The Bubonic Plague” Interesting Facts and Origins of the Black Death
by Even atheists believed the Bubonic plague or “Black Death” as it was also known was a judgment of God. So savage was this disease that a doctor could tend to a patient, contract the disease and be dead before the patient (who would die soon after.) But where did it start?
The first thing to understand is the fact that this disease has been around for a long time. It was first recorded in the 1st century and since then it has been estimated to have claimed over 200 million lives. It wasn’t recognized as a true pandemic until 1328 when many people worldwide succumbed to it.
Although Europe has usually been credited with it’s origin it actually appears to have started in either the region of the Gobi desert or the land of Egypt and then spread from there to the western world. Changes in lifestyle around the middle ages have been blamed for the virus reaching pandemic levels as trade routes allowed easy access for the disease carrying rats and highly populated areas with very poor sanitary conditions provided an ideal breeding ground for the plague to reach full ferocity. Never before did any illness or malady provoke so much fear and sheer terror, destroy economies and create social upheaval as this one.
It would appear mysteriously with no obvious causes and no known cure or treatment. Once diagnosed, people would often be locked into their houses to die rather than risk having them free to spread it further. It is now known that the disease was carried through rodents and fleas. The flea would bite and suck the infected blood from the rat then bite and regurgitate the blood into a human body thus infecting humans who could then spread it very rapidly to each other. Symptoms would include fever and painful swellings of the lymph glands which were called buboes (thus the name Bubonic Plague), it also caused red spots on the skin which would later turn black. Panic would abound when the plague came to town, fathers would abandon sick sons, lawyers refused to come and make out wills for the dying, care of the sick fell to nuns and friars who then died of the disease themselves, bodies lay everywhere. It killed people with amazing speed, the Italian writer Boccaccio wrote of the victims:”ate lunch with their friends and dinner with their ancestors in paradise”.
Although the plague is considered a disease of the Middle Ages outbreaks are still reported worldwide, the most recent to my knowledge in 2006 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The disease can now be treated with antibiotics although the most virulent form Pneumonic plague will still kill if not treated within 24 hours.
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