Medieval Europe 1347
The delirious victim stagger about in his final moments. His speech is slurred, skin purple-black covered with swollen pus-filled lamps as death calls him. Witnesses to this terrifying spectacle called. It is the ‘dance macabre’ or dance of death or Black Death.
In the fourteen century, a terrible catastrophe fell upon Asia, Europe the middle east, and north Africa that would change the course of history- the black death.
The Black Death or ‘Bubonic Plague, was an outbreak of disease that killed one-third of the Europe population in the period 1347 to 1350.
It had a similarly devastating impact in Asia, the middle east, and north Africa. The disease played no favorite. Rich and poor, young and old, priest and peasant, they fell victim to this horrible at the time. Unexplained sickness, which was spreading like wildfires. The populations of entire towns and villages were wiped out in a matter of days.
The Dead are buried in mass graves to cope with the rapid death toll. Only a thin covering of soil was placed over the dead bodies before another layer was buried on top.
Pope Clement
Pope Clement VI consecrated made scared- the Rhone River so corpses could be thrown straight into it. So What is the Black death? Where did it come from?
While it’s difficult to trace with any real certainty. The outbreak is believed to have originated in the Gobi Desert in Mongolia early in the fourteen century.
Prior to this, the disease that disease had existed for centuries in regions of Asia with small outbreaks occurring from time to time. Any one of these could have been the source.
Symptoms of the Black Death
Once infected, the victim would first experience a high fever.
Aching limbs and fatigue: Within days, the lymph node in the neck, armpits, and groin would start to swell and turn black. These black swellings are where the Black Death gets its name. Michael Platinises, a first-hand witness to the horrors of the black death wrote. Here not only do burn blisters appear, but there developed gland boils on the groin the thigh, the arms, or the neck. At first, these were of the size of a hazel nut and developed accompanied by violent shivering fits.
Which soon rendered those attacked so weal that they could not stand up, but were forced to lie in their beds consumed by a violent fever. Soon the boils grew from the size of a walnut to that of a hen’s egg or a goose’s egg. They were exceedingly painful and irritated the body. This is causing the sufferer to vomit blood.
The sickness lasted three days and on the fourth. At the latest, the patient succumbed. On the fourth at the latest, the patient succumbed. The stinking pus-filled swellings, otherwise known as buboes. This gave the bubonic plague its name. their nervous system was under attack, and victims would become crazed and delirious with fever.
Once the swollen lymph node started to burst within the body, the sufferer was not long for this word. Death usually occurred within the week. By the time the infected person had introduced the disease to the port. Town or village died, and others would already be in the early stages of infection. This made preventing an epidemic incredibly difficult. The outbreak of the Black Death in the fourteenth century.
Bubonic Plague or Black Death
Actually involved three different strains of plague. The most common-and visually most gruesome form- is the bubonic plague. The second form was the pneumonic plague. It infects the respiratory system once the bubonic strain reaches the lungs. The third form-septicemic plague- infects the body’s circulatory system. That is blood. The bubonic plague is actually the weakest of the three strains.
During the worst outbreaks of the Black Death, the pneumonic and septicemic plague had mortality rates of almost one hundred percent. They also believed malnutrition played a major role in making the symptoms more dramatic. Many who died had endured years of famine. The result of severe storms and drought weakened the immune system vulnerable.
How did Bubonic Plague or Black death end?
The black death surged unstoppably throughout Eurasia for years, killing people in painful, excruciating ways within days of infection. Almost no one who caught it stood a chance. By the time it is by a third of the world’s population the dead. So how did this deadly widespread contagion finally end?
Europe in 1347: famines, tuberculosis, smallpox, beheadings, STDs old age seemed. Like the least common way for anyone to die at a time. Even giving gave you good odds of ending up in a grave. In this time of generally widespread disease and danger, no one could have imagined that a plague that would outdo all the other plagues thus far was about to make its horrific entrance. Of course, Europe had heard of the Great Pestilence that was spreading through the middle and Asia.
Can the Black death spread again?
However, in a situation that thankfully will never repeat again. They just kept going on about their business hoping the problem would fix itself before actually affecting them. And yet one day undeterred by state lines, the bubonic plague made its Europe debut. 2 ships from the Black Sea docked in the sunny Sicilian port of Messina and people working on the docks went to greet the sailors and get the cargo.
Most of the sailors were dead. The few who remained alive had already been covered in disgusting black boils hemorrhaging blood and plus. No one knew exactly what was going on, but getting the ships and boil-covered sailors as far away from Messina as possible seemed like a good call. To where they did not care. Sicilian authorities told the death ships to leave the port. Unfortunately, it was already too late. Not only was the bubonic plague one of the most virulent, contagious diseases known to man.
Thus they had probably already spread to some dockworkers in the brief contact they had with the sailors. The flea-ridden rats that had originally infected the sailors had already shipped.
The most widely accepted idea, The use of quarantines as to how the plague was eradicated. Those that could afford to do so would leave the more densely populated places and live in greater isolation, while the uninfected would normally remain in their houses and only leave when it was essential.
Cause and Effect of Black Death
The Black Death, which had its roots in China and Inner Asia, destroyed the Kipchak khan Janibeg army as he besieged the Genoese commercial port of Kaffa (now Feodosiya) in Crimea (1347). Janibeg launched plague-infested corpses into the town as his soldiers crumbled, hoping to infect his foes. Genoese ships brought the disease from Kaffa to Mediterranean ports, where it expanded inland and affected Sicily in 1347, North Africa, mainland Italy, Spain, and France in 1348, as well as Austria, Hungary, Switzerland, Germany, and the Low Countries (1349).
In August 1348, a ship from Calais brought the plague to Melcombe Regis, Dorset. It quickly swept over the southern counties of England and nearly soon reached Bristol. Between February and May 1349, London suffered the most severely, followed by Yorkshire and East Anglia during that summer. In 1350, the Black Death spread to Scotland, the Baltic States, Scandinavia, and the far north of England.
Impact of the Black Death
This brutal calamity had a wide range of effects. Wars stopped, and trade suddenly dropped, although these effects only lasted a short while. Due to the deaths of so many laborers, a more serious and long-lasting effect was the drastic reduction in the area under cultivation. Many landowners found that this was their downfall. In an effort to keep their tenants, Labor force them scarcity to provide pay or money rents in place of labor services. The pay for artisans and peasants also increased generally. The previously rigorous social stratification gave a new fluidity as a result of these changes.
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