THE BLACK DEATH

The black death affected horribly in the medieval ages population. I wanted to learn more about this epidemic and I found an interesting article about it.

The most dreadful epidemic

The Black Death, The Most Deadly Epidemic was written by an anonymous author and published on August 17, 2012 in the National Geography. It explains the origin and spread of the epidemic, the first hypotheses about its origin, the final hypothesis, the symptoms and consequences and sequelae left by the plague.

To begin with, the author tells us that the Black Death began to spread in the middle of the fourteenth century, between 1346 and 1347, and was present until 1361. At that time, there were other chronic diseases such as dysentery, leprosy and measles. But the plague was the most feared because it affected both the poor people and the royalty, such as kings.

The author reveals that the first explanations about the origin of these contagious diseases indicated that they had an astrological origin by the eclipses or the passage of comets, Toxic gases emitted by volcanic eruptions and earthquakes and also indicated the evil to decaying organic matter, since they released gases that were present in the air that humans breathed.

Later on, he clarifies that in the nineteenth century two bacteriologists discovered that the origin of the plague was due to a bacterium that affected black rats and other rodents and was transmitted through the parasites that lived in those animals .

Then he explains the symptoms of the disease. The bacteria was prowling around the homes for about 20 days before the onset of symptoms and then three to five days before the first deaths. The plague affected the armpits, the neck and caused high fevers. There were different ways of manifesting the disease: bubonic plague (when the lymph node became inflamed), pneumonic plague (when it affected the respiratory system and caused a very strong cough) and septicemia (when contagion passed into the blood and was manifested with dark patches on the skin).

Afterwards it is revealed that the starting point of the plague was in the Crimean peninsula, on the shores of the Black Sea. Later he says that some historians say that the pneumonic plague was the most propagated since the patients through the cough contaminated the air and they contagious to others. But he warns that indications indicate that bubonic plague was the most common and that transmission occurred through ships carrying infected people, rats and fleas between the goods. And that, therefore, spread the plague without realizing it by all the cities by where they stopped.

To conclude the author focuses on the death figures left by the epidemic. The black plague reduced 50 million of Europeans and the demographic recovery did not take place until the middle of century XV. In Catalonia the plague affected between 50 and 70 percent of the population.