long term effects of the black death essay

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Black Death

By: History.com Editors

Updated: March 28, 2023 | Original: September 17, 2010

The Black Death was a devastating global epidemic of bubonic plague that struck Europe and Asia in the mid-1300s. The plague arrived in Europe in October 1347, when 12 ships from the Black Sea docked at the Sicilian port of Messina. People gathered on the docks were met with a horrifying surprise: Most sailors aboard the ships were dead, and those still alive were gravely ill and covered in black boils that oozed blood and pus. Sicilian authorities hastily ordered the fleet of “death ships” out of the harbor, but it was too late: Over the next five years, the Black Death would kill more than 20 million people in Europe—almost one-third of the continent’s population.

How Did the Black Plague Start?

Even before the “death ships” pulled into port at Messina, many Europeans had heard rumors about a “Great Pestilence” that was carving a deadly path across the trade routes of the Near and Far East. Indeed, in the early 1340s, the disease had struck China, India, Persia, Syria and Egypt.

The plague is thought to have originated in Asia over 2,000 years ago and was likely spread by trading ships , though recent research has indicated the pathogen responsible for the Black Death may have existed in Europe as early as 3000 B.C.

Symptoms of the Black Plague

Europeans were scarcely equipped for the horrible reality of the Black Death. “In men and women alike,” the Italian poet Giovanni Boccaccio wrote, “at the beginning of the malady, certain swellings, either on the groin or under the armpits…waxed to the bigness of a common apple, others to the size of an egg, some more and some less, and these the vulgar named plague-boils.”

Blood and pus seeped out of these strange swellings, which were followed by a host of other unpleasant symptoms—fever, chills, vomiting, diarrhea, terrible aches and pains—and then, in short order, death.

The Bubonic Plague attacks the lymphatic system, causing swelling in the lymph nodes. If untreated, the infection can spread to the blood or lungs.

How Did the Black Death Spread?

The Black Death was terrifyingly, indiscriminately contagious: “the mere touching of the clothes,” wrote Boccaccio, “appeared to itself to communicate the malady to the toucher.” The disease was also terrifyingly efficient. People who were perfectly healthy when they went to bed at night could be dead by morning.

Did you know? Many scholars think that the nursery rhyme “Ring around the Rosy” was written about the symptoms of the Black Death.

Understanding the Black Death

Today, scientists understand that the Black Death, now known as the plague, is spread by a bacillus called Yersinia  pestis . (The French biologist Alexandre Yersin discovered this germ at the end of the 19th century.)

They know that the bacillus travels from person to person through the air , as well as through the bite of infected fleas and rats. Both of these pests could be found almost everywhere in medieval Europe, but they were particularly at home aboard ships of all kinds—which is how the deadly plague made its way through one European port city after another.

Not long after it struck Messina, the Black Death spread to the port of Marseilles in France and the port of Tunis in North Africa. Then it reached Rome and Florence, two cities at the center of an elaborate web of trade routes. By the middle of 1348, the Black Death had struck Paris, Bordeaux, Lyon and London.

Today, this grim sequence of events is terrifying but comprehensible. In the middle of the 14th century, however, there seemed to be no rational explanation for it.

No one knew exactly how the Black Death was transmitted from one patient to another, and no one knew how to prevent or treat it. According to one doctor, for example, “instantaneous death occurs when the aerial spirit escaping from the eyes of the sick man strikes the healthy person standing near and looking at the sick.”

How Do You Treat the Black Death?

Physicians relied on crude and unsophisticated techniques such as bloodletting and boil-lancing (practices that were dangerous as well as unsanitary) and superstitious practices such as burning aromatic herbs and bathing in rosewater or vinegar.

Meanwhile, in a panic, healthy people did all they could to avoid the sick. Doctors refused to see patients; priests refused to administer last rites; and shopkeepers closed their stores. Many people fled the cities for the countryside, but even there they could not escape the disease: It affected cows, sheep, goats, pigs and chickens as well as people.

In fact, so many sheep died that one of the consequences of the Black Death was a European wool shortage. And many people, desperate to save themselves, even abandoned their sick and dying loved ones. “Thus doing,” Boccaccio wrote, “each thought to secure immunity for himself.”

Black Plague: God’s Punishment?

Because they did not understand the biology of the disease, many people believed that the Black Death was a kind of divine punishment—retribution for sins against God such as greed, blasphemy, heresy, fornication and worldliness.

By this logic, the only way to overcome the plague was to win God’s forgiveness. Some people believed that the way to do this was to purge their communities of heretics and other troublemakers—so, for example, many thousands of Jews were massacred in 1348 and 1349. (Thousands more fled to the sparsely populated regions of Eastern Europe, where they could be relatively safe from the rampaging mobs in the cities.)

Some people coped with the terror and uncertainty of the Black Death epidemic by lashing out at their neighbors; others coped by turning inward and fretting about the condition of their own souls.

Flagellants

Some upper-class men joined processions of flagellants that traveled from town to town and engaged in public displays of penance and punishment: They would beat themselves and one another with heavy leather straps studded with sharp pieces of metal while the townspeople looked on. For 33 1/2 days, the flagellants repeated this ritual three times a day. Then they would move on to the next town and begin the process over again.

Though the flagellant movement did provide some comfort to people who felt powerless in the face of inexplicable tragedy, it soon began to worry the Pope, whose authority the flagellants had begun to usurp. In the face of this papal resistance, the movement disintegrated.

How Did the Black Death End?

The plague never really ended and it returned with a vengeance years later. But officials in the port city of Ragusa were able to slow its spread by keeping arriving sailors in isolation until it was clear they were not carrying the disease—creating social distancing that relied on isolation to slow the spread of the disease.

The sailors were initially held on their ships for 30 days (a trentino ), a period that was later increased to 40 days, or a quarantine — the origin of the term “quarantine” and a practice still used today. 

Does the Black Plague Still Exist?

The Black Death epidemic had run its course by the early 1350s, but the plague reappeared every few generations for centuries. Modern sanitation and public-health practices have greatly mitigated the impact of the disease but have not eliminated it. While antibiotics are available to treat the Black Death, according to The World Health Organization, there are still 1,000 to 3,000 cases of plague every year.

Gallery: Pandemics That Changed History

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How the Black Death made life better

Christine R. Johnson is associate professor of history in the Department of History.

“[The] mortality destroyed more than a third of the men, women, and children … such a shortage of workers ensued that the humble turned up their noses at employment, and could scarcely be persuaded to serve the eminent unless for triple wages. … As a result, churchmen, knights and other worthies have been forced to thresh their corn, plough the land and perform every other unskilled task if they are to make their own bread.”

— account of the black death in the cathedral priory chronicle at rochester (written no later than 1350).

In its entry on the Black Death, the 1347–50 outbreak of bubonic plague that killed at least a third of Europe’s population, this chronicle from the English city of Rochester includes among its harrowing details a seemingly trivial lament: Aristocrats and high clergymen not only had to pay triple wages to those toiling in their fields, but, even worse, they themselves had to perform manual labor. Curiously, the documentary record, which provides ample evidence that workers did demand and receive higher wages (on which more below), contains in contrast scant evidence that “worthies” ever dirtied their hands with fieldwork. Even if (or especially as) phantasms, however, these sickle-wielding lords reveal the importance of imagined possibilities in shaping pandemic responses.

The eminent refused to take on menial roles, not because they could not perform these “unskilled” tasks, but because to do so would be unworthy of their social rank, and it was unthinkable to abandon that social and labor hierarchy. Farm work was peasant work, whether performed by serfs bound to a particular manor, tenant farmers or wage laborers hired by the year or the season. But the staggering mortality of the Black Death reduced this previously sufficient peasant population sharply enough to create a severe labor shortage.

What happened next has been the subject of an enormous amount of scholarship, particularly in the case of England, where the large extant body of sources such as chronicles, legislation, court cases and manorial account books provides rich material for studying the social and economic changes in the wake of the Black Death. Scholars disagree about how and how much things changed, but they share a tendency to describe these changes in oddly passive terms: wages rose, inequality decreased, feudalism ended.

Yet there was a great deal of deliberate (in)action behind these developments. Rather than supply some of the needed labor themselves, landowners turned to solutions that might produce the kind of world they were capable of imagining. In England they created first the Ordinance (1349) and then the Statute (1351) of Labourers, which froze wages at pre-plague levels, compelled workers not otherwise engaged in fixed, long-term employment into year-long contracts with the first employer who demanded it, and established penalties to ensure compliance. As Jane Whittle has noted, in putting their efforts behind the control of waged labor rather than the retrenchment of (already declining) serfdom, rural landowners sought a “thinkable” resolution to this impasse: They would use the existing market for labor, but control the terms of exchange.

Many peasants, however, refused to play their assigned role of deferential wage earner. Court records from 1352, for example, show that “Edward le Taillour of Wootton, employee of the prior and convent of Bradenstoke … left his employment before the feast of St Nicholas [6 December] without permission or reasonable cause, contrary to statute,” and that John Death of Wroughton demanded an “excess” of six shillings eightpence for reaping John Lovel’s corn. Recalcitrant laborers remained a problem in 1374, when “John Fisshere, William Theker, William Furnes, John Dyker, Gilbert Chyld, Alan Tasker, Stephen Lang, John Hardlad, Cecilia Ka, Joan daughter of Henry Couper, Matillis de Ely, Alice wife of Simon Souter, all of Bardney, labourers, refused to work [for the Abbot of Bardney at the stipulated wages], and on the same day they left the town to get higher wages elsewhere, in contempt of the king and contrary to statute.”

With many state governments reducing unemployment benefits to push workers to fill open jobs, the aim, like England after the Black Death, is to reinstate and reinforce previous social and labor hierarchies, regardless of whose work has actually been “essential” over the past 16 months. 

These records attest to some individuals’ appreciation of the increased value of their labor in the new marketplace created by mass death. The number and geographical range of these individual acts of defiance, moreover, suggest a vibrant, if unrecorded, current of  communal discussions, rumors and calculations that supported such individual agency. In the face of official intransigence, workers pushed for higher wages and greater mobility, which they received because “churchmen, knights, and other worthies” were willing to make these concessions, rather than have to work the fields and herd the sheep themselves. As a result, wages rose, inequality lessened … and the social and labor hierarchies remained the same.

Thankfully, the current COVID-19 pandemic is vastly less lethal than the mid 14th-century bubonic plague, and we can hope that people around the world do not experience the loss of human life on the same scale. What the Black Death does share with our present moment is the issue of labor and the limits drawn by the negative space of the unthinkable.

The people who prospered under the pre-pandemic system are now deciding what “back to normal” looks like and how we get there. With many state governments reducing unemployment benefits to push workers to fill open jobs, the aim, like England after the Black Death, is to reinstate and reinforce previous social and labor hierarchies, regardless of whose work has actually been “essential” over the past 16 months. Workers in specific circumstances and with individual or collective determination might negotiate better labor conditions or higher wages, but these concessions’ permanance remains in the hands of employers who saw no reason to implement them prior to the pandemic. As historians Ada Palmer and Eleanor Janega have argued, whatever gains peasants and artisans obtained in the decades after the Black Death did not survive the following centuries. Elites successfully reclaimed a greater share of wealth and income, hierarchies ossified, and laborers’ power diminished.

Simply stating that English society was changed by the Black Death not only discounts the people who did the changing, but also ignores the insufficiencies of the changes they produced. The Rochester chronicler raised the specter of knights and churchmen toiling in the fields to evoke the unthinkable scale of the disaster, and then refused to contemplate this radically different social order any further. We are not the Rochester chronicler. How can we think the unthinkable — about safety and health, racial justice, gender roles, immigration status, access to childcare, and the dignity, autonomy and worth of labor — for our own post-pandemic future?

All quoted material from Rosemary Horrox, ed., The Black Death (Manchester University Press, 1994).

Headline image:  Medieval illustration of men harvesting wheat with reaping-hooks, on a calendar page for August, circa 1310. Queen Mary's Psalter (Ms. Royal 2. B. VII), fol. 78v, The British Library.

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Impact of the Black Death Essay

Introduction, social impacts of the black death, economic impacts of the black death, political impacts of the black death, reference list.

The Black Death was, no doubt, the greatest population disaster that has ever occurred in the history of Europe. The name is given to the bubonic plaque that occurred in the fourteenth century in Europe killing millions of people. The plaque began in the year 1348, and by the year 1359, it had killed an approximate 1.5 million people, out of an estimated total population of about 4 million people.

So terrifying was the Black Death that peasants were blaming themselves for its occurrence, and thus some of them resulted to punishing themselves as a way of seeking God’s forgiveness. The bubonic plaque was caused by fleas that were hosted by rats, a common phenomenon in the cities and towns. The presence of rats in the cities and towns was due to the fact that the towns were littered, and they were poorly managed.

The worst part of it is the fact that the medieval peasants did not know that the plaque was caused by the pleas hosted by the rats. They actually believed that the plague was caused by the rats themselves. As more and more people died from the Black Death, the impacts of the plague became more profound.

The plague affected the demographic composition of the society, and thus it had far-reaching effects on the social, economic, political and even cultural realms of the medieval society. To this day, the Black Death is remembered as the worst demographic disaster to be ever experienced in European history (Robin, 2011). This paper is an in-depth analysis of the impacts of the Black Death.

The Black Death had far reaching social impacts on the people who lived during the fourteenth century. An obvious social impact of the plague is the fact that the Black Death led to a significant reduction in the human population of the affected areas. This had extensive effects on all aspects of life, including the social and political structure of the affected areas.

Before the plague, feudalism, the European social structure in medieval times, had created a society in which inequality was rife, with many poor peasants, and rich lords. This fuelled overpopulation, which was a catalyst for the mortality of the plaque. After the plaque, a large number of the overpopulated peasants became victims of the plaque, and thus the lords lacked labourers in their farms. This also led to a significant reduction in the population (Bryrne, 2011).

The people who were spared by the plague lived full lives. They regarded themselves as the next victims of the bubonic plague. This led to immoral behaviour that saw societal codes like the sexual codes broken. People did not care about having virtues anymore because they knew that death was approaching fast. As people lost their partners to the plague, the marriage market grew, fuelling more sexual immorality (Carol, 1996).

Also among the immediate social impacts is the fact that at one point, the number of people who were dying from the bubonic plague was seemingly more than the number of the living. This made it virtually impossible for the living to take care of the ailing, or even for the living to bury the deceased. This was a social crisis that has remained in the books of history as a remarkable impact of the bubonic plague.

Immediately after the occurrence of the Black Death, all economic activities were paralysed. The first economic activity to suffer substantially from the plaque was trade. Although people were not aware that it was the infectiousness of the plaque that was making it to kill more people, they were afraid to travel to plagued areas for fear of coming into contact with rats, which they believed was the source of the disease. This substantially affected trade ties between villages and communities in the medieval European society.

After the occurrence of the Black Death, other impacts of the plague started affecting the community. The population of the European parts affected by the plaque reduced drastically, leading to a severe shortage of labour for the farms. The demand of peasant farmers increased, with the lords competing for them by relocating them from their villages to the farms of the latter. This made the peasants have a competitive economic edge, as they were able to negotiate for better salaries.

As the Black Death claimed more lives, farms were left unattended because the peasants who were responsible for ploughing had fallen victims of the plague. Where the lords were lucky to have had some harvest, it was challenging to bring it home due to a serious shortage of manpower.

Some harvest got destroyed in the field as there were no men to bring it home. Some animals got lost because the people who used to look after them had also fallen victims of the plague. These problems led to a number of other impacts in the medieval society of the fourteenth century (Bridbury, 1973).

As farms went unploughed and some harvest remained in the fields, people in the villages starved for food. Cities and towns also faced severe shortages of food since the farming villages around the towns did not have sufficient foodstuffs. Lords had to strategize economically in order to survive, and thus most of them resulted to keeping sheep since it was easier without the manpower.

Economic activities that required the presence of large numbers of peasants like the farming of grains lost their popularity. This, in turn, led to serious shortage of basic commodities like bread. This, coupled with the fact that the production of all kinds of foodstuffs had decreases, led to inflationary prices on commodities (“The Black Death And Its Effects”, 1935). The poor were left thriving in an environment full of hardships as the prices of foods skyrocketed.

The Black Death had a number of political impacts. First of all, the feudal social system of the fourteen-century European population demanded that peasants could not relocate from their villages at will. For a peasant to relocate from his/her village, he/she had to seek the permission of his/her lord.

After the Black Death, it became increasingly difficult for lords to get the number of peasants they required to provide them with the labour for their farms. This made lords to disregard the law, and relocate peasants to their villages so that they could work in their farms. Most of the times, the lords even declined to return the latter to their rightful villages in a bid to get maximum benefit from their labour.

Another political impact of the Black Death also stems from the reduced population of the affected areas. This is because after the number of peasants reduced, and they were able to negotiate salaries and even relocate from their villages, contrary to feudal law, the government imposed stricter rules to regulate the way peasants offer their manpower to the lords.

This was done by the introduction of the 1351 “statute for labourers” (Bridbury, 1973). The statute provided that payments to peasants were to be made with reference to the payments that were made in 1346. This meant that peasants would receive payments using the terms that were prevailing before the plague occurred.

The statute was structures such that both the lord and the peasant could be accused of breaking the law by either the peasant receiving a higher payment, or the lord giving the same. The effect of this statute was that a good number of peasants disobeyed it, leading to, arguably inhumane punishment. This fuelled revolt among the peasants who sought to fight for their rights in the 1381 Peasants Revolt (Bentley et al., 2008).

After oppressive statutes like the statute for labourers came into force, peasants started to be resistant. They therefore organized a number of revolts in a bid to attract the attention of legislators to their plea of fairness. The most serious of these revolts was the aforementioned 1381 peasant revolt. The peasants had gathered in huge numbers and marched to London. They killed senior officials of the King and took control over the tower of London.

Among their main grievances was the fact that, thirty-five years after the occurrence of the Black Death, the population had reasonably grown and the pre-existent demand for labour had substantially reduced. The lords were therefore threatening to withdraw the privileges they had given to peasants since their demand was no more. This led to the revolt as the peasants sought to fight for their privileges.

From the discussion above, it is evident that the Black Death had a lot of impacts on the European medieval society. It changed the demographic set-up of the community and thus it substantially affected the social activities of the peasants. This can be evidenced by the aforementioned increase in cases of sexual immorality as people had lost their partners in the plague.

The Black Death also had a number of economic impacts which resulted from the drastic decrease in the population of peasants. This can be evidenced by the aforementioned change by lords from grain farming to sheep farming. Lastly, the Black Death had a number of political impacts which can be exemplified by the development of the aforementioned statute for labourers.

Studies of the impacts of the bubonic plague are still ongoing. This is despite the fact that most of the impacts were realized immediately after the plague and their effects on the society analyzed. Political activists during the time, who were mostly lords, had observed the effects of the plague and made societal changes that were bound to benefit them.

However, scientists still believe that the European society still suffers significant effects of the bubonic plague. For instance, it has been established that England, where the greatest effects of the bubonic plague were perhaps felt, has significantly lower genetic diversity than it is suspected to have had in the eleventh century. Geneticists explain this by the argument that the deaths that resulted from the Black Deaths were the cause of the low genetic variation in Europe.

Bentley, Jerry H., Ziegler, Herbert F., Streets, Heather E. (2008) Traditions and

Encounters: A Brief Global History, ch9,15,19, McGraw-Hill, Inc.

Bridbury, A. (1973). The Black Death. The Economic History Review, 26: 577 – 592.

Bryrne, J. (2011). Black Death. World Book Advanced. Web.

Carol, B. (1996). Bubonic Plague in the nineteenth-century China.

Robin, N. (2011). Apocalypse Then: A History of Plague. Special Report. World Book Advanced. Web.

The Black Death And Its Effects. (1935). Readings in English History Drawn from the Original Sources: Intended to Illustrate a Short History of England. Boston: Ginn.

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IvyPanda. (2019, October 29). Impact of the Black Death. https://ivypanda.com/essays/impact-of-the-black-death/

"Impact of the Black Death." IvyPanda , 29 Oct. 2019, ivypanda.com/essays/impact-of-the-black-death/.

IvyPanda . (2019) 'Impact of the Black Death'. 29 October.

IvyPanda . 2019. "Impact of the Black Death." October 29, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/impact-of-the-black-death/.

1. IvyPanda . "Impact of the Black Death." October 29, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/impact-of-the-black-death/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Impact of the Black Death." October 29, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/impact-of-the-black-death/.

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The Black Death and its Aftermath

• John Brooke

The Black Death was the second pandemic of bubonic plague and the most devastating pandemic in world history. It was a descendant of the ancient plague that had afflicted Rome, from 541 to 549 CE, during the time of emperor Justinian. The bubonic plague, caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis , persisted for centuries in wild rodent colonies in Central Asia and, somewhere in the early 1300s, mutated into a form much more virulent to humans.

At about the same time, it began to spread globally. It moved from Central Asia to China in the early 1200s and reached the Black Sea in the late 1340s. Hitting the Middle East and Europe between 1347 and 1351, the Black Death had aftershocks still felt into the early 1700s. When it was over, the European population was cut by a third to a half, and China and India suffered death on a similar scale.

Traditionally, historians have argued that the transmission of the plague involved movement of plague-infected fleas from wild rodents to the household black rat. However, evidence now suggests that it must have been transmitted first by direct human contact with rodents and then via human fleas and head lice. This new explanation better explains the bacteria’s very rapid movement along trade routes throughout Eurasia and into sub-Saharan Africa.

At the time, people thought that the plague came into Mediterranean ports by ship. But, it is also becoming clear that small pools of plague had been established in Europe for centuries, apparently in wild rodent communities in the high passes of the Alps.

The remains of Bubonic plague victims in Martigues, France.

We know a lot about the impact of the Black Death from both the documentary record and from archaeological excavations. Within the last few decades, the genetic signature of the plague has been positively identified in burials across Europe.

The bacillus was deadly and took both rich and poor, rural and urban: the daughter of King Edward III of England died of the plague in the summer of 1348. But quickly—at least in Europe—the rich learned to barricade their households against its reach, and the poor suffered disproportionately.

Strikingly, if a mother survived the plague, her children tended to survive; if she died, they died with her. In the late 1340s, news of the plague spread and people knew it was coming: plague pits recently discovered in London were dug before the arrival of the epidemic.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder's 1562 painting "The Triumph of Death" depicts the turmoil Europe experienced as a result of the plague.

The Black Death pandemic was a profound rupture that reshaped the economy, society and culture in Europe. Most immediately, the Black Death drove an intensification of Christian religious belief and practice, manifested in portents of the apocalypse, in extremist cults that challenged the authority of the clergy, and in Christian pogroms against Europe’s Jews.

This intensified religiosity had long-range institutional impacts. Combined with the death of many clergy, fears of sending students on long, dangerous journeys, and the fortuitous appearance of rich bequests, the heightened religiosity inspired the founding of new universities and new colleges at older ones.

The proliferation of new centers of learning and debate subtly undermined the unity of Medieval Christianity. It also set the stage for the rise of stronger national identities and ultimately for the Reformation that split Christianity in the 16 th century.

Depiction of the Great Plague of London in 1665 (left) . A copper engraving of a seventeenth-century plague doctor (right) .

The disruption caused by the plague also shaped new directions in medical knowledge. Doctors tending the sick during the plague learned from their direct experience and began to rebel against ancient medical doctrine. The Black Death made clear that disease was not caused by an alignment of the stars but from a contagion. Doctors became committed to a new empirical approach to medicine and the treatment of disease. Here, then, lie the distant roots of the Scientific Revolution.

Quarantines were directly connected to this new empiricism, and the almost instinctive social distancing of Europe’s middling and elite households. The first quarantine was established in 1377 at the Adriatic port of Ragussa. By the 1460s quarantines were routine in the European Mediterranean.

Major outbreaks of plague in 1665 and 1721 in London and Marseille were the result of breakdowns in this quarantine barrier. From the late 17th century to 1871 the Habsburg Empire maintained an armed “cordon sanitaire” against plague eruptions from the Ottoman Empire.

Michel Serre's painting depicting the 1721 plague outbreak in Marseille.

As with the rise of national universities, the building of quarantine structures against the plague was a dimension in the emergence of state power in Europe.

Through all of this turmoil and trauma, the common people who survived the Black Death emerged to new opportunities in emptied lands. We have reasonably good wage data for England, and wage rates rose dramatically and rapidly, as masters and landlords were willing to pay more for increasingly scarce labor.

The famous French historian Marc Bloch argued that medieval society began to break down at this time because the guaranteed flow of income from the labor of the poor into noble households ended with the depopulation of the plague. The rising autonomy of the poor contributed both to peasant uprisings and to late medieval Europe’s thinly disguised resource wars, as nobles and their men at arms attempted to replace rent with plunder.

A depiction of the 1381 Peasant's Revolt in England.

At the same time, the ravages of the Black Death decimated the ancient trade routes bringing spices and fine textiles from the East, ending what is known as the Medieval World System, running between China, India, and the Mediterranean.

By the 1460s, the Portuguese—elbowed out of the European resource wars—began a search for new ways to the East, making their way south along the African coast, launching an economic globalization that after 1492 included the Americas.

And we should remember that this first globalization would lead directly to another great series of pandemics, not the plague but chickenpox, measles, and smallpox, which in the centuries following Columbus’s landing would kill the great majority of the native peoples of the Americas.

In these ways we still live in a world shaped by the Black Death.

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Europe 1300 - 1800

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The Black Death

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The plague hit hard and fast. People lay ill little more than two or three days and died suddenly….He who was well one day was dead the next and being carried to his grave,” writes the Carmelite friar Jean de Venette in his 14th century French chronicle. From his native Picardy, Jean witnessed the disease’s impact in northern France; Normandy, for example, lost 70 to 80 percent of its population. Italy was equally devastated. The Florentine author Boccaccio recounts how that city’s citizens “dug for each graveyard a huge trench, in which they laid the corpses as they arrived by hundreds at a time, piling them up tier upon tier as merchandise is stowed on a ship.

Trade was to Blame

"god is deaf nowadays and will not hear us", economic impact, did the black death contribute to the renaissance, want to join the conversation.

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3 (page 35) p. 35 Big impacts: the Black Death

• Published: March 2012
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‘Big impacts: the Black Death’ explains how the contention that major epidemic disasters changed the course of historical events — the ‘Great Disaster’ interpretations of history — leaves too much out of the account. Focusing on the second pandemic in Europe, and on the Black Death which initiated it, it describes the effect of the disease on human behaviour and explains how it might well appear to have reshaped the course of European history. However, it does not seem to have been plague alone which determined population trends in the fifteenth century. It is impossible to attribute everything to plague in explaining long-term and large-scale economic and social change.

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• Journal of Economic Literature

The Economic Impact of the Black Death

• Remi Jedwab
• Noel D. Johnson
• Mark Koyama
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History of the Plague: An Ancient Pandemic for the Age of COVID-19

During the fourteenth century, the bubonic plague or Black Death killed more than one third of Europe or 25 million people. Those afflicted died quickly and horribly from an unseen menace, spiking high fevers with suppurative buboes (swellings). Its causative agent is Yersinia pestis , creating recurrent plague cycles from the Bronze Age into modern-day California and Mongolia. Plague remains endemic in Madagascar, Congo, and Peru. This history of medicine review highlights plague events across the centuries. Transmission is by fleas carried on rats, although new theories include via human body lice and infected grain. We discuss symptomatology and treatment options. Pneumonic plague can be weaponized for bioterrorism, highlighting the importance of understanding its clinical syndromes. Carriers of recessive familial Mediterranean fever (FMF) mutations have natural immunity against Y. pestis . During the Black Death, Jews were blamed for the bubonic plague, perhaps because Jews carried FMF mutations and died at lower plague rates than Christians. Blaming minorities for epidemics echoes across history into our current coronavirus pandemic and provides insightful lessons for managing and improving its outcomes.

Clinical Significance

• • The Black Death or bubonic plague killed more than 25 million people in fourteenth-century Europe.
• • Yersinia pestis (the plague bacteria) can be easily weaponized as a bioterrorism agent.
• • Early plague treatment is curative, but its symptomatology can be nonspecific. Modern outbreaks still regularly occur. The plague existed in the ancient world and has killed more than 200 million across centuries.
• • Familial Mediterranean fever carriers have plague immunity, which is an important evolutionary adaptation.

Alt-text: Unlabelled box

Introduction

Killing more than 25 million people or at least one third of Europe's population during the fourteenth century, the Black Death or bubonic plague was one of mankind's worst pandemics, invoking direct comparisons to our current coronavirus “modern plague.” 1 , 2 , 3 An ancient disease, its bacterial agent ( Yersinia pestis ) still causes periodic outbreaks and remains endemic in some parts of the world. 4 , 5 , 6 Additionally, because it could be weaponized for world bioterrorism, understanding its clinical syndromes, epidemiology, and treatment options remains critical for medical practitioners. 5 , 6 Finally, recent molecular discoveries linking recessive familial Mediterranean fever mutations to plague immunity have revolutionized how scientists and historians alike view this novel evolutionary adaptation. 7 , 8 This history of medicine article sheds light onto the plague and provides insights that can help us manage the COVID-19 epidemic.

History of Plague Epidemics

The plague has afflicted humanity for thousands of years. 1 , 2 , 3 Molecular studies identified the presence of the Y. pestis plague DNA genome in 2 Bronze Age skeletons dated at roughly 3800 years old. 9 In the biblical book 1 Samuel from approximately 1000 BCE, the Philistines experience an outbreak of tumors associated with rodents, which might have been bubonic plague. 3 Scholars identify 3 plague pandemics. 10 , 11 The first pandemic or Justinian plague probably came from India and reached Constantinople in 541-542 CE. At least 18 waves of plague spread across the Mediterranean basin into distant areas like Persia and Ireland from 541 to 750 CE. 10 , 11

The second pandemic or Black Death arrived in Messina in Sicily, probably from Central Asia via Genoese ships carrying flea-laden rats in October 1347, which initiated a wave of plague infections that rapidly spread across most of Europe like a relentless wildfire. 10 , 11 , 12 In Europe, plague-stricken citizens were often dead within a week of contracting the illness. Ultimately, at least one third of the European population (more than 25 million people) died between 1347 and 1352 from the Black Death. 10 , 11 , 12 The plague spread to France and Spain in 1348 and then to Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. It decimated London in 1349 and reached Scandinavia and northern England by 1350. 10 , 11 , 12 The plague died out by the century's end, but outbreaks resurfaced and spread throughout Europe over the next 400 years. In 1656-1657, two thirds of the population in Naples and Genoa died from the disease. In 1665-1666, London lost about one quarter of its citizens to plague, about 100,000, and the same number died in Vienna in 1679. 3 , 13 , 14 Moscow recorded more than 100,000 plague deaths during 1770-1771. 3 , 13 , 14

The fourteenth-century bubonic plague transformed European society and economies, leading to severe labor shortages in farming and skilled crafts. 1 , 2 , 3 The geopolitical impact included a decline in power and international status of the Italian states. 15 During the Black Death, European Christians blamed their Jewish neighbors for the plague, claiming Jews were poisoning the wells. These beliefs led to massacres and violence. 2 , 16 At least 235 Jewish communities experienced mass persecution and destruction during this period, often preemptively in a futile effort at plague containment. 16 The ancient physicians Hippocrates (c. 460-c. 370 BCE) and Galen (129-c. 210 CE) promoted the miasma theory, or poisoned air, to explain disease transmission, which Medieval Europeans believed caused the Black Death. 11 , 17 People of that period thought warm baths permitted plague miasma to enter humans’ pores, so public baths were closed. Victims’ clothes and possessions were thought contaminated and were burned, and cats were killed as possible transmission agents. So-called “plague doctors” wore protective clothing with a long cape, mask, and a bill-like portion over the mouth and nose containing aromatic substances (partly to block out the putrid smell of decaying corpses), perhaps an early version of the modern hazmat suit 10 ( Figure 1 ).

Costume of the plague doctor. The plague doctor wore a black hat, beaked white mask, which contained aromatic substances to block out the smell of decaying bodies, and a waxed gown. The rod or pointer kept afflicted patients away. The earliest version of a protective hazmat suit. Courtesy National Library of Medicine.

The third plague pandemic began in Yunnan Province in southwest China around 1855, where outbreaks had occurred since 1772, and spread to Taiwan. 10 , 11 , 18 It hit Canton in 1894, where it caused 70,000 deaths, and then appeared in Hong Kong. Ships carried it to Japan, India, Australia, and North and South America between 1910 and 1920. 10 , 11 , 18 An estimated 12 million people died from the plague in India between 1898 and 1918. 19 Rats from merchant ships brought the plague to Chinatown in San Francisco in 1900. 20 Although few European cases of the plague were reported after 1950, isolated outbreaks still occur worldwide. 4 , 20 It is estimated that more than 200 million people have died from the plague throughout human history. 10

Plague Microbiology

Y. pestis is an aerobic, gram-negative coccobacillus in the family Enterobacteriaceae . 21 , 22 , 23 Genetic DNA analysis shows that it diverged from its enteric pathogenic relative, Yersinia pseudotuberculosis , up to 6000 years ago. 24 After incubation for 24 to 48 hours in blood or on MacConkey agar at 37°C, small bacterial colonies can be identified. 21 , 22 , 23 Its primary vector for transmission is the Xenopsylla cheopis flea, although roughly 80 species of fleas can carry it. During the Black Death, the flea was transported by the black rat or Rattus . 21 , 22 , 23 A controversial new theory argues that ectoparasites such as human fleas and lice also spread the disease during the second plague pandemic. 25 Fleas can also survive in infected clothing or grain. 11 , 19 , 20 , 21 The bacteria multiply in infected rodents (more than 280 mammalian species can serve as carriers) and block the fleas’ alimentary canal, causing the fleas to regurgitate the Y. pestis bacteria into its animal host. 11 , 19 , 20 , 21 The bacterium is named for the Pasteur Institute physician Alexandre Yersin, who provided the first, most accurate description of its causative agent in 1894 during the Hong Kong outbreak. However, the Japanese physician Shibasaburo Kitasato was an independent coinvestigator whose bacterial plates were unfortunately contaminated and led to erroneous observations. 19 In 1898, Dr. Paul-Louis Simond in Karachi showed that fleas from infected rats could transmit the disease to healthy rats, and Ricardo Jorge in 1927 reported that wild rodents serve as a plague reservoir. 10

Clinical Presentation, Treatment, and Prophylaxis

There are 3 major clinical forms of the plague. 10 , 21 , 22 , 23 In the most common bubonic subtype, infected persons develop sudden onset of high fevers (>39.4°C), terrible pains in their limbs and abdomen, and headaches generally between 3 and 7 days after exposure. The bacteria reproduce rapidly in lymph nodes located closest to the flea bites, leading to painful swellings (“buboes”) in the groin, cervical, or axillary lymph nodes, which can enlarge to the size of an egg (or up to 10 cm) ( Figure 2 ) 12 . About 60% of untreated victims die within 1 week of exposure as the pus-filled buboes suppurate and the patient succumbs to overwhelming infection. 10 , 21 , 22 , 23 During the time of the Black Death, it must have been truly terrifying to witness otherwise healthy individuals cut down rapidly by a seemingly invisible demon. The rarer septicemic plague form (10%-15% of cases) occurs when the bacteria multiply in the blood, often triggering disseminated intravascular coagulation and gangrene of the extremities, ears, or nose 10 , 21 , 22 , 23 ( Figure 3 ). Finally, the infrequent, fulminant pneumonic plague syndrome represents the only form with human-to-human transmission as inhalation of aerosolized droplets (much like coronavirus transmission) from infected patients or even cats leads rapidly to hemoptysis and death. Because this clinical subtype is specifically aerosolized, pneumonic plague could be used for potential bioterrorist attacks. 5 , 6 , 26 Its initially nonspecific, flu-like symptoms include sudden onset of high fevers and dyspnea within 4 days of plague exposure, progressing quickly to a purulent, frothy, or ultimately bloody cough. 21 , 22 , 23 Chest X-ray for primary pneumonic plague may show lobar pneumonia, which spreads rapidly throughout the lungs. The blood-tinged sputum is highly infectious. 21 , 22 , 23 The latter 2 clinical subtypes are invariably fatal without treatment.

Buboes (swellings). Cervical buboes in a patient with bubonic plague from Madagascar. From Prentice MB, Rahalison L. Plague. Lancet . 2007;369:1196-1207. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(07)60566-2. Copyright Elsevier 2007.

Gangrene from plague sepsis. A man from Oregon developed bubonic plague after being bitten by an infected cat, leading to sepsis and acral amputation. Courtesy Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Plague transmission is generally from infected fleas by rodent vectors or, rarely, in clothing or grain but may also occur through ingesting contaminated animals, physical contact with infected victims, or direct inhalation of infectious respiratory droplets. 21 , 22 , 23 Early recognition and treatment with streptomycin (or gentamycin) or a combination of doxycycline, ciprofloxacin, and chloramphenicol can cure the bubonic plague. 21 , 22 , 23 One study compared the plague fatality rate in the United States from 1900-1942 (before antibiotics were available) at 66% compared with cases after 1942 and the advent of antibiotic treatments with a death rate of only 13%. 20 Prompt identification of plague infections and the introduction of appropriate antibiotics will generally lead to a full recovery, but because its initial symptoms may include a nonspecific fever and often no clear exposure to infected animals or fleas can be identified, diagnosis may be delayed, leading to death. The gold standard for diagnosis is isolation of the bacteria from tissue or body fluids, which should only be done in a biosafety level 3 laboratory, although confirmatory serologic testing for antibodies to the F1 antigen may also be performed. 21 , 22 , 23 Empiric chemoprophylaxis with oral doxycycline or ciprofloxacin for 7 days is recommended for family members or others in close contact to victims of plague. 21 , 22 , 23 , 27 There was a whole-cell, formalin-killed vaccine, but it was discontinued because it was only protective against bubonic plague. Efforts continue to produce a vaccine effective against the rare pneumonic plague subtype, which potentially could be used for biowarfare. 5 , 6

Modern Plague Outbreaks

More than just a historical oddity, plague outbreaks continue to surface and cause occasional deaths throughout the world. 4 , 20 Plague reservoirs exist in animal hosts, including wild squirrels, rats, prairie dogs, marmots, gophers, and other rodents; cats can become infected and transmit Y. pestis via aerosolized droplets. 10 , 21 , 22 , 23 An outbreak hit Los Angeles in 1924, killing 30 people, when a man contracted the disease and died after handling a dead rat. A Catholic priest administering last rites to victims and mourners attending associated funerals all also died of pneumonic plague. 28 The “telluric hypothesis” proposes that plague bacteria can survive in soil and not simply on rodents, which may explain why plague foci persist despite aggressive efforts to eradicate its hosts. 11 One recent analysis reported that Madagascar, Congo, and Peru remain the most plague-endemic countries. 5 Indeed, between 2010 and 2015, there were 3248 cases and 584 plague deaths worldwide, with the majority (75%) being in Madagascar. 5 Plague eruptions can disrupt production in modern economies, just as it did in the Middle Ages. In 2005, 130 men working in a diamond mine in Congo contracted plague, causing 57 deaths. Similarly, 162 workers were sickened in 2006 at a gold mine in Congo, leading to 45 deaths and temporarily shutting down these operations. 23 The World Health Organization (WHO) has deemed plague to be a reemerging disease since the 1990s. 5 Two unrelated teens contracted plague in separate incidents in August 2015 while visiting Yosemite National Park in California, apparently from infected squirrels, although local bears also demonstrated antibodies against Y. pestis . 29 Indeed, a healthy 15-year old boy died in July 2020 from plague in Mongolia after eating an infected marmot (similar to a large ground squirrel), and Mongolia has had almost 600 cases of marmot plague since 1928, with an associated mortality rate of 74%. 5 , 30

Systematic attempts to destroy plague reservoirs largely failed. For decades until 1991, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) launched an impressive, aggressive plague-eradication program. Poisons were placed manually into thousands of rodent burrows, pesticides like DDT were widely deployed to kill plague hosts, and potential mammalian carriers were destroyed. 26 Although such laborious efforts decreased cases, the plague was never fully eliminated. The potential toxicity to humans and the native ecosystem from insecticides promoted a shift toward vector control (not eradication) and epidemiological sampling to monitor the presence of Y. pestis in local rodent populations. 4 , 5 , 6 , 26 Current programs balance ongoing surveillance among plague vectors with protecting the natural environment as a multipronged approach toward plague containment. 4 , 5 , 6 , 26

Plague and Bioterrorism

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) classifies Y. pestis as a Category A (tier 1) biologic agent for potential bioterrorism. 5 It can be released and spread easily, which creates a major public health hazard and could lead to quarantines and potentially widespread economic devastation. 5 , 6 Pneumonic plague leads to death rapidly without prompt recognition and treatment. Its initial nonspecific symptomatology of flu-like illness coupled with a mistaken perception that plague is simply an obscure, dormant disease make it an ideal weapon for biowarfare. 5 , 6 Indeed, Tatars leveraged its lethality in 1346 by catapulting plague-ridden corpses into the Genoese-controlled seaport of Caffa, in one of the first uses of biological agents to wage war. 3 The Imperial Japanese Unit 731 during World War II developed and deployed biological weapons in Manchuria and China. On October 27, 1940, Japanese warplanes dropped plague-contaminated rice and fleas into Chuhsien, China, which led to an outbreak of pneumonic plague. 3 , 5 , 6 The World Health Organization estimates that if only 50 kg of Y. pestis were released in aerosolized form over a major city, the deadly pneumonic plague subtype could cause widespread devastation and death. The bacteria remain viable for up to 1 hour at a distance of up to 10 km from the drop point. 5 , 6 Because a main goal of bioterrorism would be to incite fear among its population, plague is an ideal biological tool because its victims die quickly in a horrific fashion (with hemoptysis, respiratory failure, high fevers, and the like).

Familial Mediterranean Fever and Y. Pestis

Molecular advances have linked familial Mediterranean fever (FMF) gene mutations to plague immunity. 7 , 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 FMF is a rare, recessive disease mostly seen in people of Arab, Armenian, Jewish, or Turkish ancestry. Symptoms of FMF include abdominal pain, arthritis, and fevers lasting 12-72 hours, although those affected are usually completely normal between spells. 32 , 33 Pyrin is its gene protein product, from the Greek word for “fever.” As an extremely important and versatile immune regulator, pyrin fights infection and cancer. When bacteria attack a cell, the immune system is activated. Pyrin is one of the major players in this immune system cascade and plays a crucial role in mounting and maintaining human defense systems against pathogens. Pyrin activates caspase-1, an enzyme that facilitates programmed cell death, and participates in IL-1β processing for fever production. 8 , 31 , 32 , 33 Y. pestis reduces production of IL-1β and IL-18, blocking the immune system from mounting a robust immune response. 8 , 31 , 32 , 33 The bacteria run unchecked as natural defenses are shut off.

Patients who carry the FMF mutation have a “gain-of-function” in the pyrin gene, as its activity is always “on.” Y. pestis shuts off pyrin in subjects who lack the mutation, which increases susceptibility to plague infections. 7 , 8 , 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 Like sickle cell trait and resistance to malaria, those harboring the FMF mutation have plague immunity, as an important example of an evolutionary adaptation. 35 Up to 20%-40% of Israeli Jews in some studies may carry a recessive mutation in the FMF gene. 36 , 37 , 38 This mutation is found throughout the Middle East, but during the Black Death, Jews were the only large European community with Middle Eastern origins. We hypothesize that the presence of the FMF mutation would have allowed fourteenth-century Jews to survive plague at higher rates than their non-Jewish neighbors, which may have led European Christians to blame Jews for spreading the plague. 2 , 16 , 17 It is unknown if FMF carriers possess resistance to other infections, including to coronavirus, which may warrant further investigation.

Conclusions

Plague represents a reemerging infectious disease with potential use for bioterrorism. 5 , 6 From prehistory to the modern era, Y. pestis has killed millions of people. Outbreaks of worldwide plague foci in both developed and underdeveloped countries continue to occur. 4 , 5 , 6 Although modern medicine has greatly improved therapies and limited its spread, many clinical practitioners remain unfamiliar with its symptomatology, thus preventing timely recognition and treatment. 10 , 11 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 Advanced technology has demonstrated the selective genetic benefit of protective FMF mutations, which likely provided plague immunity for many medieval Jews and perhaps contributed to violence against them during this period. 7 , 8 , 16

Our historical examination of plague provides important contemporary parallels with the COVID-19 pandemic. Both the coronavirus and the fourteenth-century Black Death pandemics likely originated in Asia. 3 , 39 During the Black Death, minority groups (Jews) were persecuted for supposedly spreading the disease. In a similar fashion echoing across centuries of history, Asians and other minorities have been blamed for spreading COVID-19, as one group marginalizes another amid a sea of anxiety, fear, and irrational hatred. 16 , 40 Reminiscent of the treatment of Jews during the plague, there have been acts of ethnic and racial hostility directed at Asians and immigrants based on the false belief that these individuals, because of their ethnicity, are responsible for the pandemic. 16 , 40 Studying the genetic, medical, and social science aspects of plague pandemics can lead us to greater understanding of the interplay among history, humanity, and science.

Funding: None.

Conflicts of Interest: None.

Authorship: Both authors had access to the data and a role in writing this manuscript.

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13 Facts About the Black Death

The Black Death—the world's second bubonic plague pandemic—decimated the populations of Asia, the Middle East, and Europe in the 14th century. But there was a silver lining.

By Claire Cock-Starkey | Apr 3, 2024

The pandemic of bubonic plague—later dubbed the Black Death—raged through Europe from 1347 to 1351 and wiped out between one-third and two-thirds of the entire population. But it wasn’t all bad: the calamity actually led to better literacy and labor conditions. Here are 13 facts about the Black Death.

Bubonic plague has affected humans for millennia.

Bubonic plague is a zoonotic disease., bubonic plague is named after one of its primary symptoms., the black death originated in central eurasia., the black death was used as a biological weapon., the black death probably entered europe through messina, sicily., it was not just a peasant’s disease., members of a religious movement tried to halt the plague by whipping themselves., quarantine was introduced during the black death., the black death came in waves., the cause of plague was not known until the victorian era., the 14th-century pandemic wasn’t called the black death until later., the black death wasn’t all bad..

Recent archaeological research has found evidence of bubonic plague in two Bronze Age skeletons uncovered in Russia, suggesting the disease has been around for thousands of years. The Justinianic Plague , which swept through the Mediterranean and Near East in the 6th century CE, is the first recorded pandemic of bubonic plague. (It coincided with the reign of Byzantine emperor Justinian, hence the name.) Historians consider the multiple waves of plague in the 14th century, later dubbed the Black Death, to be the world’s second plague pandemic.

The highly infectious disease is caused by a bacterium, Yersinia pestis , that infects rats and other small mammals as well as humans . It is spread by fleas that feed on the infected animals and carry the bacteria in its intestines . When their host rodents die from the disease, fleas look for a new source of food and move on to humans and livestock, transferring the deadly bacteria through their bites.

One of the first symptoms of plague to appear are painful, swollen lymph nodes at the neck, groin, and armpit known as “buboes,” which give their name to the disease. As the illness progresses, sufferers experience headache, vomiting, and high fever, and their buboes secrete blood and pus. There was no viable treatment in the medieval period and most people with plague would be dead within seven days. Today, plague can be cured with antibiotics.

The episodes of disease that triggered the Black Death originated in central Eurasia . During the 1340s, the plague moved through India, Syria, Persia, and Egypt and decimated communities in its path before reaching Europe in 1347.

In 1347, the Mongol khan Janibeg was in the midst of a siege of Kaffa, a Genoese trading port in modern-day Crimea. He hoped to oust the Genoese merchants from the territory, but his own troops were greatly depleted by the Black Death and victory looked impossible. In a final act of vengeance, Janibeg’s army used a trebuchet (a sort of medieval catapult) to fling the plague-ridden bodies of his own soldiers into the walled city. The residents of Kaffa, already weakened by the siege, were soon overcome by disease.

Rats live in proximity to humans and were usually present on the merchant ships that sailed from country to country, often spreading disease with them. Medieval folklore warned that if there were a lot of dead rats around, then disease and pestilence would follow.

Genoese ships carried trade goods—and unintentional cargoes of plague-infected rats—from Central Asia to the port city of Messina, Sicily, in 1347. The plague quickly spread through Europe , first engulfing the Italian peninsula and then moving on through France, Spain, and Germany. The epidemic reach England by 1349 and Scandinavia by 1350. Historians have traced how merchant ships drove the spread of plague: busy shipping ports, such as Kaffa, offered perfect opportunities for the pathogen to find new hosts and catch rides along the world’s major trade routes. As a result, the highest death tolls are estimated to have occurred in ports and large cities such as Venice and London.

Because it infects humans via fleas and rats, the Black Death has been mischaracterized as a “peasant’s disease” affecting only those who lived in less-than-hygienic environments. Yet the Black Death touched all sectors of society, from the very poor to the very rich. The number of high profile deaths from the plague included Joan, the favorite daughter of England’s King Edward III; Eleanor of Portugal, Queen of Aragon; King Alfonso XI of Castile; two archbishops of Canterbury, John de Stratford and Thomas Bradwardine; and the philosopher William of Ockham.

Imagine how terrifying the Black Death must have seemed before anyone understood the germ theory of disease . Some people became convinced that the plague was a punishment sent by God and sought to halt its spread by taking part in public displays of penance.

Many joined the flagellant movement , which had existed in northern and central Europe since the mid-13th century but gained more followers amid the chaos of the Black Death. Groups of monks and religious devotees led processions through cities, towns, and villages while whipping themselves and each other and calling on observers to repent. The flagellation caused such gruesome injury (which, ironically, may have made the flagellants more susceptible to infections) that Pope Clement VI denounced the movement.

While there was no understanding of germ theory in the Middle Ages , people did sense that the Black Death could be transferred from person to person. Officials imposed health regulations aimed at containing the disease. Plague doctors visited communities and told symptomatic families to stay in their homes or go to plague hospitals . Ships were prohibited from disembarking sailors for 30 days after arrival in ports, a method first used in Venice in 1347 . The practice proved effective, and the wait was eventually extended to 40 days for each newly arrived ship. Quarantine derives from the Italian quaranta and Latin quadraginta , both meaning “forty.”

The initial phase of the Black Death hit Europe in 1347 and rippled through the region until 1351—but this was not the end of the pandemic. The disease recurred in Europe several times over the next 50 years, in 1361–63, 1369–71, 1374–75, 1399, and 1400. These fresh attacks of plague were again carried into Europe by ships from Asia, spreading the disease along trade routes. More epidemics occurred in the 17th century, notably in London in 1665–66, when around a quarter of the city’s population died.

The world’s third plague epidemic emerged in Yunnan, China, in the mid-19th century, spreading quickly to Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, India, and farther afield. It killed 12 million people in India alone.

By the 1890s, medical knowledge had advanced sufficiently to identify the bacteria responsible for the bubonic plague. Researchers from multiple countries headed to Asia in the late 19th century to study the disease as it spread. In 1894, Japanese bacteriologist Kitasato Shibasaburō traveled to India and succeeded in identifying the bacterium ; mere days later, French-Swiss bacteriologist Alexandre Yersin also isolated it. A controversy erupted over who would receive credit for the discovery. Many historians now consider the two researchers to be co-discoverers, but the microbe’s scientific name is still Yersinia pestis . (The genus Yersinia was established in 1944 in Yersin’s honor.)

The breakthrough allowed Yersin’s successor, Paul-Louis Simond, to test a hypothesis based on reports that thousands of dead rats in the streets seemed to accompany an outbreak of plague in people. “On the rats captured alive, and on the rats which had just died, the fleas were thicker than I have ever seen them,” he wrote . “We have to assume there must be an intermediary between a dead rat and a human. This intermediary might be the flea.” 

A simple experiment demonstrating that fleas transmitted plague from an infected rat to a healthy one proved Simond’s theory.

In England, the Black Death was popularly known as “the pestilence,” and in much of the rest of Europe as “the plague” or “the great dying.” Elizabeth Penrose, in her 1823 book A History of England , dubbed the plague of 1347–51 the “ Black Death ”—a suitably terrifying name that stuck.

But even before then, 16th-century Danish and Swedish chronicles described a deadly plague in Iceland in 1402–03 as the “Black Death,” though no one is sure why. The chronicles were later translated into German and English and the description they used was retrospectively applied to the 14th-century plague in Europe.

Despite the terrible death toll, in which an estimated 60 percent of Europe’s population died, the Black Death did lead to some positive social changes. The labor shortage following the pandemic had far-reaching effects, ultimately sparking a rise in wages and better conditions for the peasants who worked the land. These shortages also created an impetus to develop new labor-saving technologies , such as smaller, faster boats that needed fewer crew members, making exploration (and exploitation) of Asia and the Americas possible.

And, after many of the monks responsible for copying manuscripts perished in the plague, societies needed new ways to copy and distribute books—precipitating the invention of the printing press and encouraging the spread of ideas.

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Long term effects of the black death.

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            The Black Death created a time that was a very influential period in European history. Some historians today argue that the Black Death was "a necessary and long-overdue corrective to an overpopulated Europe" (Aberth 3). Regardless, with mortality rates throughout Europe ranging from 40 to 70 percent of the population (Aberth 3), the plague was undoubtedly tragic as well. However, in addition to the obvious physical changes the victims underwent, Europe's economy and culture experienced their own "symptoms" as well. Initially, the decline in population was direct proportional to the decline in the amount of available workers there were. This resulted in a demand for higher pay and more benefits for individual workers and serfs (Aberth 69). This led to many economic dilemmas for which the government felt the need to intervene. .              In addition to the matters of the state, the church was under fire as well. Due to the extremely contagious and deadly nature of the disease, which was not helped by the medicine practices at the time, priests were more than often terrified to leave the sanctity of the church to visit the homes of the sick and dying. This led to many problems in in the eyes of the religious. As well as problems with the church, many people turned to blame the Jewish community for the arrival of the plague, many of such instances resulting in massacres of the Jewish people. Decline in population undoubtedly results in a corresponding decrease in a work force of a society. When this occurrence happened in Europe during the time of the Black Death, many employers found that their employees were demanding higher wages in addition to increased benefits in exchange for the same amount of work. In addition, due to the lack of consumers caused by the population decline, the prices of goods were going down due to the lack of demand. Although this caused the standard of living for serfs to increase, it also resulted in "lower manorial incomes for their lords" (Aberth 69).

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• Word Count: 1511

9. Steroids

Abuse of steroids can be the cause of a long list of side effects. ... Steroids are bad because of the adverse side effects that result from long term and improper use. Most side effects are reversible, however, some are not. ... This often leads to long-term use of highly androgenic drugs, which suppresses the bodies natural ability to produce testosterone and leads to negative side effects such as gynecomastia. Because steroids are only available on the black market (unless you have a prescription), fake steroids are widely available. ...

• Word Count: 839
• Approx Pages: 3