The Bubonic Plague: The Black Death

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The Black Death was one of the most infamous disease epidemics to strike mankind. From the mid 1300s until around 1600 it wept around many regions of the western world (Most notably Europe), along with it’s near seventy percent mortality rate. Bodies lined the streets as it ravaged Europe, wiping out forty percent of its population. Giovanni Boccaccio wrote in Decameron ”It carried off uncounted numbers of inhabitants, and kept moving without cease.” And “Every hour of every day there was such a rush to carry the hug number of corpses that there was not enough blessed burial ground”. This in turn came with a vast array of socioeconomic effects ranging from labor shortages to the removal of basic rights from peasants. The Black Death had its origins in Southwestern China, where the diseases were contained to a very small area due to isolation. The Black Death Consisted of three main diseases: Bubonic, pneumonic and septicemic plague. This isolation changed when trade routes opened toward …show more content…
This is because of the black “Blotches” that would appear on those whose carried the plague, and if anyone came in contact with one of the blotches they were sure to die. Symptoms other than the blotches include inflamed lymph nodes in the neck, underarm, and groin area along with internal hemorrhaging. The bubonic plague carried a 70% mortality rate. The Plague was highly contagious and deadly. Giovanni Boccaccio exemplified the potency of the plague in this statement, “ The rags of a poor man dead from this disease had been thrown in a public street. Two pigs came to them and they, in their accustomed manner, first rooted among them with their snouts, and then seized them with their teeth and tossed them about with their jaws. A short hour later, after some staggering, as if the poison was taking effect, both of them fell dead to earth upon the rags which they had unhappily