The Black Death

1347 - 1350

The Plague In 2002

Couple Remain Hospitalized With Bubonic Plague, New York Times, November 9, 2002

Civilization and Disease

Circa 8000 B.C.E. - Agriculture and Sedentism:> close contact with animals

> stagnant pools of water> accumulation of human waste

Circa 3000 B.C.E. – Cities> Large, dense populations sustain diseases like measles, smallpox

The Word ‘Plague’

“Plague” can be traced back to the Latin word “plaga” meaning blow or wound, not necessarily associated with disease (Aberth 2011: 1).

The Nature of the Disease

• Bacterium = Yersinia pestis

• Spread both by fleas and human contact

• Three types: bubonic; pneumonic; septicemic

Bubonic Plague

Pneumonic Plague

• Infection of the respiratory system

• Rarer and more virulent than bubonic plague

• Usually kills within 2 days

Septicemic Plague

• Infection in the blood stream

• Bleeding from the nose and eyes, bloody urine

• Usually kills in 24 hours or less

Nota Bene

Some outbreaks of disease called plagues weren’t plague: Plague of Athens (430 – 426 B.C.E.) and the Antonine Plague (164 – 180 C.E.) were probably smallpox.

(Aberth 2011: 22)

How Plague is Contracted

First Pandemic

Second

Pandemic

Third Pandemic

How Do Plagues End?

Origins of the Black Death

Mortality Rate

• Average mortality rate of 50-60% in 1347 – 1350 outbreak

• Estimated 50 million died in Europe in a few short years

Recurrence

• On average every 11 years between 1360 and 1500

• Averaged every 13.4 years between 1535 and 1683

What did medieval Europeans believe was the cause of the Black

Death?

Medieval Explanation: Miasma

“... a miasma or substantial corruption of the air, either from a higher source (ie. the planets) or a lower one (swamps, rotting corpses, earthquakes etc.).”

(Aberth 2011: 38)

Medieval Cures

“... the typical contemporary response to the plague was to do what their predecessors had done, only to do it more intensely and more urgently...”

(Aberth 2011: 38)

Medieval Recognition Of Contagion

“Out of the hundreds of plague treatises I have consulted from fourteenth- and fifteenth- century Europe, there are none that I know of that deny contagion, on religious or any other grounds.”

(Aberth 2011: 41)

Gentile da Foligno

Contagion By Sight

“To justify plague contagion by sight... an anonymous practitioner from Montpellier in 1349 quoted at length from Euclid’s theory of optics...”

(Aberth 2011: 41)

God’s Will

“only He who binds can unbind”

(Jacre d’Agramont quoted in Aberth 2011: 43).

Natural Explanation

Giovanni della Penna: “unskilled and ignorant physicians say that it proceeds from Gods or from the heavens,”

(Aberth 2011: 43).

Bibliography• Aberth, John (2011), Plagues in World History, Rowan &

Littlefield; Plymouth (http://books.google.com.au/books?id=w7DjsEFo0fEC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false)

• Tull, J. & Marker, L. (n.d.), John & Lucinda: Surviving the Bubonic Plague and Beyond, http://johnandlucinda.com/ .

• Vega, C. & Kelly, T. (2002), Couple Remain Hospitalized With Bubonic Plague, New York Times, November 9, 2002. Accessed 11/11/2012 at http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/09/nyregion/couple-remain-hospitalized-with-bubonic-plague.html .