was also very forthcoming with the fearful details. Pestes was one of the group of diseases internationally classified as Very Infectious. Because it had also a very high pathogenic potential it was also designated as Quarantinable, along with cholera and yellow fever. Because Mongolia was particularly vulnerable to outbreaks of plague a central Institute for Contagious Diseases had been established in Ulaan Baatar which was particularly concerned with pestes, and the public health office in each aymag maintained a section for Quarantinable Diseases. In essence, their job was to watch out for plague and report it whenever it occurred.
The problem, as the Minister pointed out, was that the disease was virtually impossible to stamp out because it was held in the almost limitless reservoir of the resident population of wild rodents. The carriers were marmots, steppe dogs, which were the equivalent of North American prairie dogs, and certain mice and rats. Even hamsters and gerbils could be infected. Nearly all these species lived in burrows and hibernated, so they were impossible to root out. The disease itself could spread from burrow to burrow and, as Prjevalski had noted, the marmots lived densely packed in their underground homes, further spreading the contagion. The best the Ministry of Public Health could do was to send out field teams every spring to different locations where plague had previously occurred. Here they shot or trapped the carrier animals and tested them for plague. If they found fresh plague signs, local warnings were issued and, in particular, hunting for marmots was banned. But of course the country was simply too vast for the whole of the reservoir area to be checked in this way, and so local plague spots could go unreported, and there were many herdsmen who were living in such isolation that they simply did not receive the warnings. To alert the city population to the plague danger, the government had started transmitting plague alerts on television, using simple little sequences showing a warning cross drawn over pictures of sick marmots. But the herdsmen did not possess television sets.
The Minister gave a recent and macabre example of how easily matters could go wrong. Early the previous month a boy from a herdsman’s family had handled a marmot which his dog had caught alive. The lad had taken the marmot to his parents, who lived in one of an isolated group of three gers. They decided to keep the animal for its fur, and skinned it. About a week later, several members of the family began to suffer from fever and severe headaches. But instead of reporting this sickness to the authorities, they decided to conceal the matter because the marmot had been caught and killed outside the official marmot hunting season and they were frightened of getting into trouble. The result was that the fever spread rapidly throughout the group of three gers. There were often fifteen people living in the gers, and eleven contracted the disease. Of those eleven, five had died.
‘That shows just how dangerous and how contagious the disease is,’ commented the Minister, ‘and it followed the classic pattern - a seven-day incubation period, followed by fever, and soon afterwards the deaths begin. If the disease is not treated in first two or three days with antibiotics or sulpha drugs, then the result is almost certain death.’
The worst outbreak of plague in recent times was in 1910 and 1911, when the so-called ‘Manchurian Plague’ flared across northern China. Sixty thousand people perished, and poor communications and inadequate reporting meant that many thousands more deaths went unrecorded. The ‘Manchurian Plague’ was pestes, or the Black Death, and contemporary research showed that it had originated in Mongolia and been carried into north China along the caravan roads. A Russian doctor by the name of Zablotny had studied the progress and vector of the disease, and confirmed that it was resident in the population of the marmots, steppe dogs, mice and rats, and that it was usually transmitted by the insect parasites which fed on the diseased animals and then bit and infected humans. The ‘Manchurian Plague’ in particular had spread like wildfire because it had also infected the lungs of the victims and then been spread by air droplets. A further outbreak in 1947 had occurred in Inner Mongolia, when 30,000 people were infected, of which 23,000 died. ‘You will be relieved to know that you cannot contract plague by eating marmot,’ Dr Nymadawa said with a grin, ‘as I believe you have done ... particularly if it is well boiled.’
Some of the popular folklore about the plague was based on accurate observation. For instance, the Mongol arats knew long before Zablotny confirmed the fact scientifically that marmots were the main culprits. In fact the Mongol name for plague was ‘Marmot Epidemic’ and it had been known by this description since the time of Genghis Khan. All Mongol herdsmen knew that the presence of sick and dying marmots and the arrival of carrion birds to feed on their carcases was a warning to stay away from the region for fear of contracting plague. Nor did any marmot hunter touch an animal that showed signs of being drowsy or was not fully alert, in case it was already in the early stages of the disease. For this reason the traditional method of marmot hunting was very special. The marmot hunters dressed in white overclothing and carried a small white flag on a short stick which they flicked back and forth as they crawled towards the marmot at the lip of its burrow. An alert and healthy marmot would immediately stand upright and watch the strange white apparition as it approached. A curious marmot would be fascinated by the flapping of the white flag, and the attrac
tion was fatal. The hunter came within arrow range and killed his prey, knowing that he had dispatched a disease-free animal. ‘But now’, the Minister observed a little sadly, ‘things have changed. There are city folk who drive out in a jeep, and simply shoot the marmot from the vehicle using a high-power rifle, not knowing if it is alert or not. As for the boy whose family was infected, it is almost certain that his dog was able to catch the marmot because the animal was too diseased to run away.’
The Minister then let slip an intriguing detail. His health officials regularly tested samples of the plague bacillus taken from the diseased animals. They had found that the samples they took from the mice and steppe dogs were less virulent than the samples taken from the marmots. The plague carried by rats and mice seemed to be more akin to the milder ‘urban plague’ reported from South-East Asia. It was infectious and harmful but not so fatal to humans. On the other hand, the samples taken from marmots were highly pathogenic. The conclusion was that the zoobiotic reservoir of the Black Death was among the marmots, rather than among smaller rats and mice.