The Black Death

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Graveyards were full, medicine failed, parents abandoned ill children and in just six months, millions had died. It was the beginning of the Black Death. It was a deadly plague that spread through Europe and Asia from the mid 1330’s -50’s. The cause of death for twenty million people, the survivors thought it was God’s anger at something they had done and, therefore, the end of the world. In Venice, ninety thousand died and in Florence, half the population. There were three types of the plague. The Bubonic plague was the most common, the Pneumonic Plague was less common and the Septicaemic Plague was the most deadly and rarest of them all.

Historians believe that the plague was caused by fleas that came to Europe from Asia on ships. At the time, people thought they were being punished by God and that they were being abandoned to fend for themselves. They thought the plague was being spread by bad smells.

The plague is believed to have originated from central Asia in 1331, when the wild rats moved to live around the people, probably due to flooding and earthquakes. From central Asia, the plague spread to China and India before moving west to Iran. By 1345, the disease had spread along the trading routes to Europe. It is thought that Italian trading ships that were at Caffa also brought the plague to Constantinople, the capital of Turkey, and then to Eastern and Western Europe. The plague was then spread from person to person by bad hygiene and because the sick and dying weren’t isolated from the rest of the world. It affected more people in cities that in rural areas. This is because people in cities people are in closer proximity to each other than people in rural areas, so the germs have more people to get to than in the...

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...hurch and ruling class in order to survive. Now, most people have a choice of religion and most people aren’t treated like the people of the medieval period. We have more advanced medicine and have excelled in science and knowledge. As a result of the Black Death we are now an almost perfectly civilized community that knows how to try and avoid things happening such as the Black Death.

Bibliography:

Mellissa Snell. (2008). Death Defined. [Online]. About.com. Available from: [23 July 2008].

E.L. Skip Knox. (Unknown). The Middle Ages: The Black Death. [Online]. Boise State University. Available from: . [23 July 2008].

Greer, V.et al. (1997) Ancient & Medieval Worlds.

Mason, K.J. (2004) Experience in World History.

BBC History Magazine

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