The Black plague, plague Bubonic or Black death Is the name given to a deadly plague that was rampant during the fourteenth century. It caused the greatest epidemic of humanity.
This plague, also called bubonic plague, although it is more accurate to call it pneumonic plague, arrived from Asia in the end of 1348 to Europe.
This watercolor map, by Sean Twiddy, provides insight into 14th-century Europe and the places where"the plague"spread.
Photo retrieved from: https://www.awesomestories.com
This plague killed more people than any other world phenomenon, in China, India, North Africa and the Middle East.
It did not spread to America or the part of sub-Saharan Africa. According to some scholars, since 1331 approximately 45% of the world population died.
Causes of Black Death
Until recently, it was thought that the black plague had been caused by fleas carried by rats that were very common in towns and cities. When fleas bit their victims, they were believed to be injecting them with the disease.
However, evidence produced by forensic scientists and archaeologists in 2014 from human remains in north London suggests that fleas could not have been responsible for an infection that spread so quickly, it had to be in the air .
Once the disease reached the lungs of the malnourished, it spread to the wider population through sneezing and coughing.
Whatever the cause of the infection, death was often very rapid for the weakest victims. By the spring of 1349, the Black Death had killed six out of ten Londoners.
Why did the plague spread so quickly?
Flogging people trying to escape the Black Death
Photo retrieved from: http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk
In cities, people lived very close together and knew nothing of contagious diseases. If they did, they would have avoided close contact with others, if they themselves were sick or if others around them were sick. They would also be careful to cover their mouth and nose when they cough or sneeze.
In addition, the disposition of the bodies was very crude and helped spread the disease even more with those who handled the corpses, which were not protected in any way.
The lack of medical knowledge meant that people tried anything to help them escape the disease. One of the most extreme methods was flagellants. These people wanted to show their love to God by scourging themselves, hoping that God would forgive their sins and save themselves from the dreaded plague.
How did it spread?
The disease spread from animal populations to humans through the fleas of agonizing rats. Plague bacteria drowned the vital organs of the infected.
Their lethality arose from the avalanche of three types: plague bubonic, pneumonic and, occasionally, septicemic.
Remedies used against plague
The Plague in Florence, in 1348.
Photo retrieved from: e-archeos.com
Medieval people believed that the disease came from God, and thus responded with prayers and processions. Some contemporaries realized that the only remedy for the plague was to flee from it.
No remedy was known, but people wanted medicine. It was commented that many doctors did much 'gold' of the pestilence, without any positive result. Pest bacteria were identified in Asia in the 1890s, and the connection with animals and fleas was established.
Modern antibiotics can combat plague, but they are threatened by mutant diseases and immunity to the effects of antibiotics.
The vision of the artists of the time
In Florence, the great poet of the Renaissance, Petrarch, was certain that he would not believe:"O happy posterity, do not experience such abjection and see our testimony as a fable!"A Florentine chronicler reports that:
"All the citizens did little more than bring dead bodies to be buried... In each church they dug deep graves to the table of water; And so those who were poor who died during the night were packed quickly and thrown into the well. In the morning, when a great number of bodies were found in the pit, they took land and pushed it on them; And later others were placed on top of them and then another layer of earth, as is the lasagna with layers of pasta and cheese"
The stories are remarkably similar. The chronicler Agnolo di Tura 'fat' refers to his Tuscan hometown:
"... in many parts of Siena large graves were dug and heaped with the multitude of dead... And there were also those who were so scarcely covered with earth that the dogs dragged them and devoured many bodies throughout the city."
The"quarantine"of the Black Death
The first"quarantine"was not invented in Venice, but was a"Trentine"first legislated in Ragusa.
In Venice, at the beginning of the fifteenth century, the phrase"quarantine"was coined to refer to the exclusion and isolation of people from infected regions or others suspected of carrying plague in a 40-day isolation period (with Biblical resonances). In this way, the contagion with the rest of the population was avoided.
In the early modern period,"quarantine"had often been further reduced. The period considered necessary to isolate suspected carriers in Milan during their plague of 1557-75, for example, had been reduced to eight days for certain categories of suspicion.
Human attempts to end the plague in Europe
The cities that managed to keep the plague beyond its borders were the ones that devised and implemented quarantine, as well as border controls at city gates, harbors and mountain passes.
Individual health passports (identifying a person and certifying where they came from) and other related measures such as spy networks were used to indicate when a pest had exploded in a foreign city or region.
Ragusa was a pioneer with its first"quarantine"and its increasingly sophisticated measures to isolate the infected and control their borders during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
His last plague was in 1533, while in England it was 1665-56, in the Baltic region 1709-13, and North Africa and the Middle East in the nineteenth century. Many Italian regions followed the example of Ragusa, and after them, other regions of western and central Europe.
The position of the Church
The church and its help to the sick
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In spite of the thousands of people who sacrificed their lives helping spiritually or physically the afflicted during the Black Death, the church did not grant them any status of blessed or holy.
From October 1347 in Sicily, to the early 1350s further north, contemporary chroniclers criticized the abandonment of members of the sick family and accused clerics and doctors of being"cowards"for giving up their responsibilities to Escape the vicious contagion of the plague.
Occasionally, however, contemporary writers also praised those who remained to care for the afflicted, and often lost their lives in doing so. Curiously, the church did not recognize any of these martyrs during the Black Death with elevations to beatitude or holiness.
The first to be recognized did not appear until the fifteenth century, and those who intervened to help those affected by the plague (ie during their own life and not as miraculous postmortem acts) remained invisible even during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Mass burials
People were thrown into ditches, without proper burials for the time
Photo retrieved from: http://www.dailymail.co.uk
The situation of the lower class and of the majority of the middle classes was even more unfortunate to contemplate than the upper class. Most of them remained in their homes, either because of poverty or in the hope of security, and fell ill equally.
Since they received no care and attention, almost all of them died. Many ended their lives on the streets both at night and during the day. Many others died in their homes, and this was only known because the neighbors smelled their bodies in decay.
The corpses filled every corner. Most of them were treated in the same way by the survivors, who were more concerned with getting rid of their rotten bodies than moved by charity toward the dead.
With the help of the porters, if they could get them, they took the bodies from the houses and put them in the door, where every morning could see dead. They were then placed in court or, as these were often missing, at the tables.
Such was the multitude of corpses carried to the churches every day and almost every hour that there was not sufficient earth consecrated to give them burial, mainly because they wanted to bury each person in the tomb of the family, according to the old custom.
Although the cemeteries were full, they were forced to dig enormous trenches, where they buried the bodies by hundreds. Here they were stored as bundles in the hold of a ship and covered them with a little earth, until the whole ditch was full.
Is black plague a cause for concern these days?
New research suggests that the bubonic plague, the deadly scourge that annihilated half of Europe during the Middle Ages, is still hidden in the pockets of the world.
Although plague is now rare in Europe, it has recently sickened more than 10,000 people in Congo for a decade, and cases still occasionally occur in the western United States, according to a study published on 16 September in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene .
The bacteria of the pest, Yersinia pestis , Have remained present, undeviating, in the Gobi Desert of China for many centuries.
Even during the 1900s, the plague still killed millions of people. Since then, the advent of better hygiene in cities and rapid treatment with antibiotics has reduced this killer of old in a rare disease. Still, the outbreak of plague still explodes around the world.
According to a new study, which recorded reported cases of plague around the world between 2000 and 2009, more than 20,000 people became infected during that time. People contracted the disease through rodents, poor camel meat and sick grazing dogs, according to the report. Cases in Libya and Algeria resurfaced after decades of absence.
The highest burden was in Africa: in the Congo 10,581 people contracted the plague, followed by Madagascar with 7,182 cases and Zambia with 1,309 cases.
"These events, while showing progress, suggest that the plague will persist in rodent deposits primarily in poverty-stricken African countries and civil unrest, killing them when patients do not receive antimicrobial treatment soon,"the authors wrote in their Article.
In the United States during that time period, 56 people contracted the plague and seven died. Cases occurred mainly because the plague has become endemic in wild squirrels and rodents in the American West.
Two of the dead were scientists: one who had performed an autopsy on a wild mountain lion, and one who worked with pest bacteria in the laboratory.
Despite being a source of pest in times past, Europe recorded very few cases of the disease in the last decade. That may be because European cities keep their rodent populations under control, so the potential hosts of the plague are not so prevalent.
You can also see what the 25 most deadly diseases today , Among which is the Black Death.
References
- Truemann, N. (2016). "The Black Death of 1348 to 1350". Retrieved from: historylearningsite.co.uk.
- J. Hatcher. (1994). "England in the Aftermath of the Black Death". (Past & Present).
- M.W. Dols. (1970). "The Black Death in the Middle East"(Princeton).
- Benedictow, O. (2004). "The Black Death: The Greatest Catastrophe Ever". Nordway. Retrieved from: historytoday.com.
- Edmonds, M. (2010). "How the Black Death Worked." Retrieved from: history.howstuffworks.com.
- Cohn, S. (2002). " The Black Death Transformed: Disease and Culture in Early Renaissance Europe ". Oxford University Press. Retrieved from: historyextra.com.
- Boccaccio, G. (1930). "The Decameron vol. I". &"The Black Death"(1983). Retrieved from: eyewitnesstohistory.com.
- Ghose, T. (2016). "Bubonic Plague Still Kills Thousands". Milwaukee. Retrieved from: livescience.com.