Essay On The Black Plague

In the mid 13th century Europe was devastated with a disease that wiped out a large portion of their population. This disease was called the plague.The plague was a disease with a name Yersinia Pestis. This disease was spread by fleas on small rodents such as black rats. Black rats were the most accused for the spread of the black plague. Once the flea is on a human it will infect a human by putting infected blood into the humans blood stream. Once infected you would start getting symptoms like high fever, rapid pulse, headache, body aches, and weakness. Your fingers toes and lips would also turn black/blue. The average time to die from the time you start receiving symptoms is 72 hours. Gabrielle de’ Mussi lived in Sicily when they plague broke out. He wrote, “They in turn soon infected their whole families, who in three days succumbed, and were buried in one common grave.”

The plague originated with the Mongols in the Gobi desert in the year 1235.

The mongols had received the disease by not being hygienic. The Mongols rapidly traveling all around Asia for land but what they didn't know is that they were slowly setting themselves up for the most historical epidemic ever. The Mongols truly started the Black Death when they opened the doors of china to the rest of the world.
Once the doors of China were opened the disease started traveling through the east-west trade system.

The way it traveled on land was fleas would get on

horses that would travel on the silk road. It traveled faster by going from sea port to sea port. Black rats would live on ships with the infected fleas . The rats would get off at each port carrying the disease with them. The first European city hit was Sicily, Italy.

The plague swept through killing about 70 million people. This was over half the population at the time. This had a major effect on the economy. One of the biggest effect was that most work ceased because of lack of workers. People were also left with an abundance of goods because the infected would die so fast. With less workers those who could work had much higher pay. Manors were at high threat they were very low on workers and without workers they could not operate on their own. Serfs were now free. If they left their master they would instantly be hired by another one because workers were so

scarce.
There was also a big effect on social many people abandoned friends and family to give themselves a better chance at surviving. Some people would lock themselves in their own house and shut themselves out from the rest of the world. Everyone was in high amounts of fear and high in stress. Some people got severe depression and commit suicide before the disease could get to them. Some entire famous family names disappeared because they all died out. Complete manors were taken over by distant relatives.

Religion was completely changed during this time. The church had lost most of its power because people were losing faith in god. People would pray to stop the sickness and heal them but it would never work so the church was blamed for it.
Some people though god was disappointed of what they were doing so he punished them. Other people thought it was all the Jewish communities fault. Jewish people then became ignored and hated.
Every winter seemed to kill of the disease. Yet every spring it seemed to come back. The disease finally started to slow down when public hospitals started being built to treat the ill. People were also practicing better hygiene; before the plague people were only bathing maybe once a decade. People also stopped traveling so the disease wasn't being moved around as much. Nothing seemed to ever fully kill the disease as it is still around to this day.