Bubonic Plague Just mention the name and you will send shivers down the spine of many people. There is no doubt that this disease was deadly. Deadly and gruesome to watch. The death rate was 90% for those exposed to the bacterium. It was transmitted by the fleas from infected Old English black rats. The symptoms were clear: swollen lymph nodes (buboes, hence the name), high fever, and delirium. In the worst case, the lungs became infected and the pneumonic form was spread from person to person by coughing, sneezing, or simply talking. From the time of infection to death was less than one week. There were three major epidemics – in the 6th, 14th, and 17th centuries. The death toll was 137 million victims. As a result, the plague is considered to be the worst epidemic of Black Death Plague is a term applied randomly in the Middle Ages to all fatal epidemic diseases, but now restricted to an acute, infectious, contagious disease of rodents and humans, caused by a short, thick bacillus, Yersinia pestis. In humans, plague occurs in three forms: bubonic plague, pneumonic plague, and septicemic plague. Bubonic plague is the best-known form and is so called because it is characterized by the appearance of buboes, in the groin or armpit or on the neck.
Bubonic plague is transmitted by the bite of any of numerous insects that are normally parasitic on rodents, and that seek new hosts when the original host dies. The most important of these insects is the rat flea Xenopsylla cheopis, which is parasitic on the brown rat. Untreated bubonic plague is fatal in 30 to 75 percent of all cases. The Black Death, the name later given to the plague, ravaged Europe between 1347 and 1351, taking a great toll of life. Modern research confirms the estimate of the chronicler Jean Froissart that about one-third of the population died. Originating in China and Turkestan, the plague was transmitted to Europeans when a Kipchak army catapulted plague-infested corpses into the town. The plague spread from the Mediterranean ports, affecting Sicily, North Africa, Italy, Spain, France , Austria, Hungary, Switzerland, Germany, and England, and Scandinavia and the Baltic lands.There were recurrences in 1361-63, 1369-71, 1374-75, 1390, and 1400. In bubonic plague, the first symptoms are headache, nausea, vomiting, aching joints, and a general feeling of ill health. The lymph nodes of the groin or, less commonly, of the armpit or neck, suddenly become painful and swollen.
The Essay on The Black Plague People Death Europe
... Europe's people. This epidemic is known as the Black Death, or the Bubonic Plague. The plague was carried by rats and fleas along the ... The Septicaemic plague is more like the bubonic plague. Very similar symptoms, but death occurs in one day of getting the disease. The ... persists, people turn to cures. Many believed that the disease was transmitted upon the air, probably because the smell from the ...
The temperature, accompanied by shivering, rises to between 101? and 105? F. The pulse rate and respiration rate are increased, and the victim becomes exhausted and apathetic. The buboes swell until they approximate a chicken egg in size. In nonfatal cases, the temperature begins to fall in about five days, and approaches normal in about two weeks. In fatal cases, death results in about four days. The purple color, which appears in all plague victims during their last hours, is due to respiratory failure; the popular name Black Death that is applied to the disease is derived from this symptom. Many preventive measures, such as sanitation, killing of rats, and prevention of the transport of rats in ships arriving from ports in which the disease is endemic, are effective in reducing the incidence of plague. Famine, which reduces resistance to the disease, results in spread of plague. Individuals who have contracted the disease are isolated, put to bed, and fed fluids and easily digestible foods. Sedatives are used to reduce pain and to quiet delirium. During World War II, scientists using sulfa drugs were able to produce cures of plague; subsequently, streptomycin and tetracycline were found to be more effective in controlling the disease.
The Term Paper on The Plague European Society
... Renaissance movement. Virtually no aspect of European society was unaffected by the Black Plague for it changed the cultural elements ... million people reducing the population of Europe by one third. Originating in Asia the plague swept through Europe between 1347 and 1350 ... these things being considered associated with the cause. Both diseases came with various misconceptions about the causes and ...
The coming of the Black Death, when in just two years perhaps one third to one half of Europe’s population was destroyed, marks a watershed in Medieval and Renaissance European History. Bubonic plague had been absent from Western Europe for nearly a millenium when it appeared in 1348. The reaction was immediate and devastating. Up to two thirds of the population of many of the major European cities succumbed to the plague in the first two years. Government, trade and commerce virtually came to a halt. Even more devastating to Europeans, there was hardly a generation which did not experience a local, regional or pan-European epidemic for the next two hundred years. There was virtually no aspect of European society that was not affected by the coming of plague and by its duration. At the most basic level, recurrent plague tended to skim off significant portions of the children born between infestations of plague, dampening economic and demographic growth in most parts of Europe until the late seventeenth century. The responses of Europeans are often treated as irrational or superstitious. Yet medical tracts, moral treatises and papal proclamations make clear that for most Europeans there were, within the medieval world view, rational explanations for what was happening.
Plague stimulated chroniclers, poets and authors, and physicians to write about what might have caused the plague and how the plague affected the population at large the framing story of Boccaccio’s Decameron is merely the most famous of the writings. Nonetheless, in the wake of the first infestations there were attacks on women lepers and Jews who were thought either to have deliberately spread the plague or, because of their innate dishonor, to have polluted society and brought on God’s vengeance. The violence against outsiders demonstrated, in a tragically negative manner, the nature and the limits of citizenship in Europe. This was a society which defined itself as Christian and recurrent plague changed religious practice, if not belief. Christians had long venerated saints as models of the godly life and as mediators before God, in this case an angry and vengeful one. A whole new series of “plague saints” (like St. Roch) came into existence along with new religious brotherhoods and shrines dedicated to protecting the population from plague. The recurrence of plague also affected the general understanding of public health. Beginning in Italy in the 1350s there were new initiatives aimed at raising the level of public sanitation and governmental regulation of public life. And, finally, by the sixteenth century a debate over the causes of plague spread in the medical community as old corruption theories inherited from Greece and Rome were replaced by ideas of contagion. The story of plague in Renaissance society is not merely a medical, religious or economic subject. To properly understand the impact of plague it is necessary to consider almost all aspects of society, from art and
The Essay on The Bubonic Plague Crisis In Europe And Asia
... that would affect all aspects of European society. The Bubonic Plague generated from a bacterium called ... 40 percent of the entire population. The population of England pre-plague was estimated to be ... to come by. The standard for medieval medical response to serious illness was taking ... which large numbers of people wandered through Europe in religious processions flagellating themselves with metal ...
