Arcadia Scotland

Although Covid-19 has had a detrimental impact on all our lives, it is important to remember that it is just one of the many pandemics that has occurred in the history of Scotland. For millennia disease has threatened humankind, but this same danger has also acted as an agent for positive change. Disease has shaped history and has proven our capacity for humanity even at the worst of times. Despite outbreaks of the bubonic plague, “Spanish” Flu, HIV, and many other diseases, the Scottish nation has survived. 

The Black Death

Scotland’s remote geography on the edge of Europe meant that some of the earlier outbreaks of the bubonic plague had little impact. The Plague of 664 A.D., for example, lasted more than 20 years in England and Ireland, yet in Scotland the outbreak remained confined to the Lothians. Adomnán, the abbot of Iona Abbey, claimed that Scotland was spared from the pestilence by St Columba, who had converted the Picts to Christianity a century earlier. 

In the 1340s, the Black Death wasted much of Europe and the Middle East, yet Scotland initially welcomed the onset of the plague. Once again the Scots believed they had been spared, this time by St Andrew, while the English were receiving some much deserved divine retribution. The Scots had been defeated by the English at Neville’s Cross  in 1346, with David II being taken prisoner. England lost so many men to the plague, however, they lacked the soldiers to garrison Scotland, preserving the kingdom’s independence for the time being. The Scots did not get off so easily, and the Gesta Annalia estimated that when the Black Death finally arrived in 1349 as many as one-third of the population died. This would not be the last time that the plague came to Scotland, and there was an outbreak in Glasgow as late as 1900. 

Whereas in the past Scotland’s remoteness had been her saviour, it was Glasgow’s position as the ‘Second City of the Empire’ which contributed the outbreak of 1900. Glasgow’s port was one of the largest in the world, and accepted ships from all over the British Empire, and it was on these vessels that the plague arrived. One doctor complained in the British Medical Journal that concerns over the economic effects of an outbreak had impeded official responses: 

‘It is a common fate of the medical man who first suggests the probability of plague in a community to be voted a public nuisance who ought to be chloroformed beyond the final stage of safe anaesthesia, for plague means so much to the mercantile and maritime interests of the town or city in which it may appear.’ 

Ultimately the disease was contained and there were only 36 cases with 16 recorded deaths. Human beings were learning, albeit slowly, how to combat and control outbreaks of disease.

The “Spanish” Flu

The "Spanish" Flu pandemic occurred immediately after the First World War, killing between 50 and 100 million people. The pandemic attracted little academic or public interest until fairly recently, and even at the time awareness about the disease was low. The name itself comes from the fact that many countries had enacted wartime censorship, and only in neutral Spain was the epidemic widely reported on. In Scotland, the mortality rate was grossly underestimated at only 22,000, with modern figures suggesting as many as 70,000 deaths. The war itself aided the spread of the virus, as demobilisation caused unprecedented population movements, while the collective immunity of the civilian population had been weakened by food shortages. Many doctors and nurses were on active service as well, meaning that there was an acute lack of medical personnel. The public, however, tended to blame wartime shortages in whisky and the weakness of ‘Government Ale’ for the outbreak. Reactions to the pandemic were surprisingly muted in Scotland; it seems likely that the loss of as many as 100,000 men during war had desensitised the nation to such high casualties. One doctor warned in the Edinburgh Medical Journal that:

‘Not only does this epidemic of influenza tower over all previously recorded epidemics of similar nature; it proved the most fatal epidemic of disease of any form that has occurred in Scotland since death registration began.’

HIV-AIDS

During the Enlightenment Edinburgh became known as the ‘Athens of the North’, yet by the 1990s the city was the ‘Aids’ capital of Europe.’ In 1996 it was estimated that per 10,000 of the city’s population, 13 had HIV. Those living with the virus were often ostracised due to the belief that only homosexual men and heroin addicts were at risk. Homosexuality had only been legalised in 1981, and as in other countries, some claimed that the outbreak was evidence of the dangers of a permissive society. It was difficult then for sufferers to find a voice when society believed HIV was a moral, rather than a medical, problem. Yet Irvine Welsh’s cult novel Trainspotting illustrates that amongst the infected hope, friendship, and even humour, survived. Davie, a background character who is not featured heavily in the film adaptation, remains optimistic despite his HIV diagnosis: ‘Life is beautiful. I’m going to enjoy it, and I’m going to live a long life. I’ll be what the medical staff call a long term survivor. I just know that I will.’ Although there is still much work to be done, today the median life expectancy for an HIV patient in Scotland is near normal at just over 70 years of age. 

Given the periodic outbreaks of disease in Scottish history, perhaps the words ‘long term survivor’ can be applied to the nation and her people more broadly. Indeed, it is at times like this that one must remember that our own existence is testament to humankind’s ability to overcome disease in all its forms.