Black Death: A global pandemic
Black
Death: A global pandemic
The
Black Death was a devastating global epidemic of plague that struck Europe and
Asia within 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 people still alive were gravely ill and covered in
black boils that oozed blood and pus.
The
Black Death most likely originated in Central Asia or East Asia, from where it
travelled along the Silk Road, reaching Crimea by 1347. From there, it had been
presumably carried by fleas living on the black rats that travelled on Genoese merchant ships, spreading throughout the Mediterranean Basin and reaching
Africa, Western Asia, and therefore the remainder of Europe via Constantinople,
Sicily, and therefore the Italian Peninsula. Current evidence indicates that
when it came onshore, the Black Death was in large part spread by human fleas
which cause plague and therefore the person-to-person contact via aerosols
which plague enables, thus explaining the in no time inland spread of the
epidemic, which was faster than would be expected if the first vector was rat
fleas causing bubonic plague.
The
Black Death was the second disaster affecting Europe during the Late Middle Ages (the first one being an excellent Famine) and is estimated to possess
killed 30% to 60% of Europe's population. In total, the plague may have reduced
the planet population from an estimated 475 million to 350–375 million within
the 14th century. There were further outbreaks throughout the Late Middle Ages,
and with other contributing factors it took until 1500 for the ECU population
to regain the amount of 1300 (Crisis of the Late Middle Ages). Outbreaks of the
plague recurred at various locations around the world until the first 19th
century.
Symptoms of theBlack Plague
Europeans
were scarcely equipped for the horrible reality of the Black Death. “In men and
ladies alike,” the Italian poet Boccaccio wrote, “at the start of the malady,
certain swellings, either on the groin or under the armpits…waxed to the
bigness of a standard apple, others to the dimensions of an egg, some more and
a few less, and these the vulgar named plague-boils.”
Blood
and pus seeped out of those strange swellings, which were followed by several
other unpleasant symptoms fever, chills, vomiting, diarrhoea, terrible aches
and pains, and then, in short order, death.
The
plague attacks the systema lymphatic, causing swelling within the lymph nodes.
If untreated, the infection can spread to the blood or lungs.
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