战争期间的鼠疫流行对中国人口和社会变动造成多大的影响，由于历史文献中有关鼠疫的记载相当少，故而在一个相当长的时期里，并不为多数学者所知。本文以咸同年间的云南为例，利用20世纪50年代鼠疫专业人员所作的调查报告，估算出战争期间的鼠疫死亡人口数以及这些死亡人口在整个战争人口损失中所占的比例；进而对战争期间的鼠疫如何造成大量人口的死亡进行阐释，在此基础上，提出战争也是一场“生态灾难”。

Due to a lack of statistical documentation few scholars have researched the number of deaths from the great plague during the Muslim Rebellion in the Xianfeng and Tongzhi reigns. The author utilizes reports from the 1950s written by a specialist to estimate how many people died of plague in Yunnan and what proportion of deaths during the war came from plague. The author then explains the reasons for the high number of deaths during the war, and concludes that war itself is also a type of “ecological disaster.”