Diseases and Hygiene Issues in England: The Black Death Plague

England has been hit with many diseases and hygiene issues through out the decades. When the country is hit with major health issues it is left with hardly any options other than to wait it out, this maybe due to the lack of health and medicine care back in those days. In this essay I am going to be exploring, comparing and contrasting the plagues of the 14th and 17th century. I am also going to go through the different ways of how England has prevented another plague from infecting its streets since then.

The bubonic plague in the 14th century was known to be one of the most horrendous events that took place in Europe. A common name for this time period was the ‘Black Death’, however this term was not coined until the 17th century. The Black Death claimed an estimated 75 to 200 million people’s lives in all of Europe.

The plague started from central Asia where it made it’s way through the Silk Road in 1346, reaching a place called Crimea, close to the black sea. It was here, most likely, where the rats then went on board the merchant ships. As the ships sailed throughout the Mediterranean and Europe, so did the plague. During this time an estimate of 30% to 60 % of Europe’s total population were killed.

The first known case of infection in England was a seaman who arrived at Weymouth, Dorset, from Gascony in June 1348. A couple of months after that the plague had spread through England and reached the city of London. The Black Death had spread throughout England by the year of 1349.

During the 14th century, England was a very rural country where most of the population worked and lived in the countryside. London was one of the major cities that England had and stood in it’s own class. There were a total of 70,000 people who live...

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... city until the second plague in the 17th century, which was then followed by the Great Fire of London. I say this because after the first plague in the 14th century people should have been thinking of how to avoid another outbreak in the future, and maybe if they had tried to improve the working and living conditions of the poorer class, it would not have happened again. In the 17th century however this plague really pushed the people who live in London to their maximum strength, and not only did they have to conquer the plague that year but also go through the biggest fire in the history of London. After the plagues people really fell into religion because they thought that this was some sort of punishment or test that God was putting on them. Lastly after the Great Plague they really did step up and make London a more cleaner and safer city for people to live in.