Black Death
From the Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can change
The Black Death or Black Plague was an epidemic (a disease that goes over a large area) that killed millions of people. It started in Europe in 1347, and lasted until 1351. Almost one out of every three people in Europe got the disease and died. This means about 25 million people died from it, in Europe alone.
As of 2008, people think the diesease came from Asia. Today, it is believed the disease may have been the bubonic plague. This disease is carried and spread by fleas on rats. Traders from the Silk Road may have brought the infected fleas to Europe.
The disease spread all over Europe, the Middle East and parts of Asia. It caused swelling on the neck, groin, and under the arms. People were in pain and then they died a horrible death. The symtoms could be seen 3-7 days after being infected.
It killed between a third and two-thirds of Europe's population and, including Middle Eastern lands, India and China, it killed at least 75 million people.
The same disease is thought to have returned to Europe every generation with varying degrees of intensity and fatality until the 1700s. Later outbreaks include the Italian Plague of 1629-1631, the Great Plague of London (1665–1666), the Great Plague of Vienna (1679), the Great Plague of Marseille in 1720–1722 and the 1771 plague in Moscow. There is some controversy over the identity of the disease, but in its virulent form seems to have disappeared from Europe in the 18th century.
The Black Death had a drastic effect on Europe's population. It changed Europe's social structure. It was a serious blow to the Roman Catholic Church and resulted in widespread persecution of minorities such as Jews, Muslims, foreigners, beggars and lepers. The uncertainty of daily survival influenced people to live for the moment, as illustrated by Giovanni Boccaccio in The Decameron (1353).
The initial fourteenth-century European event was called the "Great Mortality" by contemporary writers and, with later outbreaks, became known as the 'Black Death'.
The Black Death has been used as a subject or as a setting in modern literature and media. Edgar Allan Poe's short story The Masque of the Red Death (1842) is set in an unnamed country during a fictional plague that bears strong resemblance to the Black Death.
Albert Camus uses this theme too. His novel, The Plague is set against an outbreak of the plague, in Algeria and how people handle it. It was published in 1947.
Black Metal band 1349 are named after the year Black Death spread through Norway.
Sufferers of the bubonic plague develop fevers, severe flues and buboes that could swell to the size of an average apple. These buboes appear mainly in the groin, armpit and apparently sometimes on the thighs.
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[change] Doctors' reactions
The medical knowledge of the time was based on Hippocrates' theory. According to Hyppocrates, the body consists of different fluids. If they are in harmony, the person is healthy. If they are not, disease results. Very often, diseases were also seen as a punishment of god. Such a theory can of course not account for the spreading of a disease from one person to another one. Spreading of disease was said to occur from bad winds (called Miasma). The bad air could also come from within the earth, and thereby causer the disease. Remedies against the disease included to only open windows towards the north, to not sleep during the day, and not to work too hard. The Faculty of Medicine of the University of Paris concluded that the Black Death was caused by a bad constellation of Jupiter, Saturn and Mars. This constellation had occurred on 20 March, 1345. They had been asked by Philipp VI about the cause of the disease in 1348. Since the answer was scientifically founded, it was soon taken to be the real cause, and translated into many languages.
Therefore, the doctors' often limited their actions to tell people to go to Confession, so that their sins be forgiven. In the long run, the pandemics caused the doctors to revise their ideas on how the human body worked, to get away from the theories of Hyppocrates and Galenos; more towards empirical science. Only 200 years later did Girolamo Fracastoro discover that diseases spread through Infection.
[change] Other websites
[change] Primary sources online
- Henry Knighton's account
- Agnolo di Tura's account
- Gabriele de' Mussi's account
- Marchionne di Coppo di Stefano Buonaiuti's account
- A Petrarch account and More quotes from Petrarch
[change] Secondary sources online
- The History Guide "Satan Triumphant: The Black Death"
- Symptoms, causes, pictures of bubonic plague
- Overview of the black death
- BBC news story on controversy over Black Death origins
- Examination of "Ring around the Rosy"'s relationship to the plague
- Black Death Overview from BBC history
- Plague and Public Health in Renaissance Europe. Primary source documents and analysis.
- Secrets of the Dead . Mystery of the Black Death PBS
- Pandemics in Eastern Europe
[change] See also
- Great Famine of 1315-1317
- Great Plague of London
