World History Project

The Black Death The Black Death was considered to be an epidemic which has spread across almost all of Europe in the years 1346 – 53; the black death has killed over a third of the entire population. It has been described as the worst natural disaster in European history. The Black Death is genarally otherwise known as " The Plague " Or The " Great Mortality ". This was a trans-continental disease which swept through Europe and killed millions during the fourteenth century. While reading up on this topic i found out that there is now argument over exactly what this epidemic was. The traditional, and most widely accepted, answer is the Bubonic Plague, caused by the bacterium Yersinia Pestis, which scientists found in samples taken from French plague pits where bodies were buried.Yersinia Pestis was spread through infected fleas which lived first on black rats, a type of rat which is happy to live near humans and, crucially, on ships. Once infected, the rat population would die off, and the fleas would turn to humans, infecting them instead.After three to five days of incubation the disease would spread to the lymph nodes in the body, which would swell into large-blister like ‘buboes’, usually in the thigh, armpit, groin or neck. 60 - 80% of those infected would die within another three to five days. Humans fleas, once blamed quite heavily, in reality contributed only a fraction of cases. Some variations of the Plague could turn into a more serious airborne variant called Pneumonic plague, where the infection spread to the lungs, causing the victim to cough up blood which could infect others. Some people have argued this aided the spread, but others have proved it wasn’t common and accounted for a very small amount of cases. Even rarer was a septicaemic version, where the infection overwhelmed the blood; this was nearly always fatal.The main area of the Black Death was between 1346 to 1353, although the plague returned to many areas again in waves during 1360s -through the 1400s.Because of the Extremes of cold and heat slow the flea down, the bubonic version of the plague tended to spread during the spring and summer, slowing right down during winter.The Black Death originated in the north-west shores of the Caspian Sea, in the land of the Mongol Golden Horde, and spread into Europe when the Mongols attacked an Italian trading post at Kaffa in the Crimea. Plague struck the besiegers in 1346 and then entered the town, to be carried abroad when the traders hurriedly left on ships the next spring. From there the plague travelled rapidly, through rats and fleas living onboard ships, to Constantinople and other Mediterranean ports in the thriving European trade network, and from there through the same network inland. By 1349 much of Southern Europe had been affected, and by 1350 the plague had spread into Scotland and north Germany. Overland transmission was again either via rat or fleas on people / clothing / goods, along communication routes, often as people fled the plague. The spread was slowed by cool/winter weather, but could last through it. By the end of