THE black Plague this is how the outbreak of bubonic plague that affected the entire European continent in the period from 1347 to 1353 was known. This disease is believed to have originated in Central Asia, being carried by Genoese traders who were in the Crimean region. Due to its expansion into a large territory, it was considered a pandemic.
The accounts of those who lived in the plague period tell of the number of dead who succumbed to this disease and the despair of people, who fled or isolated themselves as a way to guarantee their survival. It is believed that this outbreak may have caused the death of up to 50 million people.
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Where did the Black Death come about?
The Black Death was a pandemic of bubonic plague, a disease caused by bacterium Yersina pestis, which is found in rats. This bacterium is transmitted to humans through the fleas of rats, and when the fleas lodge on humans, transmission takes place. From there, a human being can contaminate another through the body secretions and of the airway.
The bubonic plague is believed to have emerged in some region of the Central Asia, most likely in China. Throughout history, outbreaks of it have been recorded, such as the plaguejustiniana, which took place between 541 and 544 and caused thousands of deaths in Constantinople, in the Byzantine Empire.
In the context of the 14th century, this outbreak began in the lands of the Khanate of the Golden Horde, specifically in regions that currently correspond to southern Russia, having contact with Europeans in the city of coffee, located in Crimea. In the 1340s, this city, which was a colony of Genoa, was being attacked by Tatar troops who wanted to conquer it for the Khanate.
In 1346, the Tatars managed to contaminate Caffa, and the spread of the disease there caused the Genoese to flee the city. So, these Genoese took the disease through which they passed, Constantinople, Sicily, Marseilles and the Italian Peninsula. Between 1347 and 1348, the disease reached these coastal regions of Europe and spread to the rest of the continent.
How was Europe affected?
The bubonic plague pandemic has not only affected the European continent but was also present in Asia and theAfrica. In any case, Europe suffered severe impacts from the disease, since the mortality rate there was high. Places with higher temperatures suffered the most from its impact, but there were exceptions.
The poor nutrition of the poorest people and the lack of a support structure for the sick contributed to the deaths being in the thousands daily. It is said that the contagion happened more quickly bymaritime way, that is, by vessels that sailed through the Mediterranean Sea, but respiratory contamination allowed the disease to thrive. The movement of merchants, soldiers and pilgrims contributed to spread it over the land.
So, keeping in touch with a sick person was something that contributed to the infection. This transmission could also happen through contact with the person's secretions, such aslike saliva and blood. Therefore, the The body of the deceased and his clothes were also vectors of contamination.
The doctors they didn't know the origin of the disease (and not how to fight it), and many considered it to be a divine punishment. Doctors and priests were the groups that suffered most from it because they maintained direct contact with the sick. Once identified that it was transmitted in this way, measures of isolation began to be taken.
People with good financial condition fled the big cities and hid in the countryside; those who stayed in the cities sought to isolate themselves from everything and everyone, and the doctors created a leather clothing to prevent the secretion of the sick from penetrating through their usual clothes and infecting them. The doctors' special clothing also included a bird beak mask with aromatic herbs in the beak.
As the number of dead was very large, some places decided to set the bodies on fire. there was a way to bury so many, and the risk of contamination in contact with the corpses was very great. This second factor made the funeral rites were abandoned.
The disease also caused profound transformations in the economic order gives medieval europe, as all kinds of workers began to be lacking due to the high number of deaths. Item prices have fallen, workers' wages have risen, and with it, items that were previously unattainable for some people have become affordable.
Also, in some places, people stopped obeying the laws, such was the despair with the situation in which they lived. Political order ceased to exist elsewhere because the authorities had died or because there were not enough people to impose it on the population.
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Black Death Symptoms
Bubonic plague is marked by causing High fever in the patient, as well as vomiting and respiratory complications. Some patients develop buboes, that is, lumps that grow in parts of the body such as armpits and groin. Some patients develop black spots on different parts of the body. From buboes comes the term “bubonic”, and from dark spots comes the term “black plague”.
Consequences of the Black Death
The Black Death was a vector of transformation in Europe, and, after this pandemic, a series of changes began to take place in the social, political and economic areas across the continent. The Black Death, in the outbreak that lasted on the aforementioned date (1347-1353), caused demographic changes expressive in that territory.
Traditional statistics said that 1/3 of the European population died with the plague, but some recent studies have pointed out that the disease had a much more profound impact on 14th-century Europe. They have claimed that half to 2/3 of the European population has died as a result of the disease. In matters of numbers, scholars say that even 50 million people they may have died.
However, even with the weakening of the disease from 1353 onwards, the bubonic plague did not cease to exist in Europe, and researchers on the subject claim that outbreaks of it were recurrent on the continent until the mid-eighteenth century. In the 14th century alone, new outbreaks occurred between 1360-1363, 1366-1369, 1374-1375 and in 1400.
