The Black Death

The Bubonic plague, better known as the Black Death, broke out in Europe around 1347 in the port cities of Sicily and Merseilles. It came from Asia. It is thought that Mongol warriors brought it out of central China during their occupation of the region. The disease spread through rats and the fleas on them. It spread quickly to the port cities of Asia. Since trade was stronger now than it had been it easily spread to Europe. Once in Europe it spread quickly, devastating the population in European countries.
The Bubonic plague was a version of the bacterium Yersinia pestis and was carried by fleas and rats into the ships of merchants bound for European port cities. Its spread in Europe was vast and with amazing speed. The traditional dates of the Black Death, the name given to the plague by Europeans, are from 1347 – 1351 AD. It is often said that the Black Death wiped out one to two-thirds of the European population, or 70 million people. Such a massive reduction in the population of Europe cannot but have had radical consequences as we will see later.
The plague first arrived in Europe through the ports of Sicily and later Marseilles in 1347. The new trade networks that had been established since the end of the crusading period guaranteed that goods were being traded between Asia and Europe. The plague spread like wildfire. In the five years of the plagues main activity it spread throughout most of Europe. By June of 1348 the plague had penetrated deep into France and had consumed Italy and the Balkans. Spain was also affected on its Mediterranean coast. By December of 1348 the plague had spread to portions of England and had almost completely engulfed most of southern Europe. In the next six months it spread further into England and began to infiltrate Germany and Russia. By December of 1349 almost all of England was affected as well as the North Sea region. Throughout 1350 and 1351 the plague continued to spread into Russia and other northern lands. As we can see in the map, very little of Europe was spared the devastation of the plague. There are a few places that seemed little touched by the disease and death of the plague. It is unknown why this is the case, except that they were low population areas and had less contact with the broader European community than most other areas.
The Black Death is of three varieties. The bubonic plague, the pneumonic plague, and the septicemic plague, but all have the same bacteria and initial transmission. Distinctions are made to acknowledge the different ways the plague was spread from carrier to host. The bubonic plague was spread through the fleas on black rats from Asia. The bacteria multiplied in the fleas’ stomach, making it ravenous. It ate constantly, trying to satisfy its hunger, but eventually died of starvation because the bacteria consumed everything. Its eating, however, allowed the bacteria to transmit to new hosts: rats, cats, and humans. From there pneumonic and septicemic plague took over to transmit the bacteria among the human population of Europe. Pneumonic plague was spread through saliva coughed out of infected hosts. Septicemic plague was spread through contact with the infected blood of a host.
The close living conditions of medieval cities made the plague spread all the faster and the limited knowledge of physicians at the time did not help anything. Physicians knew nothing about the scientific causes of the spread of infectious disease. The field of medicine was still dominated by the Greek physicians Galen and Hippocrates. Hippocrates, often called the father of modern medicine, thought that disease was caused by an imbalance in one of the four fluids, or humours, of the body. When this imbalance took place the humors must be brought back into balance. This was often done by bleeding or resting and waiting. Both of these methods of dealing with the plague in Europe proved disastrous. Bleeding brought others in contact with infected blood and waiting simply gave the disease more time to develop.
The symptoms of the black plague were obvious and quick. An infected person would develop large red blotches of infected blood and these would ooze pus and blood. The red blotches gave rise to the term Red Death in some literature dealing with the plague, notably the short story Masque of the Red Death by American writer Edgar Allen Poe.
The death rates for Europe during this period changed everything about society at the time. Most cities could not keep up with the death rate and mass graves were inaugurated to deal with the great amount of death. In the next section we will see how individual people and institutions dealt with the pandemic on social, ethical, and psychological levels.