How did the black plague start?
Even before the "ships of death"
arrived at the port of Messina, many Europeans had heard rumors about the
"great pestilence" that was carving a deadly path along the trade
routes of the near and far east. Indeed, as early as the 1340s, the disease
affected China, India, Persia, Syria, and Egypt.
Plague is thought to have originated in Asia
2,000 years ago and was likely spread by trading ships, although recent
research has shown that the pathogen responsible for the black death may have
been present in Europe by 3000 bc.
Symptoms of the black plague
Europeans were barely aware of the horrific
reality of black death. "In men and women alike," wrote the Italian
poet Giovanni Boccaccio, "at the beginning of the disease, some swelling,
either on the waist or under the armpit... increases to the size of a common
apple, and other swellings to the size of a till. Eggs—some more and some
less—were named plague-boils.
These strange swellings began to ooze blood and
pus, followed by a host of other unpleasant symptoms—fever, chills, vomiting,
diarrhea, terrible aches and pains—and then, in a short time, death.
The bubonic plague attacks the lymphatic system,
causing lymph nodes to swell. If not treated, the infection can spread
to the blood or lungs.
How did the black death spread?
The black death was frighteningly,
indiscriminately contagious: "merely touching the clothes," Boccaccio
wrote, "seemed to transmit the disease to the toucher." The disease
was also terrifyingly effective. People who were perfectly healthy when they
went to bed at night could be dead by the morning.
Do you know? Many scholars think that the
nursery rhyme "Ring around the Rose" was written about the
symptoms of black death.
Understanding black death
Today, scientists understand that the black
death, now known as the plague, is spread by a bacillus called Yersinia pestis.
(French biologist Alexandre Yersin discovered this pathogen in the late 19th
century.)
They know that the bacillus is spread from
person to person through the air, as well as through the bites of infected
fleas and rats. Both of these pests could be found almost everywhere in
medieval Europe, but they were especially at home on ships of all types—this is
how the deadly plague made its way to European port cities one after another.
Shortly after attacking Messina, the black death
spread to the port of Marseille in France and the port of Tunis in North
Africa. Then it reached Rome and Florence, two cities located at the center of
a wide network of trade routes. By mid-1348, the black death had struck Paris,
Bordeaux, Lyon, and London.
Today, this serious sequence of events is
horrifying but understandable. However, in the mid-14th century, there was no
rational explanation for this.
No one knew how the black death spread from
patient to patient, and no one knew how to prevent or treat it. For example,
according to one doctor, "instant death occurs when the air spirit
emanating from the eyes of a sick person attacks a healthy person standing
nearby and looking at the sick person."
How do you treat the black death?
Healers relied on crude techniques such as
bloodletting and boil-lancing (practices that were dangerous as well as
unhygienic) and superstitious practices such as burning aromatic herbs and
bathing in rose water or vinegar.
Meanwhile, in panic, the healthy people did everything
they could to avoid getting sick. Doctors refused to see patients; the priests
refused to perform the last rites; and shopkeepers closed their shops. Many
people fled the cities to the countryside, but even there they could not escape
the disease; it affected cows, sheep, goats, pigs, and chickens, as well as
people.
In fact, so many sheep died that one of the
consequences of the black death was a European wool shortage. And many people,
desperate to save themselves, even abandoned their sick and dying loved ones.
"In doing so," Boccaccio wrote, "each thought of securing for
himself immunity."
The black death: a timeline of the
horrific epidemic
Track how the black death devastated
humanity throughout history.
Read more
How did the black death spread along the
Silk Road?
The Silk Road was an important trade route
connecting east and west, but it also became the vehicle for one of the
deadliest epidemics in history.
Read more
Pandemics that Changed History
In the field of infectious diseases, epidemics
are the worst-case scenario. Only when an epidemic spreads beyond a country's
borders does the disease officially become a pandemic. Infectious diseases
existed during mankind's hunter-gatherer days, but the shift to agricultural
life 10,000 years ago created communities that made pandemics more likely.
Malaria, tuberculosis, leprosy,...
Read more
Black plague: God's punishment?
Because they did not understand the biology of
the disease, many believed that the black death was a type of divine
punishment—retribution for sins against God such as greed, blasphemy, heresy,
adultery, and worldliness.
According to this logic, the only way to
overcome the plague was to receive God's forgiveness. Some believed that the
way to do this was to rid their communities of heretics and other miscreants,
so, for example, thousands of Jews were massacred in 1348 and 1349. (Thousands
of others fled to less populated areas of eastern Europe, where they could live
relatively safely from rampaging mobs in the cities.)
Some people coped with the terror and
uncertainty of the black death epidemic by attacking their neighbors; others
coped by turning inward and worrying about the state of their soul.
Flag carrier
Some upper-class people joined processions of
flag-bearers who went from town to town and publicly performed penances and
punishments; they would punish themselves and each other with heavy leather straps
studded with sharp pieces of metal. used to kill while the townspeople watched.
For 33 1/2 days, the flag bearers repeated this ritual three times a day. They
will then move to the next city and start the process again.
Although the flagellant movement provided some
relief to those who felt powerless in the face of an unspeakable tragedy, it
soon began to worry the pope, whose authority the flagellants had begun to
usurp. In the face of this resistance from the pope, the movement
disintegrated.
Social distancing and quarantine were used to
fight the black death in the middle ages.
In the 14th century, public health officials
didn't understand viruses, but they did understand the importance of distancing
and disinfecting.
Read more
How a 17th-century Italian town survived
the plague
The city of Ferrara managed to avoid a
single death from a widespread infection. How did they do it?
Read more
5 hard-earned lessons from past
pandemics
How does the population survive
epidemics? History offers some strategies.
Read more
How did the black death end?
The plague never really ended and returned with
a vengeance years later. But officials in the port city of Ragusa were able to
slow its spread by keeping arriving sailors isolated until it was clear they did
not have the disease, relying on isolation to slow the spread of the disease.
Social distancing was maintained.
Sailors were initially kept on their ships for
30 days (a trentino), a period that was later extended to 40 days or a
quarantine—the origin of the term "quarantine" and a practice still
used today. Is.
Does the black plague still exist?
The black death epidemic took its toll as early
as the 1350s, but the plague reappeared every few generations over the
centuries. Modern sanitation and public-health practices have substantially
reduced the impact of the disease but have not eliminated it. While antibiotics
are available to treat black death, there are still 1,000 to 3,000 cases of
plague each year, according to the World Health Organization.
Gallery: pandemics that changed history
Although it had been around for centuries,
leprosy developed into an epidemic in Europe in the Middle Ages. Leprosy, a
slow-developing bacterial disease that causes sores and disfigurement, was
considered a punishment from God that ran in families. a